It has been a while but the Pittsburgh Penguins will be returning to game action after being off since Tuesday. The break came at a great time for the team. The team was losing a lot more than winning, their coach was fired, and they were playing without Kris Letang and Sidney Crosby during their last contest.
There has been a lot of turmoil surrounding the team this year and by having that extended break away from game action this late in the season can only be a positive. Some teams don't want the break to come, the Penguins weren't that team. Will the team benefit from this break?
Getting Kris Letang back into the lineup is a huge plus. Mike Sullivan has yet to have the team's number one defenseman play since he has taken over the head coaching duties. The team's possession numbers have been better under Sullivan. Logic would dictate that getting a player like Letang back into the lineup will make them even better.
Tracking players pre-Sullivan and post-Sullivan this season will be interesting. Pittsburgh focused on loading up their forward depth this offseason and it has not led to more offense. The change in coach provides an opportunity to find out if their failures to this point were system related.
For example a guy like Nick Bonino was brought in to help with that scoring depth. Here are his splits so far.
It is way too early to make any definitive statements but there are improvements and tracking stuff like this moving forward should be interesting. It is not outside the realm of possibility that between the coaching change and moving a defenseman void of skill (Scuderi) that we should expect some better offensive numbers moving forward for a lot of the players on the roster.
Pittsburgh will play against the Minnesota Wild this evening. Here is how the two teams stack up
Teams are even for the most part with the exception of even-strength shooting percentage. Pittsburgh is one of the worst shooting teams in the league this year.
Minnesota boasts one of the better defense groupings in hockey. Ryan Suter leads the way up top but it is the more unheralded members (Jonas Brodin, Marco Scandella, Jared Spurgeon, and Matt Dumba) that make this group so good. Jared Sprugeon received an early Christmas present when he signed a four year 20.75M contract before the holiday break.
The World Junior Championships have begun and the Pittsburgh Penguins will not have any participants in the tournament this year.
Took .@coreypronman's numbers for the #WJC2016 and made this. Coyotes and Flyers lead. pic.twitter.com/1sW8mWfIFI
— Sean Tierney (@SeanTierneyTSS) December 25, 2015
Pittsburgh joins Dallas, Montreal. and St. Louis as the only other teams without representation.
The WJC is one of the more entertaining hockey events each season. It is also one of the most overrated events as far as talent evaluation goes. Too much stock is put into this tournament year after year from an analysis standpoint. It is what it is, a two week tournament in which anybody can have a hot or cold streak.
Daniel Sprong would have been Pittsburgh's lone representation, but he is currently in the process of making Canada his official country for participation and that process has not concluded. His native country of Netherlands does not have representation this year in the tournament.
Evgeni Malkin won goal of the year from ESPN. It was for his amazing spinorama against the Oilers.
Thanks for reading!