Pittsburgh rebounded after their awful performance in Chicago to defeat the Boston Bruins and Los Angeles Kings in consecutive games. The standings points are vital and currently the Penguins are third in the Metropolitan Division only a single point behind the Columbus Blue Jackets who recently lost in overtime to Pittsburgh’s opponent tonight, the Anaheim Ducks.
Anaheim is a bad team. This is one of those games the Penguins need to win.
I bet you can’t guess when Bruce Boudreau was fired and when Randy Carlyle came back to Anaheim. If only Boudreau’s teams got goaltending like the team is getting now with Pittsburgh native John Gibson. Gibson is the only thing keeping things respectable for Anaheim. The Ducks are last in xGF% this year and first overall in 5v5 save percentage.
Daniel Sprong will make his return to Pittsburgh tonight. He won’t be playing on the fourth line for Anaheim and he will probably see anywhere in the 11-15 minute range at even-strength. Since joining the Ducks he has scored three times and had a game winning shootout attempt. That is the positive. Through his five games he’s been a 47.2% possession player at 5v5. Relative to his teammates it is -7.32%. This is what we already kind of know about him. He’s not going to drive play, but he can shoot the puck and score goals. If he’s a complimentary piece on a line that doesn’t consist of replacement level talent you can probably get some offensive production out of him. Look for him to play with Adam Henrique this evening.
Marcus Pettersson has come as advertised. A depth defenseman who if given favorable deployment can quietly go about his business with no dynamic impact on the game. He did have that game against Ottawa where he didn’t allow a single shot attempt against. Yet, he is still in the red overall for shot attempts since coming to Pittsburgh. When Pettersson is on the ice the Penguins have allowed 102 attempts while generating 95 attempts. If you take away the Ottawa game it is 80 for and 102 against for 43.9%. That’s the nature of small samples, very volatile. It is also the reality of having your most common partner being Jack Johnson. I'm interested to see how Pettersson does with different partners.
Matt Murray made his first start in a long time on Saturday night and aside from the third goal (which I thought was terrible) he was solid stopping 38 out of the 41 shots he faced including some high danger chances in the overtime session. It’s a nice start for Murray to feel good about himself. We’ll see how the goaltending duties shape up moving forward as DeSmith has been good so far this year.
Thanks for reading!
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