We are one game away from Riley Sheahan’s 20th game played with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Sheahan was the player that was involved in the much anticipated “third line center” trade. What has Sheahan’s impact on the team been? Has it been good enough for Jim Rutherford to stand pat with the team’s center depth?

To start we need to understand the kinds of players that Pittsburgh needs to be successful. Given the fact that the Penguins will never be confused for a defensive minded team their forward personnel should be geared towards being offensively inclined. Riley Sheahan famously went goalless until the final game of the season last year where he scored his only two goals of the season. So far this year his offensive game has improved, although it was near impossible not to. He was a 0.64 points per 60 player at 5v5 last year. It’s really tough to not get points on accident when you play 935 minutes as Sheahan did. This year with the Penguins he is up, but it’s still only 1.06 which is well below the standard for a third line player (or even a fourth). He’s not the only Penguin struggling to produce at even-strength this year. It seems to be a team wide problem. It doesn’t change the fact that the team needs more even-strength production from their depth players and to this point they aren’t getting it from Sheahan.

Possession wise Sheahan is fine. He’s at 50.48% which is acceptable. It is slightly below the team average with a relative CF% of -1.15. The team can live with that. It is way better than what Bonino and Cullen were doing in their last year with the team. The problem is that Bonino and Cullen showed a pulse offensively and Sheahan doesn’t. Jim Rutherford spoke about how Pittsburgh’s depth players need to produce more offense and Sheahan was included in that. To Sheahan’s credit he has six points in his last nine games. He has seven points total on the season so the majority of his production has been recently. Will this continue? It will have to if the Penguins are going to continue to deploy him as the third line center. If not the team is going to have to use Jake Guentzel or make another trade.

It looks likely (as it did when the trade was made) that Sheahan’s most appropriate role with the team will be on the fourth line.

Thanks for reading!

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