The Penguins continue to roll. They picked up a pretty stress free victory over the Montreal Canadiens by a score of 5-2 and are now 10-2-1 in their last 13 games. It is safe to say they navigated what should be the roughest part of their season and did so convincingly. Yes, Evgeni Malkin, Jake Guentzel, and Bryan Rust are all out right now, but that is kind of the point. They’ll be back and when they are the Penguins will be in decent shape heading towards the latter half of the season.
Even though the Penguins have done a remarkable job staying in the thick of things they still remain fourth in the division despite being 10-2-1 in their last 13.
The good news for Pittsburgh is that they have strong underlying numbers this year. Among Metropolitan Division teams nobody has a better team xGF% than them.
The Rangers have had an amazing start to the year collecting standings points, but they are a prime candidate for regression given their xGF% status. There are certainly teams we see outperform their xGF% every year. We’ll see if the Rangers can pull it off all year.
How many of you had Evan Rodrigues tying his career high in goals on December 15th on the power play? His breakout season marches on.
Sidney Crosby had two assists on the evening and with it he now has 400 multi-point games. If somebody suits up for 400 career NHL games it is quite an achievement. Having a single point in 400 games is something else. Multi-point games in 400? It’s really quite something else.
Speaking of Crosby Kasperi Kapanen pulled off a net front play that channeled #87. It was clever and effective.
BUNT GOAL! KASPERI KAPANEN!@Pirates, you impressed? pic.twitter.com/4QdCwr8msc
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) December 15, 2021
Kris Letang has hit 600 points in his amazing career. There are only two defensemen among current players in the top 50 for points per game. Erik Karlsson is 31st overall at .793 and Kris Letang is 48th at .676. The 48 other players are forwards. Letang, as I’ve said many times before, deserves a lot more respect than he deserves.
Brian Dumoulin scored a goal last night. It was his first of the year. He doesn’t get many. Perhaps he used the force
The Penguins will host the Buffalo Sabres on Friday evening.
Thanks for reading!