This could be the real beginning of U.L. Blomquist's NHL.

I know he was here before and he played well and all that other stuff, but this, this is different.

Good morning to you.

Good Friday morning from Buffalo, New York. 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. It'll be Penguins versus Sabres here tonight at Key Bank Center.

And though Mike Sullivan's not going to say who tonight's goaltender is until after the

morning skate, I mean, you go through all this, you bring the kid up, and yeah, I would imagine he's

going to play tonight, and then you can use Alex Nadelcovic tomorrow night in Washington,

given the back-to-backs and all. And I'm not going to lie. I feel almost more invested in this Blanquist

start than I did in any of the ones earlier this season. Because we knew he wasn't going to,

he wasn't going to hang around. You had two guys getting NHL contracts between Ned and Tristan Jari.

You knew Jari was going to be back.

You knew there was just no way, right?

This is different.

And this is different not only in the sense that Jari's out maybe for good,

but also that it was Kyle Dubus's terminology that Blumquist's going to get,

and I quote directly, a prolonged look. That's not just, let's see how he does on the trip.

Let's see how he does as the guy. And that's the position I believe he's

going to be put in, whether he starts tonight or not. And that's actually just a really,

really good thing. A couple of reasons for that. One is that Ned hasn't handled starting on some sort of steady basis particularly well.

He hasn't really handled too much well in general this season with the exception of a terrific performance like the one against Edmonton.

And he's really, for whatever reason, struggled on the road.

But what you're looking for,

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