Penguins Practice Update: Ebbett/Kobasew Ready To Return?

Chuck Kobasew (left) and Andrew Ebbett (right) took part in today's optional skate.

Some good news from the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins practice facility at Coal Street this morning.

Injured forwards Andrew Ebbett and Chuck Kobasew were full participants in the team's optional skate today at the Toyota Sportsplex, perhaps signaling they are ready to return to the WBS lineup for Saturday's Game Five.

The other three injured Penguins - Reid McNeill, Nick Drazenovic and Dominik Uher - were not present at today's optional skate and are likely out for tomorrow night's Game Five.

Another notable player present at today's skate was local product Patrick McGrath, who joined the Penguins along with a few others from this year's Wheeling squad - Peter Merth, Dustin Stevenson and Tom Kuhnhackl, who has played the past two games with the Penguins and wasn't on the ice this morning.

The Penguins are on the brink of elimination and will look to send the series back to St. John's. They can do so with a win in Game Five at Mohegan Sun Arena Saturday night. If not, their season is over and for the second time in as many years they will have won the first game of the conference finals only to lose four straight and bow out in five games.

One way or another, history will repeat itself. If the Penguins lose tomorrow night, they will have repeated last season's playoff run which I just explained above.

A win sends the series back to Newfoundland much like the Penguins did against St. John's in the 2nd round of the 2012 Playoffs.

Two years ago, the Penguins split the first two games in Newfoundland and dropped their first two home games of the series before winning Game Five in double overtime to send the series back to Newfoundland. The 2012 Penguins went on to win Game Six and force a seventh game, but came up short in that Game Seven in Newfoundland.

One last note if you missed it last night, but yours truly appeared on this week's Power Play Post Show - an AHL radio show that covers league-wide events/happenings. Click on the link if you'd like to listen. I talked about the Penguins playoff journey among other things with host Bob Howard starting around the 1:23:30 mark of this week's Season 10, Episode 34.