Penguins coach Dan Bylsma was giddy enough over the prospect of getting Sidney Crosby back against Carolina last night at Mellon Arena that he was in a joking mood earlier in the day.

"We weighed our options and decided to let him play," Bylsma said.

Crosby, the team captain and leading scorer, sat out Saturday's overtime loss against Chicago because of a sore groin. He took part in the morning skate yesterday and declared himself ready to return.

"I've had a good couple of days to rest and get it worked on," he said. "There's no more pain."

Crosby, who led the team and ranked third in the NHL with 36 points going into the game, is one in a long list of Penguins who have missed time because of injury.

"The speed and the pace and what other teams have to bring to the table when he's out there playing his game five-on-five and on the power play is a different level than your average player coming back into the lineup," Bylsma said.

Although players often express a desire to play against top competition, Carolina center Eric Staal wasn't quite that politically correct.

"Obviously, it's fun playing against those top players, but I think we'd rather face them without him," Staal said of Crosby. "If you've got a guy that can break a game open at any time, you'd rather have him out of the lineup than in."

Hurricanes coach Paul Maurice went so far as to crack that the Penguins might have wanted to rest Crosby for another game because "clearly when you've got the best player in the league you should probably make sure he's healthy for the Olympics."

Defenseman Alex Goligoski and winger Chris Kunitz, who are out with undisclosed injuries, joined their teammates on the ice for the first time at the morning skate.

"I feel like I'm getting better every day, so, hopefully, [I'll be back] soon," said Goligoski, who has missed the past four games and 10 of the past 11 and apparently is ahead of Kunitz, who has been out the past 12 games.

"They're on different timelines, but, hopefully, we'll see Alex soon," Bylsma said.

Kunitz has spent most of his down time working out off the ice.

"I'm just trying to pick up the speed of the game again, still not trying to do too much," Kunitz said. "Right now it's just making sure you feel good the next day, you're not straining anything too much. You don't want to go backward. I've missed enough games that I don't want to have to [miss anything] extra."

Although Penguins defenseman Sergei Gonchar -- who was injured during the playoffs on a knee-on-knee hit from Washington star winger Alex Ovechkin -- has declined to talk about Ovechkin's similar hit on Carolina defenseman Tim Gleason last week that earned Ovechkin a two-game suspension from the NHL, Gleason didn't have a problem talking about Ovechkin's hit and style.

"I don't remember the hit on Gonchar. Everyone is saying it's similar," Gleason said. "Ovechkin's a player that's a hard, gritty player. He's obviously one of the best players, if not the best player, in the league. He plays an aggressive style. I'm not going to knock him for that. I play an aggressive style, too. His remarks were he didn't mean it. That's fine. He apologized after that. So be it. Life goes on."

That said, Gleason didn't find the hit very pleasant.

"I watched it maybe 15, 20 times, and the more I watched it, the worse it got since I'm the one who got hit," he said. "It's one of those things that I cut to the middle and knew he was coming in for the hit."

Rookie forward Mark Letestu, who was promoted during Crosby's absence, was the Penguins' only healthy scratch. ... Carolina, somewhat surprisingly, made center and captain Rod Brind'Amour a healthy scratch. He has one point, an assist, in his past 11 games. The Hurricanes also scratched defenseman Niclas Wallin.

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