From 2013-15 the Pittsburgh Penguins had some serious depth issues at the forward position. The team was constructed in a way that if Sidney Crosby and/or Evgeni Malkin weren't scoring the Penguins probably weren't winning. This is a problem because we know that all players go through elongated slumps.

This gets magnified in the playoffs. Championship caliber teams get offensive contributions from up and down the lineup at even-strength. Pittsburgh just wasn't getting the necessary contributions on that front, until now.

Here is the goal distribution by line so far in the playoffs at even-strength.



Line one is the Crosby unit, line two is the Malkin unit, line three is the Bonino unit, and line four is the Cullen unit.

The spread of the goals being scored at 5v5 is much better than it has been. On any given night somebody is going to step up and find some tangible offense. This is how you extend seasons.

For more context I compiled the 5v5 points per 60 of Pittsburgh's bottom six players. The samples were taken from the playoffs only from the past three individual seasons. Some of these players may have earned top six time during their Penguins tenure but at the time of their acquisition they were thought of as bottom six depth players. Here is the year by year break down.



There is a significant difference in the current season from the other two. The worst player on the 2015-16 list is Eric Fehr at 1.52 and the rate he is scoring at is better than nine of the other twelve options from 2013-15. Nick Spaling in 2014-15 and Brandon Sutter in 2013-14 would still be the lowest on this year's squad if they replaced Eric Fehr and those two had the best marks from the past two years.

There is even a common denominator in each of these three groups. They all had to face Henrik Lundqvist.

Matt Murray is certainly one of the biggest drivers of the Penguins postseason success so far, but the fact that Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin don't have to do all the work anymore makes them all the more dangerous. Just imagine if 87 and 71 were to go on a hot streak with this depth. The sky is the limit for this bunch.

Thanks for reading!

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