Tonight we welcome back an important Penguins goaltender, Matt Murray. I kid I kid. Matt Murray is returning tonight, but the opponent will be beloved teammate and fan favorite Marc-Andre Fleury. The Flower’s 2017-18 season has been like his career. A share of ups and a downs. Fleury started the season on fire propelling the Golden Knights to their impressive start. While the Golden Knights continued their success they did so without Fleury who suffered another concussion. Fleury was out of action for two months and just returned two days ago. He only allowed two goals against Carolina making it a successful return. His all situations save percentage is .930 in Vegas which is terrific, albeit in only five starts. It will be an emotional night for his old team as well as himself. While emotional, don’t expect the Penguins players to take it easy on him and vice versa.
Also on the Golden Knights are forwards David Perron and James Neal as well as defenseman Deryk Engelland. David Perron is also having a good season while missing time due to a concussion. In his last ten games played he has 12 points. The only other player with a better start to the 2017-18 season other than James Neal was Alex Ovechkin. Neal had six goals in Vegas’ first four games. While keeping that pace isn’t realistic Neal has continued to score goals. He has 14 goals in only 30 games with a 5v5 goals per 60 of 1.31.
Jim Rutherford spoke about a shakeup to the roster yesterday if the team doesn’t start to win more games and solidify their playoff spot. I think that is definitely something that needs to be considered. What else needs to be considered is giving some other players a chance. The obvious option is placing Daniel Sprong in the NHL and scratching Ryan Reaves.
Daniel Sprong is not a complete player. He never will be. You know who else isn’t? Ryan Reaves. Daniel Sprong’s skillset fits what the Penguins need more than Reaves ever will. Pittsburgh can’t score goals, neither can Ryan Reaves. Why not let Daniel Sprong get a chance to see what he can do to help with that. Tom Kuhnhackl is another player that shouldn’t be guaranteed a roster spot. Kuhnhackl and Reaves are the bottom two forwards on the team in their rel CF%. Kuhnhackl has a lowly 5v5 points per 60 of 0.52 and Reaves is at 0.83. The team isn’t getting anything from them. Daniel Sprong is their top prospect. Let’s put a square peg in a square hole. It isn’t difficult. This reinforces one of the most popular tropes in the NHL that offensively skilled players have to learn how to be two way players, but the offensively challenged are never in fact challenged to improve the holes in their game. Most of these offensively challenged players aren’t good defensively either which compounds the ludicrous double standard even more.
Sprong will of course need a lot of help with his player usage, but I’m sure Mike Sullivan could find him 7-10 minutes a night that make more sense than Reaves running around and not solving any of Pittsburgh’s problems. I’d like to see some changes like this happen in concert with any of the larger changes.
I do think the team is in need of a bigger roster move, but at the same time you can’t talk about wanting to get better when you voluntarily have tanked your fourth line with guys who are dead weight.
Thanks for reading!
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