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Penguins predictions for 2020-21

January 12, 2021, 12:35 PM ET [102 Comments]
Ryan Wilson
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
We are a day way from the NHL 2020-21 season kicking off. It has been a long time since Sidney Crosby’s birthday which means it has been a long time since the Penguins have played a game. Tomorrow will kick off the most unique regular season in NHL history. The teams will all be playing within their divisions and it will no doubt lead to a lot of animosity. It should make for good theater as we get going.

To mark the opening of this new season I have some Penguins predictions to make.

Pittsburgh will make the playoffs

Many of the statistical models have the Penguins making the playoffs this year and I am no exception. There is enough talent here where they should finish in second or third place in the highly competitive East Division. That said, I am not impressed with the roster because of what it could have been versus what it actually is. The Penguins are as exposed as they’ve been in quite some time to an extended Crosby or Malkin long term injury. My prediction is that both players avoid missing large chunks of time because if I thought they would miss time I wouldn’t predict the team to make the playoffs. Crosby and Malkin are still among the best at their position in the sport and will carry the offensive load. Losing Jack Johnson is addition by subtraction and the defense is way better for it even if they overinvested in the depth on the left side. I am assuming the goaltending is around league average and not at the bottom of the league. The margin for error is lower than it has been since 2013-14, though. While I think things go well. Things could fall apart quicker than in recent years.

Kasperi Kapanen won’t have the impact the Penguins were looking for

The Penguins don’t have great depth on the right wing. They badly need Kapanen to pan out. The cost to acquire was high. It needs to work. All of these expectations are going to leave fans wanting more because everything points to Kapanen being a tweener for the top six.



He is a straight line player with very good speed. His vision is lacking, though. To play successfully with Sid you need to be cerebral and I’m not sure Kapanen has shown the decision making or playmaking ability that speaks to having that quality. In the past the Penguins had a group of players they could swap in and out of the top six with Bryan Rust, Patric Hornqvist, and Conor Sheary. They don’t have that many options now. It is Bryan Rust and Kasperi Kapanen or bust. Kapanen will be mediocre and the Penguins will be stuck because nobody else is close to being a top six right wing option on the roster at this time. This will test patience and probably lead to some frustration.

Kapanen also had a history of being late to practices/meetings in Toronto and culminated with being a healthy scratch last February. If you want to keep your spot playing on Crosby’s line Kapanen cannot have repeats of that behavior.

Jake Guentzel will score 30 goals

I know 30 goals doesn’t seem like a lot, but the 56 game season skews all the norms of what we are used to projecting. Thirty goals is a ton. It projects to ~45 goal season in 82 games. Guentzel has been a terrific top six winger for the Penguins ever since he joined the NHL roster. He is a gifted finisher and in his 243 career game he has a shooting percentage of 16.2. I am confident with the 243 game sample that he has a special knack for scoring goals. He is going to be force fed minutes with Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang not only at 5v5, but on the power play as well. He is now considered a mainstay on the top power play and will not have Hornqvist’s 3:21 PP minutes per game to contend with anymore. This is also his age 26 season. I expect big things from Guentzel now that he should be fully healed from his shoulder injury from last year.

Marcus Pettersson will be traded


The Penguins forward depth isn’t good enough. They also don’t have a first round pick this year. Jim Rutherford is always tinkering with the roster via trades. The only trade candidate I see that makes sense is Marcus Pettersson. Mike Matheson’s contract is essentially a no trade clause until he improves his play. Brandon Tanev still have five years left on his deal so moving his 3.5M doesn’t seem likely. The Penguins have a lot of money tied up on the left side of their defense. It leaves Pettersson exposed as a non-essential player on the roster with a moveable contract. If the bottom six cannot provide any offense something has to give. I think the team is already trying to see what things would look like without Pettersson by placing Matheson with John Marino to start the year. I think Pettersson will be the odd man out eventually.

Sidney Crosby will return to being a candidate for the Hart Trophy

Sid is an older dude now. He is no longer considered the best player in the sport. He’s 33 and coming of an injury riddled year. Why so confident about a return to dominance? Dom Luszczyszyn of The Athletic pointed out the obvious in his season preview of the Penguins




That’s extremely worrying as Crosby is known for his ability to dominate five-on-five minutes, but there’s a pretty simple explanation: the sheer volume of minutes spent playing with Jack Johnson. Crosby spent one-third of his minutes shackled to the worst player in hockey and if you’re wondering who won that battle, it was the forces of bad hockey rather than good. Together they had a 37 percent expected goals rate with an even worse actual goals rate. Crosby was at 57 percent expected goals otherwise — his usual.

He was still the same elite passer he’s always been leading the league by a wide margin in high danger passes at 5.5 per 60 (Kane was second all the way down at 4.1). He was still strong at entering the zone and made a concerted effort to exit the zone more with control (likely due to Johnson struggling so much with it).


Now that Crosby won’t have to play a babysitting role with his 5v5 ice time I believe his elite passing will have more of a positive impact because he will be spending more time in the offensive zone. This is in concert with my prediction of Guentzel being a goal scoring machine. A full helping of the Dumoulin-Letang pairing will be a return to elite form for Sid. He should be healthy and ready to go for a big 2020-21 season.

Bryan Rust will get bit by the regression bug

I think Bryan Rust is going to have another successful campaign playing in the top six. He should do a nice job on the power play. He did lead the team in power play goals last year, after all. What he isn’t going to do is repeat his shooting percentage of 17.9. It isn’t fair to Rust to expect him to do so. The regression won’t be because he is doing anything wrong it is just a matter of hockey’s variance working against him. He was on pace for 40 goals last year. Even if that bumps all the way down to a 25 goal pace for 82 games (17 goals for 56 game season) I think it is a success. He has a lot of pressure riding on him because he is the best right wing on a team thin at the position.

The Penguins will have a top five power play

The Penguins power play has been underwhelming given the talent available ever since Phil Kessel departed for the Arizona desert. They did a terrible job transitioning from a Phil-centric setup back to one filtering through Sidney Crosby. I think we see some improvement this year where the players individual talents are maximized. The biggest reason is Todd Reirdan’s return to Pittsburgh. He did a great job in the past with the Penguins in this role. From 2010-14 when Reirdan ran the power play the Penguins were third best in the league at 20.3%. The thing about their third best power play ranking is it includes 2010-11 when the Penguins were without both Crosby and Malkin to major injury. They were 25th overall as a result. If you take 2011-14 they become the best power play in the league at 22.3%. They were ranked 5th in 2011-12, 2nd in 2012-13, and 1st in 2013-14. The core of those power plays are still on the team with Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang. I expect there to be more movement this year instead of the static uninspired slop we saw last year. I think they will do a better job of creating and taking advantage of 2v1 situations due to the player movement.

They need this power play to be firing on all cylinders because their bottom six isn’t going to save the day offensively.

Evgeni Malkin will double digit power play goals this year


Malkin had 7 power play goals last year in 55 games. This season is 56 games. As stated above I believe Todd Reirdan will have a positive impact on how the power play looks this year. I think they will get more creative with how they use Malkin and get him back to pulling the trigger more often on the power play. Malkin should feel healthier than he did to close last season which should help the cause as well. I am looking for full blown Geno Machino on the man-advantage this year.

Tristan Jarry will…

I honestly have no idea, haha. I wish I had a bold prediction here, but I don’t. I have the Penguins making the playoffs so I guess my prediction is he will be league average or better. The fact is he is one of the biggest wild cards among NHL goaltenders this season. His small sample last year was very impressive. However, in that small sample his play really fell off towards the back end of it after being absurdly good to start the year. Your guess is as good as mine when trying to predict what the Penguins will get out of Jarry this year. For better or worse he’s the guy moving forward.

Thanks for reading!
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