Limping Penguins press on vs. Senators

Associated Press

Seeing a top-line forward and your most indispensable defenseman walking slowly down the tunnel and out of sight during a game would be startling if the Pittsburgh Penguins haven’t grown so used to it.

At least Bryan Rust and Justin Schultz felt well enough on Tuesday to join the rest of the team as the defending Stanley Cup champions hopped a plane and headed to Ottawa for Games 3 and 4 of their Eastern Conference final tied at 1-1.

Whether Rust, Schultz and Patric Hornqvist — scratched after warmups before Pittsburgh’s 1-0 Game 2 victory on Monday night —get a chance to play is unclear. All three are day-to-day with upper-body injuries, though their absence hardly slowed their remarkably resilient team. The Penguins controlled play despite playing the last 50 minutes with just five defensemen and 11 forwards.

Just another day at work for a team that is within three victories of a return trip to the Cup finals despite an injured list that at times seems to grow by the shift.

Rust left just five minutes into Game 2 when he was on the wrong end of a crushing but legal check by Ottawa’s Dion Phaneuf. Schultz followed him out five minutes later after sliding awkwardly into the end boards. Hornqvist dressed but ended up staying in the locker room, the wear and tear of being a bulldozer in front of the opposing net and a wall in front of his own catching up with him.

And yet the Penguins roll on.

“We’ve been having to deal with these kind of injuries all year long,” defenseman Chad Ruhwedel said. “It really shows the character of this squad.”

Do-everything defenseman Kris Letang is out for the season after having surgery on his neck and Trevor Daley remains out with a lower-body injury of his own.