Another day and another regulation loss for the Pittsburgh Penguins. It's not going to be easy to turn this ship around at this point. Even if Jim Rutherford manages to find the right trade(s) to make the team better they'd still have to earn about 60% of their remaining points to be "in the hunt".
This is looking more and more like a lost season. This leaves the GM between a rock and a hard place. It's not every year you have an opportunity to go for a third championship in a row. It's also not every year the two-time defending champion has a lower than 50% chance of making the playoffs at the half-way point in the year. There is an obvious temptation to do what you can to save the 2017-18 season, but no matter what moves are made they have a realistic chance of not being good enough even if they do legitimately make the team better. The NHL standings point system doesn't lend itself to teams trying to catch other teams this late in the year.
The current predicament dictates that there should not be any roster moves without the long term scope in mind. If you want to make a big trade, that is fine. It needs to positively impact next year and beyond. The Penguins don't even have good assets to make a run at a rental player anyways. The cupboard is bare and teams selling off rentals want futures, not another teams discarded wares.
Jim Rutherford's decision to patiently wait out the market over the summer and into the season hasn't worked. It doesn't necessarily mean it was awful strategy, but the team is where it is. For that strategy to work the players needed to buy some time by winning more games and they didn't. The conundrum the team finds itself in is that the time for action to save the 2017-18 season may have already come and gone.
The reason for the current situation has been easily diagnosed. They can't shoot and they can't make saves.
The shooting percentage stuff is something you chalk up as unfortunate. I don't believe they are the 31st best team at shooting the puck. Clearly there are still quality players on the roster. When you look at the comparison of returning players from last year to this year you get an idea of how good the top end players were last year.
Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin were shooting way above their career averages last year. Crosby had his second best shooting season on his way to the Rocket Richard Trophy and Evgeni Malkin's 17.3% tied a career high. Jake Guentzel was never going to shoot 20% forever. However, all three are still shooting at a respectable level this year. Phil hasn't budged. Some of these other players need to get it going and not wait for the big guns to have career years in this department.
So if the team as a whole isn't doing great shooting the puck the only option is to shoot more to try and defeat the percentages.
It's not surprising to see Carl Hagelin showing decline. He's been terrible. I thought I would see that trend with a number of other players. I didn't. If anything the returning players are at the same rate and some of them have improved.
The shooting stuff isn't as problematic as the other half of the PDO equation. To flatly state it, Matt Murray hasn't been good enough in his first year as the Penguins #1 goaltender without Marc-Andre Fleury on the team. Murray's even-strength save percentage of 90.3 just isn't good enough. It's one of the worst rates for a Penguins goaltender since 2007-08 when this information was first available. Marc-Andre Fleury had his share of good and bad seasons, none were this low (playoffs aside). Matt Murray does own two of the best years among Penguins goaltenders in this department to start his career. The reality is that Murray will probably never be the guy destined for a Vezina Trophy, but he's also not as bad as he's played this year. I'm not worried about his long term viability as the Penguins starter. However, that does nothing to help in the 2017-18 season where he's been very bad. In 12 games Tristan Jarry is at 92.6%. It might be time to let Murray collect himself and ride the hot hand. The team can't worry about hurting feelings right now. They need a winning streak and they needed it last week.
Is the team past the point of no return? A few more regulation losses and it just might be.
Thanks for reading!