The Pittsburgh Penguins are looking to avoid a very rare feat, starting the season 0-3. The Penguins make their home debut tonight against the 3-0 Montreal Canadiens.
The last time the Penguins started a season with 3 losses you have to go all the way back to Sidney Crosby's first games in the NHL. Pittsburgh started that season 0-4-5 and ended up taking Jordan Staal later that spring.
In 2010-11 Pittsburgh lost their first two games to Montreal and Philadelphia 3-2 but bounced back to beat New Jersey 3-1 to avoid the three game losing streak.
Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin have started the season pointless through two games. This is obviously not going to continue being the case but it does mark the all time slowest starts to a season for each player.
Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are accustomed to getting points in the season opener. In fact only three times has Crosby had to wait until game 2 to find the scoresheet (2007-08, 2010-11, 2012-13) and Evgeni Malkin has only had to wait once (2010-11). With both players not registering a point in the first two games this year it marks the slowest ever start for either of them. I guess they are human after all.
Montreal is undefeated and leads the NHL in Score-Adjusted Fenwick at 63.11% That doesn't mean they are necessarily an elite team this year it just means they have been c rushing their opponents (Toronto, Boston, Ottawa).
A quality possession game when combined with Carey Price makes winning against the Canadiens a very tough thing to achieve.
Pittsburgh is coming into tonight with some mild alterations to their forward grouping. It will be the same nine forwards but David Perron will be replacing Sergei Plotnikov as the left winger on the Malkin unit which I believe is the right choice.
Sergei Plotnikov has played the best hockey of his very young NHL career with Beaunino.
4. One opponent on Sidney Crosby, shotless in his first two games of the season: “He is not taking pucks inside with a shoot mentality because he is looking to feed Phil Kessel.” Not a surprise that Crosby would be trying to make Kessel comfortable. No doubt the Pittsburgh Penguins try to make him more a little more selfish.
Crosby said after the Arizona game that he couldn't think of any opportunties to shoot that he turned down. That may be true but subconsciously he may not be trying to create those opportunities for himself. He needs to create for himself and the nice passes will still be there too.
And what better way to have a shooting mentality than by placing the team's best two shooters opposite each other in the power play formation. I am obviously talking about Phil Kessel and Evgeni Malkin who have yet to play with one another on the power play this year.
We might not be able to form concrete opinions about a team until the 15-20 game mark but that doesn't change the fact that the two points on the line tonight are worth the same amount as the ones in late March. Pittsburgh going 0-3 isn't a season killer but it certainly takes away from wiggle room later in the year.
Thanks for reading!
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