The Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Edmonton Oilers by a score of 6-4 on Thursday night.
The Penguins jumped out to a 4-0 lead and then kind of just stopped playing. Despite not playing the full 60 minutes Pittsburgh was victorious.
5v5 shots, Oilers at Penguins +4%. pic.twitter.com/0mZmQnWUln
— Micah Blake McCurdy (@IneffectiveMath) March 13, 2015
The Crosby line was great and so was the Cole-Scuderi pairing.
You can see why the Oilers struggle so much. Their goaltending is horrid. Marc-Andre Fleury had one of his less desirable games of the year with only a .864 save percentage but the Oilers goalies were even worse at .823. You can’t win hockey games at .823.
Sidney Crosby had a nice offensive game. He had a power play goal and two extremely nice assists. Crosby is now only two points behind the Islanders John Tavares despite playing in six less games.
David Perron broke his goal scoring slump by scoring off of Crosby’s feed from behind the goal line. Perron breaking his goal slump was something that was going to come considering how much offensive zone time the Crosby, Perron, Hornqvist line has been producing. I expect Kunitz to follow suit in the near future for the same reasons.
Derrick Pouliot didn't have a great game, so what. Keep him in the lineup and allow him to keep growing as a player. Mike Johnston agrees:
“I do know him well, so I know how to handle him. Usually with players like that, you have to be careful at this level because the reason he plays well is because he plays with confidence. You don’t want him to lose his confidence, but he has to recognize consequences in his game.“Tonight, where he got himself into trouble was when there were people around him; all he had to do was move the puck, punch it away and get it beyond the traffic. He didn’t do that, and that’s where Derrick gets himself into trouble.
“For him it’s a learning experience. I talked to Gary (Agnew) on the bench. We sat him for a few shifts, and we threw him back out into the action. I think that’s the only way to really develop some young players — to make sure they understand what you’re saying, then you allow them an opportunity to try and correct it.…
Brandon Sutter scored two very nice goals. Newcomer Daniel Winnik assisted on both goals.
Winnik has been as advertised. A quality possession depth player who plays well on the penalty kill, and can chip in with some assists. He has had a positive influence on Brandon Sutter.
Small sample size alert in is in order (49:31) but so far so good:
Speaking of Brandon Sutter I have to mention the analysis that occurred during Sportsnet’s first intermission report last night. David Amber made the following claim:
“Brandon Sutter may be a better player than Jordan Staal in his own right"
If that isn’t a severe case of recency bias I don’t know what is. "Recency bias" is the phenomenon of a person most easily remembering something that has happened recently, compared to remembering something that may have occurred a while back.
Kris Letang added an assist and now has 52 points on the year. That is most by a defenseman so far and a new career high. PK Subban sits two points back at 50.
Edit: 11:47 AM Kris Letang does not lead defensemen in points right now, Erik Karlsson does with 53. Letang has played in five less games than Karlsson to this point.
That kind of bias is what can lead to very bad deals at the trade deadline and also bad decisions towards the free agency period.
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One area where Marc-Andre Fleury has improved in this year is the frequency of providing quality starts. A quality start defined by Rob Vollman is as follows:
In order to record a Quality Start, the starting goalie must stop at least a league average number of shots (typically 91.3% prior to 2009-10, and 91.7% since), or play at least as well as a replacement level goalie (88.5%) while allowing two goals or fewer.
Fleury is at 58.5% which is above the league average of 53.2%
Another positive is that he has drastically cut down on his RBS otherwise known as really bad starts. These are starts in which the goaltender has below a save percentage of .885.
When you include last night’s RBS for Fleury he has only had four of those this season in 53 games started. Last year he had 11 in 64 starts. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that he won’t have 7 RBS in the remaining games he starts this year.
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Big weekend for the Penguins. They will face off against the Boston Bruins and Detroit Red Wings in a back to back matinee situation.
The Bruins are fighting for their playoff lives and the Red Wings have hit a rough patch so they will be clawing for some points in the standings as well.
Thanks for reading!
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