According to penguins.com Evgeni Malkin was the only player absent from Pittsburgh Penguins practice today. Enforcer Eric Godard made it threw his first practice with the team since he hurt his groin against the New York Rangers on January 25th.
There's no roster maximum of 23 players after the trading deadline, teams just must remain below the salary cap. Godard only makes the 23rd player on the team anyways, so there's nothing to worry about there anyways, but keep that in even though he'll be back soon, it doesn't mean the team can't still call up another player, if the cap space is there for the short term.
It's unknown (but seems unlikely) that Godard could be back in the lineup in two nights time. Why would the Penguins possibly try to rush a 3-4 minute player a game back? Oh yeah, Boston's on the schedule. If the Bruins try any rough stuff the Penguins still have quite a bit of muscle and willing participants to match them, but it seems likely they'll have their sights trained on Matt Cooke.
Here's the lines used from practice today. If Malkin has to miss some games is this a good lineup for the Pens to try out?
Ponikarovsky-Crosby-Dupuis
Kunitz-Staal-Guerin
Cooke-Kennedy-Fedotenko
Talbot/Rupp/Adams/Godard (rotation)