Happy anniversary to all Penguins supporters. It was a year ago today that the Pittsburgh Penguins and Chicago Blackhawks came together on a trade that would play a big role in how the Stanley Cup was awarded in 2016. The Penguins received Trevor Daley in exchange for a salary retained Rob Scuderi.
This was a huge moment for the Rutherford regime. Two days prior the team changed coaches, but coaches can only do so much with the personnel they have. Trading away Rob Scuderi was a shift away from pointless grit and experience in an effort to get faster with more puck skills. You know, the things that actually matter. This trade definitely accomplished that for the Penguins. This was the first step in transitioning the Penguins into the fast skilled team we still see and enjoy today.
Since the trade here is how the stats shake out:
*The sample includes playoff games
Daley has scored more goals as a Penguin than Rob Scuderi has in his career (8) and Daley has put up more points in 99 games as a Penguin than Scuderi has in 246 games since 2012-13 (36). Trevor Daley was never known to be a possession darling, but he was a drastic improvement over Scuderi. Even if Daley had played poorly on the possession front his tangible offense alone would be an upgrade.
The Daley trade was just the beginning of the transition. Rutherford traded the slower David Perron for the much faster Carl Hagelin. He traded for a much maligned Justin Schultz who can skate and has puck skills. The team then put faith in speedsters like Conor Sheary and Bryan Rust to play in top six roles during the playoffs.
Now that we are a year removed from the Daley/Scuderi trade it can only be considered as a huge win for Pittsburgh and one of the major events that turned the team around. Time flies when you are having fun.
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The Penguins destroyed the Coyotes on Monday night, but tonight won't be like that. The Boston Bruins will pose a much bigger challenge. The Bruins are the best possession team in the NHL. Boston has a Score-Adjusted Fenwick of 54.3%. The Penguins are no slackers on this front as they are fourth overall at 53.2%.
You may ask yourself why aren't the Bruins higher up in the standings if they are the best possession team in the league? It's a valid question because most teams that drive possession like that usually get rewarded in the standings. Their possession has not led to tangible offense yet this season. Here is a comparison of the top ten point producers for each team at even-strength.
You can see that Pittsburgh is getting a lot more from their players. Shockingly you have a player of Patrice Bergeron's caliber producing like an also ran fourth liner.
When you look into things deeper you can see the main culprit for the Bruins offensive woes. They are the 30th ranked team in the NHL in even-strength shooting percentage at only 6.11%. Toronto was the worst shooting team last year and they were higher at 6.36%.
In the past the shooting woes might not be as big of an issue because the Bruins employ one of the better goaltenders in the league in Tuukka Rask. However, what may come as a little bit of a surprise is that the Bruins are only 16th in the league with a .923 even-strength save percentage. It isn't because Rask is playing poorly, because he most certainly is not. He's at .939 and playing great. The problem is in the eight games he hasn't started the goalies who were in net have been terrible. Zane McInytre (.851), Anton Khudobin (.895), and Malcolm Subban (.857) have been awful.
For comparison sake the Penguins are ninth at .927. League average this year is .925 which is up from .921 from just a few years ago. Tuukka Rask has 15 of the team's 16 wins this year. In contrast the Penguins have shown they can win with either goalie in net. They have 11 wins from Matt Murray and eight from Marc-Andre Fleury.
So with overall goaltending average and shooting at a league worst some of the Bruins great possession is going to waste and its why they aren't leading a wide open Atlantic Division.
The Bruins will be going with Rask in net tonight.
Here are what the Bruins lines will look like
AM lines:
— Fluto Shinzawa (@GlobeFluto) December 14, 2016
Marchand-Bergeron-Backes
Schaller-Krejci-Pastrnak
Spooner-Czarnik-Hayes
Moore-Nash-Acciari
Pittsburgh will not be making any changes to its lineup. As a result they still have a ton of fire power in their top six. This is noteworthy for the following reason.
Crosby-Hornqvist on first line. Malkin-Kessel on second. Don't think Chara and Bergeron will share many shifts.
— Fluto Shinzawa (@GlobeFluto) December 14, 2016
Faceoff is at 7:30PM.
Thanks for reading!