Satan's presence shocks, helps Penguins

A lot can happen over the course of an American Hockey League season, but last week, something took place that even Nostradamus himself couldn’t have predicted.

Miroslav Satan suited up for the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.

A former National Hockey League All-Star, Satan was assigned to the minors for salary cap reasons earlier in the month.  He has over 1,000 games of NHL experience, which is more than double than the rest of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton roster has combined.

“I definitely did not envision that,” Penguins’ interim head coach Todd Reirden said of Satan's arrival. “It’s a pleasure to have him and it’s a joy for our guys to be able to work with a guy that has a playing resume that he does.”

“He’s awesome, any time you can add a veteran player with that much skill and that much experience it’s awesome,” said Chris Minard, Satan’s linemate. “It’s fun out there with him.”

In his Wilkes-Barre/Scranton debut last Monday, Satan made an immediate impact. He scored a goal and added three assists in a 7-2 win at Albany. Two days later, he played his first home game, tallying an assist and scoring a shootout goal in a victory over Philadelphia.

And he’s just getting started.

Satan hasn’t played in the AHL since April of 1995, when he skated for the now-defunct Cape Breton Oilers. He then played 13 seasons in the NHL, and admitted after Wednesday’s game that he was still adjusting to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton system and playing with his new teammates.

“I still have to see many more teams to kind of get the feeling, what it’s about playing in this league… It’s a new situation for me. It’s going to be like this for a while,” Satan said.

But according to Reirden, the numbers that Satan has put up in his short time in Northeast Pennsylvania are only a part of his contribution to the Penguins.

“He does so many things that don’t show up on the score sheet,” Reirden said. “It’s not just points for Miro. It’s little plays, it’s plays along the wall, it’s areas of the ice that he opens up for other players.”

His presence also adds to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s talent pool and gives the team more depth at the wing position, something that Minard says is invaluable.

“We have four lines that we can roll. (16-goal scorer) Luca Caputi on our fourth line, let’s say, that probably doesn’t happen on any other team,” Minard said. “That’s just the depth of our hockey team and that’s going to help us in the long run.”

It’s unclear exactly how long Satan will play for the AHL Penguins. One possibility is that he will stick with the team for the remainder of the regular season, then rejoin Pittsburgh for the playoffs when NHL teams are not required to be salary cap compliant.

But even if he is only with the Penguins for the rest of the regular season, the team stands to benefit from his presence.

“You want to put your best line-up out there every night, he makes our team that much better,” Minard said. “He’s going to help us win hockey games, that’s for sure.”