Pittsburgh Penguins forward Evgeni Malkin was not on the ice for the start of practice Friday at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex. Coach Mike Sullivan said Malkin benefited from a day of maintenance off the ice. There is no indication this will affect his status for Saturday’s home game against Montreal.

Malkin leads the Penguins with 14 points. He seemed to fly around the ice the last two games after being moved to left wing on the first line with Sidney Crosby and Rickard Rakell. He had 21:53 of playing time Thursday in the Penguins’ 2-1 overtime win over the Anaheim Ducks at home.

All the other expected players were on the ice.

With Malkin out, Anthony Beauvillier skated with Crosby and Rakell in practice.

Shake penguins PP

Even with Malkin out, the Penguins have shown a different look at the power play in practice, something that began to evolve against the Ducks, including Kris Letang moving to the second unit and Matt Grezlcyk moving to the first unit.

The rest of the top unit Friday included Crosby, Rakell, Erik Karlsson and Michael Bunting. Letang was joined on the second unit by Lars Eller, Kevin Hayes, Valtteri Puustinen and Cody Glass.

The Penguins rank 14th in the NHL with a 20.6 percent power play success rate – an improvement from last season’s 15.9 percent which had them finishing 30th in the league. They were 0 of 3 on Thursday and 1 of 9 over the last four games.

“We’re looking for better execution,” Sullivan said. “We score power play goals (but) we also look at the process and what it looks like in terms of sustainability. We just think we’ve gotten to the point where it’s now been a few games in a row that, process-wise, we weren’t happy with where things were right now, so we’re trying to bring a little of change. We’ll see where this leads.