Pens Points: A Fiery Return?

Here are your Pens Points for this Thursday morning...

Pittsburgh Penguins captain, Sidney Crosby, recently received the ‘day-to-day’ injury designation from head coach Mike Sullivan. Crosby was spotted at practice yesterday, participated in a full capacity, and captained the first-team power-play unit. Are these all signs that #87 will make his long-awaited season debut later tonight? [PensBurgh]

Jason Zucker vowed to be better heading into the 2021-22 season. Plainly put, he said he wanted to shoot the puck more. Well, the early returns on Zucker’s bounce back campaign have been pretty impressive thus far. [PensBurgh]

Teddy Blueger was given the task of designing Casey DeSmith’s new goalie mask. To say the mask is unique is an understatement. [Post-Gazette]

News and notes from around the NHL...

The Tampa Bay Lightning will be without the services of star forward Nikita Kucherov for the next 8-10 weeks, as the Russian rehabs a lower-body injury. [Tampa Bay Times]

The identity of “John Doe” in the Chicago Blackhawks sexual assault case has been revealed as 31-year-old winger, Kyle Beach. Beach sat down with Rick Westhead of TSN to detail what he went through while with the Blackhawks in 2010. [TSN]

As the fallout from the Blackhawks sexual assault scandal continues to come, ex-Blackhawks head coach, Joel Quenneville, is set to meet with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman today to discuss the coach’s involvement in the case. [ESPN]

Jeremy Colliton, the current Blackhawks head coach, says he ‘feels bad’ for Stan Bowman after seeing the now-former Chicago GM resign due to his involvement with the aforementioned scandal. [Yahoo Sports]

Minnesota Wild GM, Bill Guerin, is set to be named as Team USA’s new general manager following Stan Bowman’s dismissal from this position as well. [The Hockey News/SI]