Mike Sullivan confirms bad news for Marcus Pettersson.

The Pittsburgh Penguins still aren't in a great position, finding themselves in the bottom half of the National Hockey League's Metropolitan Division standings, but it was starting to look like this team may have the potential to turn things around. Unfortunately right as the Penguins seemed to be righting the ship, the team has been hit with some pretty unfortunate news.

On Monday morning, Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan confirmed that defenseman Marcus Pettersson, who has been one of the few bright spots for the Penguins this season, will miss significant time after suffering an injury against the Ottawa Senators over the weekend. Sullivan has indicated that Pettersson will be reevaluated on a week to week basis with a lower body injury, which likely means he won't be back until the turn of the calendar year at least.

Pettersson has been one of the most important players on the Penguins roster this season as one of the team's most active players in terms of ice time at 5 on 5 and the team's most active player on the penalty kill thus far in the regular season. Petterson has averaged 21 minutes and 47 seconds of ice time per game this season and that includes Saturday's game against the Senators in which he played just 6 minutes and 11 seconds due to the injury.

Pettersson has played so well in fact that he has been the subject of a great deal of trade speculation as the kind of player that playoff contenders would be looking for ahead of the trade deadline, which could be just one more reason that this situation is less than ideal for the Penguins. If the Penguins were hoping to trade Pettersson that has likely been put on hold, and there's no telling how the injury might impact his value moving forward.

Here's a look at how the Penguins lineup looked during Monday's morning skate, which Pettersson obviously did not attend.

Rakell-Crosby-Rust
Bunting-Malkin-Tomasino
DOC-Glass-Beauvillier
Nieto-Lizotte-Acciari

Pickering-Letang
Grzelcyk-Karlsson
Graves-Shea