Chirps from Center Ice

I said yesterday that Robert Bortuzzo or Andrew Hutchinson would get called up to Pittsburgh for tonight’s game in Ottawa vs. the Senators.

Well today Pittsburgh announced it called up Corey Potter and Steve Wagner instead. I whiffed on that one big time.

The thought is that Pittsburgh knows that Matt Niskanen isn’t playing tonight because of the flu and the reason you take two defensemen from Wilkes is because Kris Letang took a shot from an Edmonton player late in the third Sunday. My only guess is he won’t go tonight, (EDIT: Paul Martin is missing from practice today according to the Pens Report) thus you call up Potter and Wagner.

Potter’s numbers for those Pittsburgh fans who may not be familiar: 62 GP, 2-25-27 and a +24. His +24 is second in the league for +/-.

Wagner’s numbers for those Pittburgh fans who may not be familiar: 64 GP, 5-21-26 and a +14.

Neither Potter or Wagner fight as much as say a Jesse Boulerice so you shouldn’t expect them to drop the gloves and fight at the drop of a hat. They do know how to scrap however. Both are unrestricted free agents at the end of the year so Pittsburgh figures this is an audition of sorts.

Also, unrelated to the above, I talked up Wilkes-Barre / Scranton with Zach Boslett and the Faceoff Factor recently. The link to the story is here.

Gameday vs. the Moose will be up at 4:30 p.m. today. Preview from the Moose persepctive can be found here.

Go Pens.