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Cuts Can't Come Soon Enough

October 1, 2016, 9:34 AM ET [74 Comments]
Ryan Wilson
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
A few notable observations from the second Chicago Pittsburgh preseason game

Derrick Pouliot did not have a good game on the possession front. He was paired with Trevor Daley, but found himself on the wrong end of things. He was only on the ice for 13 shot attempts for and 19 against. He is certainly capable of better and was against Detroit when he was at 63.6% earlier in the week.

The line of Wilson-Sheary-Fehr had 38% possession.

Kevin Porter and Tom Sestito (yes that Tom Sestito) were two of the top four possession players.

I guess the point I want to make is that these games before most of the cuts are made are useless for predictive value. There are too many broken parts. In Pittsburgh's three preseason games so far we have yet to see one of their top four centers. Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Nick Bonino, and Matt Cullen have yet to play. We have only seen one game from Chris Kunitz who has any kind of meaningful NHL sample as a top six winger.

The problem with the preseason is that you have a bunch of players with no shot at the NHL. So when you are trying to analyze specific guy(s) you're left with the shortcomings of those career AHLers (or below). Recency bias and small samples with broken rosters is great recipe to make evaluation mistakes.

Basically all I took from last night's game was that Jake Guentzel continues to look good. Even that doesn't matter until we get to see him playing with and against more NHL players. Hopefully we do after cuts are made.

Well there was one more thing. Marc-Andre Fleury was really sharp. The Blackhawks certainly generated enough scoring chances to score goals but Fleury made every save with some of them being excellent ones.

Going from the World Cup to these games is painful. We've got three more of these games to go. Hopefully cuts will be sooner than later Let me know when the team plays at least one of their top four centers or a legit NHL top six winger.

Thanks for reading!
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