With the Pittsburgh Penguins' injury woes mounting, they made another move to shore up their blue line for the rest of their Western road trip.
With yet another notch in the injury department for the Pittsburgh Penguins, the team is taking more measures to offset some of their losses and keep legs fresh.
And they made another move to address that on Thursday.
With recently acquired blueliner Sam Girard out day-to-day with an upper-body injury, the Penguins shuffled a few things around with their defensive corps ahead of their matchup against the Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday evening. They recalled 6-foot-4, 230-pound left defenseman Alexander Alexeyev from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton (WBS) - Pittsburgh's AHL affiliate - and sent Ryan Graves to the AHL on a conditioning loan.
Alexeyev, 26, has yet to appear for the Penguins in an NHL game this season, and he has three goals and seven points to go along with a plus-4 and 15 penalty minutes at the AHL level this season. The former first-round pick (31st overall in 2018) was signed to a one-year deal this offseason by the Penguins after spending parts of four NHL seasons with the Washington Capitals.
In 80 career regular season games, he has one goal and eight points, and he also appeared in 10 playoff games for the Capitals last season, registering no points and coming in at a minus-2.
Graves, 30, is in the third season of a six-year contract that pays him $4.5 million annually. He has appeared in only 19 games at the NHL level this season for Pittsburgh after getting waived following training camp, and he has not played since Jan. 21 against the Calgary Flames.
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