Things did not start off great for the Penguins. They dug themselves a two goal deficit against the lowly New York Rangers. However, they did wake up and score the game’s next five goals while cruising to a comfortable victory.
Matt Murray stopped 33 out of the 35 shots he has faced. He continues to play at a high level giving his team a chance to win on a nightly basis. Since coming back from injury on December 15th Murray has been one of the best goalies in the league. The December 15th starting point for this sample is arbitrarily based on Murray’s personal situation and meant to highlight his play since coming back
5v5 save percentage
Ben Bishop .951 Jordan Binnington .945 Matt Murray .942
5v5 HDSV%
Peter Mrazek .890 Ben Bishop .884 Matt Murray .876
All situations save percentage
Ben Bishop .941 Robin Lehner .935 Thomas Greiss .933 Matt Murray .931
All situations HDSV%
Ben Bishop .893 Jaro Halak .868 Jordan Binnington .865 Robin Lehner .862 Sergei Bobrovsky .860 Matt Murray .858
Whatever was causing Murray’s poor play before he took a month off has seemingly been resolved. When your starting goalie is putting up numbers like this you are in a great place. Penguins are in a great place at the present moment.
Teddy Blueger scored twice last night. One was shorthanded and one was at even-strength. I want to focus on the shorthanded goal because I think it shows something I’ve been harping on for years. You want penalty killers who can skate and handle the puck. Jared McCann has been great in this role for the Penguins and Teddy Blueger is showing the same. The Craig Adams of the hockey world don’t score those goals and don’t kill penalties better because they aren’t good skaters. This isn’t a hard concept. It's why it is no shock that Crosby and Guentzel are very good penalty killers as well.
At this point I believe Blueger has shown enough to stay in the lineup when the Penguins are fully healthy. It would be inexcusable for him to sit behind Garrett Wilson or Matt Cullen at this point. There are many different line combos you could use with a fully healthy Penguins lineup. Here is just one example:
Guentzel-Crosby-Rust McCann-Malkin-Kessel Simon-Bjugstad-Hornqvist Johnson/Cullen-Blueger-ZAR
Cullen can’t play center anymore. He just doesn’t have it in the tank. Blueger can skate a little and is a natural center. Garrett Wilson has shown nothing to this point which makes him an automatic to play on a nightly basis. The sample on Adam Johnson is microscopic so I don’t think he’s a real option at this point.
Erik Gudbranson was 45.16 against Dallas and 37.14% against the Rangers on the CF% front. It’s two games. It doesn’t eliminate the quality games he’s played to this point in Pittsburgh. It is worth keeping an eye on because his larger NHL sample is what it is.
The MSG Network needs to fire the Filip Chytil isolated camera into the damn sun. For some reason they felt the need to split the screen in half to show us his shifts in full detail. The first time they used the camera it showed Chytil knocking a ref away from the play on the forecheck. The rest of the night was watching paint dry. I’m not a fan of the regular broadcast using a live isolation camera, but if you’re going to do it maybe pick someone like Mika Zibnejad.
Sidney Crosby picked up an assist after going pointless for two games. I really liked what led up to his assist. The Rangers were cheating up high on the interplay between Justin Schultz and Phil Kessel like other teams have been doing. The Penguins noticed this and shifted their approach to working down near the goal line. Sidney Crosby was given the puck down below the goal line which makes life very difficult for a goaltender to track. Crosby then moved the puck from low to high after the penalty killers got caught gazing at him. Justin Schultz ripped a bomb and that was that. Very nice sequence for the power play.
Would be nice to see Justin Schultz get some more time in the offensive zone to let that shot off at even-strength…
We have quite the Metropolitan platter on the menu tonight. Carolina will pay a visit to Washington while the Islanders will be in Columbus. Here’s to hoping that the results keep the Penguins lined up.
The Penguins have a ton of time off and don’t play again until they host Nashville on Friday. It will be interesting to see how Olli Maatta fits into the plans because he should be game ready by then.
Thanks for reading!