Pittsburgh Penguins Winning Despite Unimpressive Play
The Pittsburgh Penguins have won 6 of their last 7 games after starting 0-3. As of writing this, they are 6-4 and are currently only 2 points back of the Metropolitan Division leading New York Islanders and New York Rangers.
This past week, they went on the road and beat two of the better teams in the NHL in the Nashville Predators and Washington Capitals. The Pittsburgh Penguins have also only allowed 20 goals through the first 10 games of the season, which is also one of the best marks in the NHL.
So why the cause for concern?
Too many shots against
Well, the Penguins play as been anything but reassuring through the first 10 games of the season. They have been winning, but it has mostly been on the shoulders of unearthly goaltending by Marc-Andre Fleury.
The Pittsburgh Penguins have given up 324 shots against so far. Using an advanced metric, they have a Corsi Against per 60 of 58.8, which is good for 27th in the NHL. Both of these stats are egregiously bad and it will eventually catch up with them. They won’t always have excellent goaltending to bail them out for giving up an average of 32.4 shots a game.
The Pittsburgh Penguins need to do more to stifle shot attempts. One of the only ways to do that is to let the better players play. Adam Clendening needs to be in the lineup on a regular basis and Rob Scuderi needs to take a seat in the press box more often than he has this season.
Also, it is time for Derrick Pouliot to come back from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. Pouliot has 6 points in 7 games so far for the Baby Penguins. While he had a horrible training camp and preseason, the time is now to be recalled to Pittsburgh.
Pouliot isn’t going to learn anything new in Wilkes-Barre. He needs to come up and play at the NHL level and learn through his mistakes. There will be mistakes, but there is also the potential to become the player we saw on occasion last season. I’ll take that every time over what we see from Scuderi on a nightly basis.
Are the past couple of games a turning point offensively?
The Pittsburgh Penguins actually have 315 shots in this still young season, ranking 7th in the NHL. Their Corsi For per 60 is 54.1, which ranks in the middle of the pack at 16th in the NHL.
However, while it hasn’t looked pretty, they have scored 7 goals in their past 2 games. To put that in perspective, the Penguins have only scored 20 goals on the season.
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It will be interesting to watch the next few games to see if they can continue scoring like their last couple of games. They play Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary over the next week. Will we be pointing to these couple of games by the end of that western Canada swing to when they started to turn the corner offensively?
The Pittsburgh Penguins will also likely welcome back Eric Fehr to the lineup during this next week. I believe his addition is going to go a long way toward helping this lineup. He is big and physical but can score goals. He is an all around terrific hockey player and his return the lineup can only be viewed as positive.
The next week will tell a lot about this team. Toronto, Edmonton and Calgary are all struggling right now. The Pittsburgh Penguins need to take advantage with more inspired play than we have seen so far this season.
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