Pittsburgh didn’t play a bad game against the Bruins, but they still only earned one point in the standings. It has been two games in a row where the Penguins gave up two goals or less. No small feat for the 2018-19 season. Tristan Jarry made his first NHL start of the season and it was very good. He stopped 35 out of the 37 shots he faced.
Less ideal was Pittsburgh only able to generate one goal against a Bruins team missing some of their best players. You’d like to see multiple goals considering the Bruins were without Patrice Bergeron and Zdeno Chara in the lineup. They got Halak’d again.
More problems for the Penguins include injuries to Patric Hornqvist and Bryan Rust. Hornqvist left the game after a clean hit in the corner and did not make his return to the game. Hornqvist’s most recent stretch of play has been his best of the year with eight points in the last five games. There is no morning skate today so we will have to see what the updates are on Hornqvist and Rust.
Let’s say one or both of those players are out. What can the Penguins do? Perhaps the team will finally be forced into giving Daniel Sprong a center not named Matt Cullen, Derek Grant, or Riley Sheahan. Let’s see him play with other NHL players capable of creating controlled exits and entries and not leave it solely up to a 21 year old NHL players whose developmental path has been screwed up from the beginning. Sprong’s 1.63 points per 60 at 5v5 is above average for what his quality of teammate and deployment has been. For reference Matt Cullen’s 2015-16 season when he was playing good hockey was at 1.69. It’s no secret that the Penguins have totally bungled the entire Daniel Sprong situation from the beginning and they don’t seem too concerned about ever figuring out what they actually have with him now either.
In Sprong’s rookie season (20 years old) in the AHL he was fifth overall in scoring with 65 points in 65 games. That speaks well to a future NHL player. William Nylander’s 20 year old AHL year had him at 1.18 points per 60. The point isn’t to try and say Sprong is as good as Nylander it is to show there is a logical basis for thinking Sprong isn’t a doomed NHL player. When you look at Nylander’s NHL usage you will see that his most common center 2015-2018 is Auston Matthews and his second is Nazem Kadri. Nylander has spent over 1300 minutes at 5v5 with Matthews. Sprong has had 68 minutes in the same time frame with Sidney Crosby. Sprong is a 62.99% possession player with Crosby and his points per 60 with Sid is 2.63 in this microscopic sample. In 2018-19 he has played with Crosby a total of 7:28. Quality of teammate matters and if you want to totally screw up an offensively minded prospect place him with scrubs and make him focus on defense. The results speak for themselves.
One option the Penguins don’t have is Anthony Duclair. They will get to see him, his 650k cap hit, and his 2.11 points per 60 which is better than all Penguins except Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Phil Kessel, Jake Guentzel, Patric Hornqvist, and Dominik Simon. Duclair’s possession and expected goals are not good, but neither are the Penguins bottom six options unable to contribute any offense either.
Columbus is the first place team in the Metropolitan Division. They are not a team who has the markings of a dominant team. They are mediocre possession team with average goaltending to this point. Their positives are their shooting percentage and xGF% which places them 11th overall in the league.
If you want to successfully navigate the Blue Jackets and find yourself in the victory column you need to focus on Artemi Panarin, Cam Atkinson, and Pierre Luc-Dubois. Those three have been tremendous in 2018-19 and do the lion’s share of the work. John Tortorella has them playing together so if I were going up against that line I would be getting Sidney Crosby’s line with a Dumoulin-Letang pairing out against them. It isn’t likely that Blue Jackets line will be completely shut down from creating chances so in a worst case scenario play your best against them and trade chances back and forth.
Thanks for reading!