Trouba back for Rangers vs. Penguins: Join the live conversation

It’s a four point game for the New York Rangers as they take on the team directly ahead of them in the standings.  After two solid outing against the Devils, the competition gets a little tougher as the Blueshirts hope to extend their winning streak to four.

The best news is the defense corps is getting healthy with Jacob Trouba returning to the lineup.

Trouba missed eight games with a broken hand suffered in a loss to New Jersey on February 16.  It means that the third defense pairing will be Libor Hajek and Brendan Smith with Jack Johnson sitting.

Trouba was originally estimated to be out 4-6 weeks, but is back much earlier.  Coach David Quinn said that the defenseman feels “very good” and he relies on the team’s medical advice to tell him when a player is ready to go. He said that the opportunity to give Jack Johnson a rest came at a good time.  “Jack’s been a warrior through this, he’s had the lower body thing he’s been dealing with and it came at a good time going back-to-back for Jack.”

Quinn also said that defenseman Tony Bitetto is not on the road trip, suffering the effects of a lower body injury.

Quinn also said that Mika Zibanejad is fine and will be playing tonight after tweaking his leg late in the game Saturday.  That means that the forward lines remain intact except for the fourth line with Phil Di Giuseppe replacing Colin Blackwell after he sat out the last game.

Alexandar Georgiev will be making his second straight start in net and he will be faced by Casey DeSmith who will be in the goal for the Penguins.

This is the third time that Georgiev will be getting back-to-back starts and the first time on consecutive days.  The Rangers lost both of those starts. In the first, Georgiev was pulled afer he gave up four goals to the Devils.  In the second game he didn’t take the loss as he was removed for the concussion protocol against Boston and Igor Shesterkin gave up the goal that ended up being the game winner.

Last season, Georgiev start 13 games back-to-back and won six times. In 2018-19 he started consecutive games six times and won twice.  With Shesterkin out, it’s essential that Georgiev be able to win consecutive starts.

Projected lineups

New York Rangers

13 Lafrenière – 93 Zibanejad – 89 Buchnevich
20 Kreider–16 Strome – 24 Kakko
17 Rooney – 72 Chytil – 12 Gauthier
48 Lemieux – 21 Howden– 33 Di Giuseppe

55 Lindgren – 23 Fox
79 Miller – 42 Smith
25 Hajek – 27 Johnson

40 Georgiev
71 Kinkaid

Pittsburgh Penguins

59 Jake Guentzel – 87 Sidney Crosby – 17 Bryan Rust
19  Jared McCann – 71 Evgeni Malkin – 42 Kasperi Kapanen
46 Zach Aston-Reese – 53 Teddy Bleuger – 13 Brandon Tanev
18 Sam Lafferty – 14 Mark Jankowski – 9 Evan Rodrigues

8 Brian Dumoulin – 58 Kris Letang
28 Marcus Pettersson – 6 John Marino
4 Cody Ceci – 5 Michael Matheson

1 Casey DeSmith
35 Tristan Jarry

Join the live chat!

The game will be televised locally on the MSG Network  and nationally on NBCSN with puck drop scheduled for 7:30pm.  The radiocast will be on ESPN 98.7FM.   The live thread here at Blue Line Station is active now.

We have been having some issues with the live thread auto-refreshing….here is a workaround:

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