The news is official and, for Penguins' fans, very bad. Sergei Gonchar, the Penguins' top defenseman, will be out 4-6 months with a separated shoulder. Couple this with the loss of Ryan Whitney until sometime next year, and you have a team that may experience some more of the growing pains that most thought were behind them.
As I stated in my team preview, the Pens are relatively deep at defense. However, you can't really even hope to find a way to replace losing your top two defensemen. Worse yet, they were two of the team's power play quarterbacks. Whitney not as much as Gonchar, but still, these were the top two offense oriented defensemen on the team. A team that looked to again be a scoring threat all around now has only one, maybe two of their top six defensemen who can even smell the net at all.
Thusly, Kris Letang, after only playing seventy games in his career prior to this season, will be called upon as one of the power play leaders, likely along with old-timer Darryl Sydor. This leaves me concerned, not only for the Penguins' power play, but also for Letang. While he definitely has the ability to score, this could prove to be too much for the kid, and could lead to him having a rough season. Conversely, he may thrive given the opportunity to further hone his offensive game.
The other note of interest is that Marc-Andre Fleury will now have to perform his best every night. The Pens have been giving up tons of shots in the past few seasons, and without two of the top defensemen on the team for so long, Fleury will likely be facing even more shots as the defense tries valiantly to try and keep opposing players in check.
The loss of Gonchar is no small thing. However, I feel that this is a team that will still be able to compete every night. They will probably have some hero on the team step up and fill in well until either Whitney and/or Gonchar come back. I think it'll be Sydor, as unlikely as that may seem. With more minutes, I think he could very well slip into his old form, or some facsimile thereof.