Penguins' Maatta not interested in watching Niederreiter hit

Olli Maatta is only looking forward.

The Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman returned to the practice ice for the first time since suffering an upper-body injury Nov. 17, and has no desire to revisit the damaging hit into the bench door delivered by Minnesota Wild forward Nino Niederreiter.

"I actually haven't even seen it," he said on the team's official website. "I don't really want to watch it. It really doesn't matter.

"I can't really remember what happened, it happened so quickly. It didn't feel good."

We can only imagine.

As far as Maatta's recovery progress, he appears on track to return on the early end of the three-to-five week time frame.

"It was really encouraging today," head coach Mike Johnston said. "He wasn't cleared for contact in practice, but I thought he looked really good out there as far as his skating goes after not being on the ice with the team for a while.

"At the end he was bumping on the boards, his physical play seemed to be OK. We'll see how he is tomorrow and start to progress from there."

Maatta recorded two goals and two assists in 18 games prior to the injury.