The Penguins will get another chance today to register their first victory of the season. Their opponent, the Columbus Blue Jackets, had to play last night while the Penguins were off. Columbus got dialed up by the Toronto Maple Leafs so there really isn’t an excuse to lay an egg today.
After getting embarrassed by Buffalo we may have some new pairings and lines. I think they are an improvement
Dominik Simon deserves a chance to show if he can build off of his first full year in the NHL and his World Championships. Being on the fourth line wasn’t going accomplish that. I want a larger sample of Simon in the top six
Patric Hornqvist is a real wild card this year. I can see him scoring 25 goals and I can see him being washed. His extension was always a risk. Playing third line minutes and on the second power play is pretty close to a worst case scenario considering his contract.
I don’t believe the Marino-Ruhwedel pairing is going to get the nod tonight, but I feel confident that they would do no worse than a Johnson-Gudbranson for 20% of the cap hit. Even if the Penguins move forward with Johnson-Gudbranson it is better than putting Johnson with Schultz. Have a really good top pairing, a functional second pairing, and hope for the best with the bottom pairing. They made their bed with these acquisitions and now they have to do the best they can with it.
Here is the power play
Part of Galchenyuk’s value to the Penguins is similar to that of Kessel, playing on the power play. I would put Galchenyuk on the right circle and have Malkin run the power play from up top. Schultz can play the left circle with Sidney Crosby and Jake Guentzel down low. Don’t know if that is the plan, but I think it complements everybody’s skill set the most. Also, let’s make this power play the Evgeni Malkin show. I want shot volume from Geno this year on the power play.
Here is a look at the Blue Jackets from Daily Faceoff
Pierre Luc-Dubouis and Cam Atkinson are really good players. Then you get the second tier guys like Gustav Nyqvist, Boone Jenner, Nick Foligno, and Josh Anderson. This team will be closer to last place than first place after going all in on making the second round last year.
Defensively Seth Jones is stud and Zach Werenski can push the play forward to help the forwards. The goaltending is really where the Blue Jackets might be in trouble. Losing Sergei Bobrovsky was a foregone conclusion and they really didn’t make much of an effort to replace him. It isn’t likely Joonas Korpisalo or Elvis Merzlikins are going to steal more games than they blow.
I’ll leave you with a quote of the day for tonight’s matchup
“I beg to differ about (any opinions) that he had a bad year last year. I don’t think he had a bad year. He was a healthy scratch at the end of the season. I know the reason why. It wasn’t because of how he was playing”
Then what happened?
Thanks for reading!
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