By all accounts, Juuso Riikola had a pretty good training camp. But he still is eighth on the depth chart of defenders and got waived on Friday. That doesn’t necessarily mean he has to be assigned to the minors if he clears, but with two forwards with COVID issues, the Penguins might only be able to carry seven defensemen to start the season. [Twitter - Chris Johnston]
One such forward with COVID, Zach Aston-Reese, skated on his own yesterday in Cranberry in a first step towards getting back to normalcy. [Tribune Review]
While Jake Guentzel remains sidelined and appears to be awaiting the consecutive negative tests in order to begin his own comeback.