The Pittsburgh Penguins will be without one of their rookie forwards for a bit as Zach Aston-Reese is out with an upper-body injury. Head coach Mike Sullivan announced this morning that he was injured in practice on Monday and was not a healthy scratch last night. He also said that it’s more of a longer-term injury for Aston-Reese.

Penguins Zach Aston-Reese Out Long Term

Aston-Reese has appeared in 10 NHL games since being called up in Wilkes-Barre and had four goals. He was showing that he’s able to go to the dirty areas to get his first few goals in the NHL. Aston-Reese was rotating between playing with Sidney Crosby on the top line to playing down in the bottom six as well. He was also potentially going to be in the playoff lineup if kept continuing to produce down the stretch for Pittsburgh.

Aston-Reese was signed out of college and immediately went to Wilkes-Barre. He had a sluggish start to the season but rebounded to have nine goals and 29 points in 41 games before being called up. He’s still the fourth leading scorer of that team even though he’s been on the Penguins since February 3rd.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Aston-Reese if/when he comes back this season since the playoffs are now less than two months away. Will the Penguins keep him up and play him in the playoffs or will they send him down to the AHL and have him play in the playoffs down there? It’ll also be interesting to see if both Aston-Reese and Daniel Sprong are on the team as the playoffs get closer. Sprong was sent back down to work on his game in the AHL and he could very well be called up for the playoffs if all goes well.

Other injured Penguins include Matt Murray who’s out with a concussion and Phil Kessel who seems banged up lately even though he’s been playing in games.

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