Not much said about Malkin’s suspension

The Penguins didn’t have Evgeni Malkin against Connor McDavid’s Edmonton Oilers Wednesday night at PPG Paints Arena, but Malkin’s teammates refused to spend time crying over the suspended Russian.

“It’s not my call,” Kris Letang said of the one-game suspension Malkin incurred Tuesday for swinging his stick like a sword at Philadelphia’s Michael Raffl. “So I don’t care.”

“It doesn’t matter what I think, you think or anyone else thinks,” coach Mike Sullivan added. “The league makes its decisions, and we’re going to live by it.”

While Penguins players didn’t want to say much about the suspension — “I have no comment on that,” Patric Hornqvist said — Sidney Crosby did sympathize with Malkin.

They’ve all been there before, Crosby said, in so many words describing Raffl punching Malkin in the back of the head and setting him off. The lesson here is for Malkin, who now has two of the five match penalties that have been handed out this season, to keep his cool.

“It’s an emotional game,” Crosby said. “You’re going to do stuff sometimes. Ideally, you wouldn’t do anything; you’d skate away.

“I’m sure there’s a lot of guys — myself included — who’ve said that a number of times. It doesn’t always work out that way.”

Without Malkin, Nick Bjugstad centered a second line with Tanner Pearson and Phil Kessel against the Oilers.

Aston-Reese returns

Zach Aston-Reese returned to the lineup after a 13-game absence, joining a fourth line with Matt Cullen and Garrett Wilson.

“I’m excited,” Aston-Reese said after morning skate. “I’m back with Cully and Willy. I thought we had a lot of chemistry earlier in the year, playing that grind game.”

When Aston-Reese hurt his hand in a fight with Florida’s Colton Sceviour Jan. 8 — not a punch; Sceviour landed on it — Aston-Reese was feeling good offensively. Although he didn’t have a point that night or the previous game, Aston-Reese was coming off a four-game point streak where he scored a pair of goals.

“I wouldn’t say I was at the top of my game, but I was definitely starting to figure it out offensively, how to get some points and things like that,” Aston-Reese said.

That will be key, too, on the power play, where Aston-Reese took Dominik Simon’s spot on the second unit.

With three goals in his past 33 games, Simon was a healthy scratch against Edmonton.

Top unit back

Speaking of the power play, Sullivan re-assembled the top unit after using two separate ones Monday against the Flyers.

That meant Kessel was back with Crosby, Letang, Hornqvist and Jake Guentzel.

With the Penguins one for 20 on the power play in a nine-game stretch before Wednesday, what was Sullivan’s message in putting the top guys back together?

“To score goals,” said Hornqvist, who entered the game without a point in his past nine.

Coffey talk

Former Penguins defenseman Paul Coffey was back in town because of his role as an Oilers skills and development coach. The last one of his Penguins records, however, has just fallen.

Letang knocked that one off in Philadelphia, scoring his 109th career goal. Letang is now the Penguins leader in games played, goals, assists and points by a defenseman in the regular season and playoffs. Letang also has a huge amount of admiration for Coffey, whom he considers a friend.

“He brought huge things to me, especially early on, having chats about the mental aspect of the game, what it is to play with guys like Geno and Sid,” Letang said. “He had the chance to play with Mario [Lemieux] and [Wayne] Gretzky.

“It’s not always technical. It’s more mindset going into games and coaching.”