Penguins Practice: Rust, Granlund Return; Personnel Shuffles

CRANBERRY — Top-nine forwards Bryan Rust and Mikael Granlund, who sat out the Pittsburgh Penguins’ 5-4 overtime victory against Columbus at PPG Paints Arena Tuesday night, were back on the ice for a 33-minute practice today at UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex.

Alex Nylander, who played against the Blue Jackets on emergency recall, was present for the workout, too, as was forward Ryan Poehling, who was put on the Long-Term Injured list Tuesday.

Poehling wore a regular gold jersey for the workout.

That’s noteworthy because he had gone onto the ice wearing one before practice Monday, but switched to a white one to indicate that he has not been cleared for contact.

Rust missed the Columbus game because his wife gave birth, while Granlund did not play because of illness.

Crowded crease

Tristan Jarry and Casey DeSmith weren’t the only goalies to take part in the workout.

They were joined by a third, believed to be emergency backup goalie Mike Chiasson.

The Penguins have added him to practices in the past when they wanted to lighten the workload for the goaltenders and with three games in less than four days looming, it’s not surprising that they would do so again.

Personnel combinations

With Rust and Granlund back in the mix, the Pittsburgh Penguins used some different forward combinations than they did against Columbus, and also reconfigured the top defense pairings, sticking with a switch made during the Blue Jackets game.

During the drills today, the lines looked like this:

Guentzel-Crosby-Rakell

Zucker-Malkin-Rust

O’Connor-Granlund-Carter/Nylander

Heinen/Poehling-Bonino-Archibald

(Because Poehling is still on the LTI list, he is not a candidate to play against the New York Islanders Thursday night at PPG Paints Arena.)

These were the defense pairings:

Pettersson-Letang

Dumoulin-Petry

Kulikov-Rutta

Joseph-Ruhwedel

Pettersson and Dumoulin initially got new partners during the game Tuesday night, and the switches remained in place during practice today.

No. 1 power play: Crosby, Malkin, Letang, Guentzel, Rakell

No. 2 power play: Zucker, Carter, Rust, Granlund, Petry.