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Qu'est-ce que c'est

October 14, 2018, 2:04 PM ET [37 Comments]
Ryan Wilson
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Pittsburgh has played two games against Montreal and has only come away with one point in the standings. Mike Sullivan shook up his lineup and it did not pay dividends. The Penguins were soundly outplayed. Jack Johnson was one of the possession leaders on the team and more times than not having that be true is not going to be good for the team.



Olli Maatta returned to the lineup and it was a horror show. He was a CF 4 CA 25 player. It’s tough to have worse results than what Maatta had. I’ll say this, Maatta playing to his partner’s ability may have been at play here. Juuso Riikola had his struggles. This may surprise some, but Riikola is probably not going to win the Norris Trophy despite the training camp and early season buzz that has surrounded him. This pair is Finnish and should be finished.

The biggest news to take away from the game is Justin Schultz’s ugly looking ankle injury. It would be a miracle if he is week to week and not month to month. Body parts shouldn’t bend that way. Kris Letang is going to be playing a ton of minutes without Schultz in the lineup because he is their best defenseman and he is the only right handed player aside from Chad Ruhwedel on the roster right now. For a team that is struggling to figure out how to play better having fewer options on defense is not going to help.

Mike Sullivan also changed up the forward lines putting Derick Brassard on the wing with Sidney Crosby and Jake Guentzel. I think this line has potential to be very good. The problem is that I think it leaves the bottom six too thin. Pittsburgh’s strength should be its depth and ability to roll out multiple scoring lines. This limits them to two. If Patric Hornqvist is going to spend time away from Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin he’s going to have to feast on the power play because Riley Sheahan isn’t going to be able to do all the hard work to get the puck into the offensive zone under control.

Matt Cullen isn’t showing any signs of life through the first four games. He’s a 37% possession player which is the neighborhood he was in last year. Dads are old and past their athletic prime.

If you’re looking for some good from this game Phil Kessel made some more quality plays. Here he is driving wide off of an Evgeni Malkin zone entry and finds a wide open Kris Letang in the slot who made no mistake.




It wasn’t the cleanest entry in the zone. It goes to show how good both of them are when they can turn what looks like a broken play into something that looks so nice.

The third goal was even nicer




Evgeni Malkin makes things look so easy when they aren’t. His push of the puck up top before he dished over to Sid was pretty great. Phil’s catch and release is something else.

Casey DeSmith is no Marc-Andre Fleury in the shootout.

Mike Sullivan will have another couple of days to figure out why things aren’t working as the Penguins don’t play until Tuesday against the Canucks.

Thanks for reading!
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