PREGAME: Pens vs. Canes

Consol Energy Center. 7:00. ROOT

Hey everyone, Haylie (@haypens) here. I know, I know, I've been slacking on the pregame Pens stuff. Ginger cult things, no big deal. BUT WE'RE BACK.

The Penguins (2-0-0) are taking on the Hurricanes (1-0-1) at home tonight, third game of the regular season for both teams. The Pens have had a perfect 5-0 record against the Canes in CEC so far. Also, a Pens win tonight would give the Pens the first 3-0 start to the season since 1994-95, which led into a 7 game win streak.

Marc-Andre Fleury, who was named NHL's third star of the week for his solid play last week (including his 24th career shutout vs. the NJ Devils), will be in net tonight.

Here's just one of his many beautiful saves, by the way:

Been seeing this a lot on twitter today, so I suppose I should mention it as well (per @jmarshfof of Faceoff Factor). Evgeni Malkin has never gone 3 games into a season without scoring a goal, so this could be a scoring night for him.

LINES:

Kunitz - Crosby - Dupuis

Jokinen - Malkin - Bennett

Jeffrey - Sutter - Kobasew

Glass - Vitale - Adams

Orpik - Martin

Scuderi - Niskanen

Maatta - Bortuzzo

Fleury

Tlusty - E. Staal - Semin

Gerbe -  J. Staal - Dwyer

Skinner - Nash - Dvorak

Sutter - Lindholm - Bowman

Faulk - Sekera

Bellemore - Hainsey

Harrison - Murphy

Ward

Injury Report:

• James Neal is still out with an upper-body injury, said to be "week to week".
• Tomas Vokoun out 3-6 months (blood clot).
• Kris Letang and Matt D'Agostini (both lower-body) are on injured reserve.

Also, Kris is busy carving pumpkins, so there's that. (Love ya, Tanger!)

LET'S GO PENS