The Penguins will host the Penguins this evening and they both come into the contest with somewhat similar records. The Penguins at 5-5-4 and the Sabres at 6-6-2, both at 14 standings points. How they’ve both gotten there is also somewhat similar. The Penguins have been performing quite well with loads of injuries and missing players, while the Sabres are overperforming while missing their two best players… because they traded them away.
Sidney Crosby is back and while it is understandable for it to take time for him to get into full swing I probably wouldn’t pick a better team for him to play than the Sabres. In 50 career games Crosby has 24 goals and 73 points. You can probably count on one hand the number of times he has failed to earn a point against the Sabres. Getting Sid rolling will go a long way in earning standings points because the Penguins haven’t been bad this season even with the injury issues. They just need some higher end players to join the lineup to help create more time and space to help their teammates get more high-danger opportunities not to mention the finishing ability that has been out of the lineup between Crosby and Malkin.
Here’s how the Penguins stack up relative to the rest of the league in xGF%
Pretty good. Being in the top ten considering all the obstacles they’ve had to overcome so far is impressive.
And here is the evidence that their finishing has let them down
I hate to harp on the past, but protecting Jared McCann in the expansion draft would have definitely helped on this front. He was a pretty good shooter on a team that didn’t exactly have many to spare.
On the flip side you can see the Sabres have been playing a bit over their head. There’s a good opportunity for the Penguins to earn both points this evening and these are the kinds of games they have to take. Pittsburgh has quite a number of road games coming up and six of them will be in Canada. Given the COVID situation there could be issues with players being eligible to play because of the COVID restrictions between the two countries. You can’t take anything for granted right now. Go take the two points tonight and move on.
Thanks for reading!