The Penguins are back in action tonight and they will be taking on the Florida Panthers. The Panthers have been through some turmoil early on this season. Last week they fired Gerrard Gallant after a game and left him to fend for his own cab. The optics on that were not endearing.
The Panthers haven’t been playing poorly this year, but they aren’t seeing the results that saw them make the playoffs last year. They are currently eighth overall in Score-Adjusted Fenwick at 52.1%. As a comparison the Penguins are sixth at 52.8%.
Florida has dealt with a number of injuries this season. Jonathan Huberdeau has yet to play this season, Jussi Jokinen has missed a chunk of time as has Nick Bjugstad. The latest injury is to Jonathan Marchessault who happens to lead their team in 5v5 points per 60. These injuries have negatively impacted the team’s even-strength offense. Last year they generated 2.47 goals per 60 at 5v5 which was second best in the NHL. This year they are currently 25th at 1.83.
Here is a snapshot of why they are not as good
There are some significant drops for multiple players that were producing at a top line level. Then there are some players who have been hurt or have since left the team. They are going to have to get some kind of bounce back from last year’s production in order to make a run at the playoffs. They are currently five points out of the final wild card berth with a game in hand on the Flyers. They are four points off from Boston who is in third place in the Atlantic Division.
Our old friend Jaromir Jagr isn’t producing at his league leading rate from last year, but he is still hunting down hockey legends in the all-time scoring department. He is six points away from tying Mark Messier for second overall in the league’s history. He currently has 1,881 points.
I was looking through some of his stats from his career and I found myself checking out his numbers from his time in Washington. Overall the general perception is that Jagr’s stint with the Capitals was a failure. He played in 190 games and scored 83 goals while registering 201 points for a points per game of 1.05. In the modern cap era only four players have a better points per game than Jagr’s “failed” time in Washington: Sidney Crosby (1.33), Evgeni Malkin (1.18), Alexander Ovechkin (1.14), and Joe Thornton (1.06).
On the Pittsburgh side of things, they made some roster moves yesterday. They re-assigned both Jake Guentzel and Derrick Pouliot to the Baby Penguins. The Pouliot choice isn’t very surprising considering how well the Cole-Schultz pairing is playing and the teams reluctance to sit Olli Maatta. The young Finnish defender has not had a good season. Everybody he has played with this year has done better when they weren’t with him.
Since his excellent rookie season when he was in a sheltered role with Matt Niskanen Olli Maatta’s sample size has not been overly impressive.
Trevor Daley had a strong start to his Penguins career. He played really well for the team during their playoff run. The possession part of his game has never been his strong suit, but last year he had a CF% of 53.7%. That has regressed to 47.7% this year which falls closer in line with his larger sample.
When Maatta and Daley are paired together they are a team worst 44.7% on the shot attempt front. This pairing is still receiving a good chunk of minutes and it isn’t working.
In today’s edition of beating a dead horse the Penguins should play their 12 best forwards. With Guentzel in the minors they are not doing that. If the argument is that there are no top six spots right now for Guentzel and he should be sent down that is a stupid argument. Stop type casting players on the third and fourth lines. You don’t need to be overly defensive and gritty just because you aren’t getting top six minutes. Guentzel playing on the fourth line with Matt Cullen (sans Eric Fehr) for 10 minutes a game is way better than him playing down in the AHL. Just because he is slotted on the fourth line doesn’t mean the coach can’t utilize him with other players at random times throughout the game. To make the fourth line better Mike Sullivan could put Scott Wilson or Tom Kuhnhackl on the right wing and bench Fehr. Can Scott Wilson or Tom Kuhnhackl play right wing? Right now the team trots Eric Fehr out on the right side on a nightly basis and there’s a strong argument that he can’t play it. Why not try somebody new even if they don’t have a history of being there? The current usage has the second worst possession player in hockey on the right wing and a promising forward in the minors.
As I was finishing up today's blog the following information became available.
The team is taking baby steps with their roster construction.
Looks like no Eric Fehr this evening and if the lineup is performance based this is an obvious decision for the reasons stated above
Matt Murray will be making the start tonight
It should be fun trying to decipher Malkin from Malgin on the broadcast this evening.
Thanks for reading!
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