EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- Sidney Crosby needs two assists when the Penguins visit Anaheim Friday night to become the 32nd player in NHL history to record 800 in his career.
No surprise there, since Crosby has been one of the league's finest set-up men since he entered it in 2005.
"That'd be a nice number," he said after the Penguins' practice at the Toyota Sports Performance Center Thursday. "Doesn't feel like it's coming that easy right now."
There's a good reason for that: When Crosby faces the Ducks, he will be trying to end a run of four consecutive games without an assist.
That matches his longest such drought of the season, which came in his final four games before undergoing surgery to repair a sports hernia in November.
Crosby, though, said he isn't frustrated by the dry spell, or allowing it to affect the way he approaches his job.
"You have to keep making plays," he said. "Sometimes, it just goes like that. ... When it's going that way, it kind of goes in bunches. But when it's going in for you, it can go in bunches the other way just as quick.
"You learn to stay with it. The worst thing you can do is to start to overthink or change anything. You rely on all those habits that give you success and trust they'll go in."
Crosby's history against the Ducks suggests it's quite possible that will happen once or twice Friday night: He has 15 assists, along with nine goals, in 17 career games against Anaheim.
While Crosby is hunting a piece of history -- San Jose's Joe Thornton is the only active player to record 800 assists -- a handful of teammates are focused on simply getting back into the lineup.
And they all seemed to taken significant steps toward that objective during Thursday's practice.
Defensemen Brian Dumoulin (ankle surgery) and John Marino (facial surgery) were cleared for full contact, center Nick Bjugstad practiced with the team for the first time since undergoing a core-muscle operation in November and Jared McCann worked out, albeit in a no-contact jersey, after missing the Penguins' 2-1 loss in Los Angeles Wednesday because of an unspecified upper-body injury.
"It's great to have all those guys out there," Mike Sullivan said. "Hopefully, it's just an indication of them all getting healthy and (will) give us an opportunity to have a full lineup."
Of that group, Dumoulin and Marino might be the closest to returning, although Sullivan labeled McCann "a game-time decision" for the Anaheim game.
"Obviously, the fact that (Marino and Dumoulin) participating in full-contact, I think that's real encouraging, from our standpoint," Sullivan said.
He added that "we have a sense" of when those two might be able to resume playing, but that "I'm just not going to share it."
Bjugstad was injured against New Jersey Nov. 15 and was initially expected to miss at least eight weeks.
His recovery seemed to proceed slower than expected, although team officials regularly insisted that he had not experienced a setback.
"It's been up and down, for sure," Bjugstad said. "It's s tough injury, and things have happened throughout. ... Obviously, I didn't expect to be out this long, but what are you going to do?"
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