Pens Points Monday: Back to TD Garden We Go

Good freezing morning everyone!

Following a not-so-successful weekend trip to Montreal, the Pens travel back to TD Garden, place where their 2013 playoff hopes ended in a sweep at the hands of the Bruins. Yes, the Pens already beat the Bruins once this year in Pittsburgh, but the best way to exorcise those demons would be to go back to the scene of their demise and repeat it there.

The team placed Beau Bennett on IR (no word on what the injury is, but we all assume it's the wrist), and re-called Zach Sill and Andrew Ebbett from WBS Penguins. The two re-calls mean that presumably something's also wrong with Tanner Glass.

Brooks Orpik and Paul Martin both have a shot at making the US Olympic team for Sochi, but neither is losing sleep over it. It would be the first Olympic voyage for Paul Martin, and I hope he gets the recognition.

What's life like for Penguins rookies? Is there ribbing, hazing, bullying? The guys say life's a lot easier on rookies now than it used to be.

Just as we always suspected, healthy scratches are upsetting to Joe Vitale. When on the ice, he is really serving as that energizer bunny that the fourth line needs, not to mention his work on faceoffs, but if he could only find some scoring touch...

The Hockey Writers give us all their thoughts on the curious case of Evgeni Malkin.

All the Pens fights are accounted for by PensInitiative.

In other NHL news, only two games were on tap yesterday. The Canes beat the Sens 4-1, and Eric Staal had a goal and two assists. Watch Cam Ward's amazing stick save, robbing Greenberg of a certain goal. Ottawa is sinking fast and quiet. Lehner is not happy with his and the team's inconsistent play.

In the other game, the Sabres tried to summon superhero power by unleashing their caped third jerseys (which, for the record, I really like and don't see what everybody's problem is), and it seemed to help for a little while, as they did score the first goal, but then the Wings woke up and put two behind Ryan Miller and added an empty-netter to seal the win. They did all that without Pavel Datsyuk, who seems to be doing fine following an elbow to the head and should be back in the lineup for the next game. Zetterberg's assist to Franzen was his 700th career NHL point.

Bruins tonight. Let's go Pens.