{"id":545242,"date":"2026-04-07T09:31:53","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T09:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/545242\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T09:31:53","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T09:31:53","slug":"penguins-stuart-skinner-out-with-upper-body-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/545242\/","title":{"rendered":"Penguins’ Stuart Skinner Out With Upper-Body Injury"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Penguins announced this afternoon that they\u2019ve recalled winger Avery Hayes<\/a>\u00a0from AHL Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton and goaltender\u00a0Taylor Gauthier<\/a>\u00a0from ECHL Wheeling. Gauthier is dressing as Arturs Silovs<\/a>\u2018 backup this afternoon against the Panthers, as Stuart Skinner<\/a>\u00a0is unable to dress because of an upper-body injury.<\/p>\n

Skinner was healthy enough to dress as Silovs\u2019 backup in a scheduled start for the latter yesterday, so it\u2019s unclear what\u2019s causing him to have to stay off the ice today. That\u2019ll also mean back-to-back starts for Silovs in under 24 hours against Florida after he allowed four goals on 23 shots yesterday. Luckily, he got nine goals\u2019 worth of support from Pittsburgh\u2019s offense to record his 18th win of the season.<\/p>\n

For whatever reason, the Penguins weren\u2019t going to be able to get either of their highly-touted AHL netminders,\u00a0Sergey Murashov<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Joel Blomqvist<\/a>, to Pittsburgh in time for today\u2019s 2:00 p.m. Central puck drop. It\u2019ll be Gauthier, the #5 on Pittsburgh\u2019s goaltending depth chart, getting the bump for now as a result. Josh Yohe of The Athletic<\/a> reports that the Pens will recall Murashov later in the week if Skinner needs to miss multiple games, though.<\/p>\n

Gauthier, 25, initially signed with the Pens as an undrafted free agent out of the WHL\u2019s Portland Winterhawks back in 2022. They opted not to issue him a qualifying offer when his entry-level contract expired last summer, but he returned to the organization on a one-year minor-league contract anyway. The ECHL\u2019s Goalie of the Year back in 2023-24, he\u2019s had another spectacular season in Wheeling with a .932 SV%, 2.00 GAA, three shutouts, and a 20-7-5 record in 33 games. That was enough to earn him a two-way deal from Pittsburgh at the trade deadline, making him eligible to join the club as an emergency backup option for the playoffs.<\/p>\n

As the Penguins continue to jockey for playoff positioning in the Metropolitan Division, they\u2019ll have to do so without Skinner for now. He had been emerging as their likely Game 1 starter. Head coach Dan Muse had been quite strict in a nightly rotation with Skinner and Silovs since the former\u2019s acquisition from the Oilers in December, but Skinner had started four out of five leading into yesterday\u2019s win over Florida and was expected to make it five of seven today.<\/p>\n

Skinner\u2019s .886 SV% and 11-8-5 record in 24 games since his acquisition aren\u2019t much to write home about, but he\u2019s been steadily improving while Silovs has hit a rough patch. Over each netminder\u2019s last 10 games, Skinner has saved 1.4 goals above expected while Silovs has a gnarly -6.4 GSAx, per MoneyPuck<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Penguins have all but clinched a playoff spot, entering today\u2019s schedule with a 99.2% chance<\/a> at a postseason berth. There\u2019s now a five-point gap between them and the Islanders for second place in the Metro, with the Pens having five games left and New York having four.<\/p>\n

As for Hayes, he was technically rostered for yesterday\u2019s game as well as a scratch, so this morning\u2019s announcement is overdue. He was just sent down to WBS on Friday but played for them that night, making him eligible to come back up to the NHL roster right away. He didn\u2019t draw into the lineup for today\u2019s game either but now has three goals through his first 13 NHL games, all this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Penguins announced this afternoon that they\u2019ve recalled winger Avery Hayes\u00a0from AHL Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton and goaltender\u00a0Taylor Gauthier\u00a0from ECHL Wheeling.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5113],"tags":[16597,5,4,118,1469,100,5216,157,7625,405],"class_list":{"0":"post-545242","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-penguins","8":"tag-avery-hayes","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-penguins","12":"tag-pittsburgh","13":"tag-pittsburgh-penguins","14":"tag-pittsburghpenguins","15":"tag-stuart-skinner","16":"tag-taylor-gauthier","17":"tag-transactions"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116362736143554139","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}