Breaks, bruises and strains are a sore subject with the Penguins. If one more person gets hurt, general manager Craig Patrick might start waking up from nightmares flashing back to last season. First, Martin Straka strained a hamstring in the first period of Wednesday’s game. He didn’t play Friday or Saturday and is not definite for Tuesday. Later in that game, Shean Donovan broke his foot blocking a shot. It’s the second trip to the shelf for Donovan, who came back just a week earlier from a knee injury. He is out indefinitely this time. Ian Moran was also hit by a shot in that game, but did not miss any time. Then, the Penguins lost Dick Tarnstrom, the league’s top scoring defenseman at the time, for 2-4 weeks when he also broke his foot blocking a shot Friday. He was hobbling around on crutches after Saturday’s game against the Boston Bruins. “Yeah, it’s tough,” the quiet defenseman said. Through 23 games, the Penguins have lost a total of 83 man-games to injury, the same number as last year. But Patrick said this year is different. “Injuries are going to happen, and we have more depth this year,” he said. “I guess we learned.” The Penguins have been able to deal with injuries thus far without any drastic roster moves, for the most part. They’ve always had at least six healthy defensemen. On the forward lines, they recalled Kris Beech for two games, Milan Kraft for one, and Michal Sivek is with the team now. The Penguins were 9-9-3-2 last year through 23 games, and 11-6-3-3 this year. “Hopefully not,” goaltender Jean-Sebastien Aubin said when asked if it’s starting to look like last year. “We’ve just played some tough teams and gotten banged up a little bit. We’ll be alright.” The Penguins took Sunday off after playing three games in four nights and will resume practice today at 10:30 a.m. at Mellon Arena in preparation for the Washington Capitals on Tuesday. MATCHING UP NICELY Even though they lost, Penguins forward Dan LaCouture was happy with the way the team played against the best team in the Eastern Conference. “There’s no question we match up well with them,” he said of the Bruins. “We’ve got just as good of a team in this locker room as they do over there, and we’re confident in our play. The loss tonight isn’t going to ruin our confidence or anything like that. It was a hard-fought game.” The Penguins led the Atlantic Conference for 24 hours after first beating the Philadelphia Flyers on Wednesday to tie them for the lead, then passing them with a win in Buffalo on Friday. The Flyers and New Jersey Devils moved back into a share of the division lead with wins Saturday. All three teams have 28 points, and the Devils have two games in hand. TO THE RESCUE The Penguins were without the services of defenseman Andrew Ference for 17 minutes Saturday night because of his instigator penalty. Ference was standing up for teammate Alexei Kovalev, who was down on the ice after Michal Grosek hit him hard from behind. Earlier in the season, Penguins forward Steve McKenna said he’d like to see the instigator penalty thrown out. “Guys know they can run around and do anything because the big guy (on the team) isn’t going to do anything, at least without getting a penalty, ” he said. “That’s the way it goes, and that’s the way they wanted it. Hopefully, that rule will change. I think it will help the game if they take that instigator rule out. But the powers that be govern the game. I think a lot of players would like it to happen. But who knows if it will?” General managers first adopted the penalty for the 1992-93 season to discourage fighting. It included a five-minute fighting penalty and a game misconduct. The two-minute penalty was added and the game misconduct was changed to a 10-minute misconduct in 1996.

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