Tonight will be the only time the Minnesota Wild will be visiting the Penguins in the regular season. This reunites the Pittsburgh faithful with former Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau, but more importantly it will give the fans a chance to give Matt Cullen some proper recognition for his role in back to back Stanley Cups with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Matt Cullen’s acquisition was one of the moves that Jim Rutherford made that signaled that these weren’t going to be the latter years of the Shero/Bylsma era. After stumbling through his first year as general manager with the forward depth Rutherford totally revamped the bottom six and one of the better moves was bringing in Cullen to center the fourth line. After a number of years of anemic production from the depth forwards Cullen came in and provided a real boost to the team in that department. He was able to slide up and down the lineup depending on injuries and was a great fit with the team. It was a tremendous signing. This past summer Cullen basically had three choices: Stay in Pittsburgh, go home to Minnesota, or go home to Minnesota as a retired NHL player. He chose to play in Minnesota and any level headed person could totally understand that decision.
Fast forward to tonight and it is easy to look at how the Penguins bottom six has faltered with Cullen in town as a reminder of what once was. However, what was once a productive Cullen in Pittsburgh has not been a productive Cullen in Minnesota. Even though the Penguins need better from their role players it appears as though Cullen has hit a wall.
As you can see the offense is lower than it has been and it isn’t good enough to make up for the ever decreasing possession numbers. I certainly don’t begrudge Cullen for playing another year. If somebody is willing to pay him then he should take advantage of the situation if that is what he wants to do. That said I don’t believe he’s in a place to help an NHL hockey team at this point.
So that's the 2017-18 version. Let's end on a positive note and celebrate the career that Cullen had. He did hit the 700 point mark this year which is a nice accomplishment for any player. He currently ranks 233rd overall in the history of the NHL in all-time points. To put that into perspective that is only four points shy of Phil Kessel, 13 points shy of Ziggy Palffy, and 17 points shy of both Martin Straka and Petr Nedved.
In the analytics era (2007-present) he has been almost dead even on the possession front while coming strong with a 1.74 points per 60 and had an xGF% of 51.55 *excluding 2017-18
He accomplished much of this while also being a great value to his team from a cap hit standpoint
To cap things off Cullen has three Stanley Cups to his name as well. A really great career.
Thanks for reading!