good, great, and greatest Penguins news

I'm a day late on this one. My work and personal schedule this week is pretty demanding. The Penguins had 3 pieces of great news yesterday at practice. One even surprised his teammates.
The good news is Aaron Asham was back on the ice practicing. Asham has had a shoulder injury since the Oct. 1 exhibition against Chicago. He has yet to play a regular season game with the Penguins. You should be able to count on 10 or so goals for Asham this year and a physical gritty play. Before the injury, he was paired on a 3rd line with Cooke and Talbot. It will be interesting to see how he fits in and who must go when he does return. He is targeting a return in the next week.

The great news from yesterday is that Brooks Orpik returned to practice. Orpik has been out with a groin injury since Oct 9. He did play in the Pens first 2 games. The injury is something that has bothered him since earlier in training camp. Hopefully this layoff gave the groin time to heal and strengthen. Orpik is a rugged blueliner. He was slated to play along with Michalek and be the Pens shutdown defense duo. With Michelek still out for a couple to several weeks, Orpik will have to find a new partner. Orpik may be back as early as Thursday against Nashville

The greatest Penguins news of the day yesterday came when Jordan Staal skated out with the rest of the team for practice. Staal had been skating before practice for the last week. From the reports, Staal looked great. He has not practiced or played a game for 6 months. He has been hassled by  foot surgery which then became infected. Conditioning has to be an issue but Staal is young(22 years old) and has shown to be in excellent health and able to rebound in the past. Prior to the start of this season, Staal had never missed a regular season game due to injury in his NHL career. Staal was a finalist last year for the Selke trophy, which is given to the NHL's best two way defensemen. This year, there are big expectations of Staal's line. Evgeni Malkin has moved from center to wing to make room for Staal to move up from a 3rd line center to 2nd line. Staal scored 29 goals in his rookie season, mostly playing with Malkin. Staal admits he may need a couple more weeks to work on some things before being game ready, but joked "I think I could play tomorrow". Maybe not tomorrow, but Staal will be back soon and the club will be getting one heck of a player back.