As we head towards the playoffs there are things the Penguins need to improve to be legitimately competitive. One issue is figuring out their defense pairings and maximizing the skill sets of the players they have available. I am not focusing on that one today. Another issue is increasing their depth scoring at 5v5. Phil Kessel doesn’t have many 5v5 goals lately, but he is still putting up assists and contributing. A bigger issue is the anemic production of Patric Hornqvist.
Hornqvist signed a five-year extension that has an AAV of 5.3M per year last February. I was skeptical of the deal the day it was signed and my feelings haven’t changed. My concerns were with his ability to produce at 5v5 and his style of play as it pertains to the aging curve.
Hornqvist started the 2018-19 season strong at 5v5. Halfway through the year he was at 11 5v5 goals which was only three short of the 14 he scored all of last year. He was alleviating my initial concerns for the early portion of this season. Since then… Yikes.
He doesn’t have a single 5v5 goal in the last 27 games. That is remarkably bad considering how he started. On the power play goals have rarely been an issue because he is afforded the opportunity to sit in front of the net while some incredibly gifted players zip the puck around and get it to his net front area. Even that has dried up. He only has two power play goals in the last 27 games.
The slump seems to coincide with his return from injury (concussion) in January. I don’t want to minimize the potential of a head injury slowing production, but wasn’t one of the concerns with his contract the physical nature of his style of play and how he could hold up over time?
I wanted to look past the potential injury issues and see if there was anything else impacting his play the second half of the year. Patric Hornqvist is never going to be confused as a playmaker or someone who is creating zone entries and exits. It isn’t a reasonable expectation to assume those areas are going to improve, so I didn’t focus there. I did look at his individual shot attempt numbers and let’s just say they aren’t where they need to be. He isn’t finding the opportunities he once did. This is a problem because he is not a skilled shooter. He rarely scores from distance and a lot of his goals aren’t him picking spots to shoot at. His success comes from the volume of whacks he takes at the net. This year his individual shot attempts are down
Here’s a look at the last three years
Can this be explained away by injury? Perhaps some, but I think how Mike Sullivan is deploying him is a legit variable as well. Since coming to Pittsburgh the majority of Hornqvist’s time has been stapled to either Sidney Crosby and/or Evgeni Malkin at 5v5. This is no longer the case.
More times than not Hornqvist was with Sidney Crosby which means Kris Letang is part of the package as well. You have some absolute monsters who are able to earn zone exits and entries. It makes the life of the other players on the ice so much easier. This year his time with Crosby and Malkin is down to the lowest of his Penguins tenure and his most common defense linemate is… Jack Johnson. He isn’t the beneficiary of all the great things Crosby, Malkin, and Letang do in transition anymore. The puck isn’t being delivered to Hornqvist on a cushy platter like it once was.
If Hornqvist is going to earn more individual shot attempts the deployment is going to have to change. If Hornqvist isn’t going to be in the top six for the early stages of his contract extension what was the point of giving him this contract? You are not going to get good value out of his 5.3M cap hit by making him a third line player. He still has value on the power play, but the emergence of Jake Guentzel as a totally acceptable net front presence on the unit takes some luster away from Hornqvist’s value as well.
The usage needs to change. You can’t be a cap ceiling team and spend 5.3M on a one-dimensional player whose dimension you aren’t willing cater to. It makes no sense. The numbers are speaking for themselves in 2018-19. The team needs all hands on deck heading into next month. Right now they aren’t.
Thanks for reading!
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