Penguins coach Todd Reirden suffers serious injury.

The Pittsburgh Penguins have lost one of their coaches in an unfortunate series of events.

According to a report from Penguins insider Michelle Crechiolo, Penguins assistant coach Todd Reirden has suffered a serious injury. The injury is serious enough that Reirden will now need surgery, this in spite of the fact that he was hoping to push through the injury at least until the end of this current season.

Reirden reportedly fell and injured his knee at some point during the National Hockey League's All-Star break, although the circumstances of exactly how that may have happened have not been disclosed publicly. The fact that Reirden will now need corrective surgery to fix the damage to his knee does however suggest it was a pretty bad fall, especially for a guy that was hoping to make it through the season before going under the knife.

"He’s going to have surgery on Monday to get it fixed," said Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan on Saturday. "He reiterated to all of us he wanted to put it off to the end of the season, but that’s not possible."

At the time of this writing there's been no update on what kind of contingency plan the Penguins will operate with in Reirden's absence, and there also has not been a timeframe established for how long Reirden may be out of action as a result of his injury and the subsequent surgery.

Reirden has an extensive history with the Penguins organization and I have no doubt that his health, both short and long term, will be the organization's first priority in this matter. Reirden began his coaching career at Bowling Green State University but was quickly recruited by the Penguins one season later when he became assistant head coach of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. One year later he was named head coach of that team and just two years after that he had been promoted all the way up to the National Hockey League as an assistant head coach.

Reirden would remain in that role for several seasons before eventually being hired by the Washington Capitals where he also worked as an assistant, eventually being named head coach after the firing of Barry Trotz.

Following his split with the Capitals, Reirden was once again quickly hired by the Penguins and has remained in his role as an assistant coach with that team ever since.