Club return to the ice. Yesterday, first practice of the Stanley Cup playoffs, which will formally begin tomorrow, and I've got to tell you, I'm not sure how much better that session could have turned out, meaning the one yesterday. Good morning to you. Good Friday morning. I'm Dan Kovachvich of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports, and this is Daily Shot of Penguins. It comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you're into football and or baseball, I also offer daily shots of Steelers and Pirates in the same place that you found this.

Penguins versus Flyers, game one is an 8 p.m. face off. Saturday night, prime time.

Up at PPG paints arena. Game two will be Monday. Games three and four will head out to the wrong end of the Commonwealth.

And the most anyone could have sought out of that session yesterday was to have one of Blake

Lazot or Connor Dewar be healthy. Instead, they were both healthy.

They were both flying around.

They were both testing their respective injuries.

They were both passing, at least to my eyes, with flying colors.

Nothing formal was announced afterward by Dan Mews,

but both players said that they're ready for game one.

That means that the best fourth line in hockey will be intact come Saturday night.

Subtext to this for maybe everybody except me.

Anyway, because I thought this was kind of a big deal.

But one might think that those two players coming back

would knock Elmer Soderblum out of the lineup,

even though Soderblom could not and should not be knocked out of this lineup.

It's just one of those sets of circumstances that invites a bad decision, if that makes sense.

Well, a bad decision was not made.

Soderblum was instead placed on the third line, something that I had mentioned earlier in the

week I would love to see.

He'll be out there along with Ben Kindle and Anthony Mantha.

And in the process, that'll take Justin Brazo out of the lineup as a healthy scratch

...