After last night’s defeat to the Colorado Avalanche the Penguins have now lost five out of seven games and find themselves in a precarious spot in the standings.
The Philadelphia Flyers lost ten games in a row and are only two points behind the Penguins with two games in hand. Carolina has three games in hand, they are a top five possession team, and if they ever get some goaltending they are going to pass up the Penguins as well.
The season isn’t quite at the halfway point, but whatever wiggle room Pittsburgh had from the beginning of the year has evaporated and there is a realistic possibility that the team could miss the playoffs. I’m not saying it is likely, but given the division they play in they cannot afford another seven game stretch where they only earn four out of 14 points.
People that follow the team knew the Penguins would be a flawed team entering the season. They lost a lot of depth players over the offseason (Fleury, Kunitz, Bonino, Cullen, Daley, Hainsey) Jim Rutherford preached a patient approach in order to not rush into bad deals over the summer. There was nothing wrong with that philosophy. It made sense and it still makes sense. However, we are five months removed from July and the team is floundering. This current group of players cannot be relied on to turn it around. Maybe Rutherford could wait until February if the Penguins were still in the Atlantic Division, but they aren’t. They are a top heavy team with Sidney Crosby producing like a replacement level player at even-strength and their goaltending is near the bottom of the league. This is not a recipe for success. You can put a game puck under your pillow and hope the PDO fairy shows up or you can make changes to the roster.
So what can the Penguins do? There are no easy answers here. They aren’t “one player away…. This is a flawed team with minimal futures to use in a trade.
They need to replace an entire fourth line if they are unable find a third line center replacement for Riley Sheahan, who is better suited for fourth line duty. Their formula for winning championships has been playable depth. The current fourth line is a disgrace and that falls on Rutherford. You can’t trade away first round picks to make your team worst while chasing a false narrative. Ryan Reaves is not the prime reason for the Penguins struggles, but trading for him and always dressing him is certainly a part of this. He’s dead weight that even 2015-16 Matt Cullen wouldn’t have been able to drag around so what makes anybody think that Carter Rowney or Gregg McKegg would be able to do it?
How could anybody think that having a prospect like Klim Kostin (taken with Penguins pick) isn’t a better situation than having a five minute a night bottom six forward? It’s crazy to think otherwise. This is a team with barely any valuable futures to trade as it is. You are going to use that capital on a face puncher? And if this face puncher’s sole existence is to make somebody like Sidney Crosby comfortable why is Sid’s 5v5 points per 60 at only 1.04? If you think that sounds stupid it’s because it is. I don’t for one second believe that Reaves has anything to do with Sid’s lack of production at even-strength. I don’t think Reaves has an impact on Sidney Crosby at all! The whole premise of Reaves is asinine.
Tom Kuhnhackl doesn’t provide the team anything unique or useful. The most notable thing he does is block shots and that just means the only time you notice him is in the Penguins zone, which he is in all the time.
Carl Hagelin is a huge problem right now. He isn’t giving the team anything offensively. He was amazing in 2015-16. Since then he’s been underwhelming. Pittsburgh doesn’t have the luxury of not getting value in those 3-5M contracts they have on the books. I wrote this about Hagelin the day the team traded for him and it is still valid now
If tangible offense continues to elude Hagelin like it has in Anaheim and it did for Perron in Pittsburgh this deal is going to be pretty bad. As stated above the Penguins would have effectively signed the 2015-16 version of Perron to a three year contract extension.If Hagelin can improve his points/60, which has been on a steady decline, then it could be helpful considering how bad Pittsburgh's left wing situation is in both the short term and long term.
The larger Hagelin’s Pittsburgh sample grows the more it looks like the HBK situation was lightning in a bottle and that Hagelin’s trend of decreasing offense is who he is. I’m not sure what the team can do other than hope he snaps out of it.
If the Penguins are looking to make an impact trade I would consider three base options. The first would be to package Ian Cole with Daniel Sprong and a first round pick. The next would involve Patric Hornqvist. That certainly has some risk to it, but I’m personally not keen on giving him his next contract and you have to give to get. This assumes that the team will realize that they are terrible defensively and aren’t scoring goals so maybe whatever defensive shortcomings Daniel Sprong has shouldn’t be the road block they are making them out to be. The third option would center on Olli Maatta.
I’m not sure what else the team can do right now. I hear Conor Sheary’s name brought up for trade proposals, but that’s the kind of contract value this team needs desperately. He moves all over the top nine and has a successful track record with Sidney Crosby. The team needs his speed and versatility. It would have to be a hell of a trade to give up his contract.
This all sounds negative because it is. The Penguins have played the most games in the conference and are currently sitting outside of a playoff spot. They have a -11 goal differential. You can blame the Chicago game all you want for that, but it was on October 5th and a true contending team would have been able to earn a positive goal differential by now. In Pittsburgh’s next eight games they will play against a divisional foe in six of them. This is a big stretch. Three of those games will come against Carolina and Philadelphia. Both of those are only two standings points back of the Penguins right now with multiple games in hand.
I’m not ready to count the Penguins out on the 2017-18 season. They still have the hard to get pieces on their roster. However, the status quo is a death sentence for not only a three-peat (ha), but the playoffs in general.
Thanks for reading!