Penguins At The Quarter Pole

As the Pittsburgh Penguins hit the approximate quarter pole of this season, it's a great time to take a look at where they've been and where they're going.

They currently have an 11-8-2 record, good for 24 points and 2nd in the Atlantic Division.  After the Philadelphia Flyers' shootout victory over the Washington Capitals last night, they trail their cross-state rivals by 4 points.

Pittsburgh also sits tied for 4th in the conference behind those two squads and the Montreal Canadiens, and even with the Boston Bruins and Tampa Bay Lightning.

League-wide, the Penguins are 5th overall in scoring.  They are 3rd in the East in that category.

On the goals-against side, they are 6th overall in the East, but tied for only 17th overall in the entire NHL.

While I'd rather not talk about this, I have to.  The Penguins are 25th overall on the power-play, clicking at a continued substandard 13.5%.  As it has often been around here, the Penguins' individual parts remain more efficient than the sum of the collective whole --- at least on its underachieving man-advantage.

And this, despite having more power plays than any other team in the National Hockey League.

On the opposite side of the ledger, it's hard to do anything but praise the Penguins' penalty killers, which are ranked 4th overall and killing an impressive 88.5% of the penalties called against them.

The Penguins lead the league in fewest shots against, at 27.1 per game, and are 12th overall in the number of shots per contest they take, at 31.6.  Western Conference powers Detroit, Chicago and San Jose -- probably not surprisingly -- are at the top of the latter list.

Individually, the Penguins players have run hot and cold this year so far, which makes their record not that all surprising.  After all, if you take the 5-1-1 streak they are currently on out of the picture, you can see that their record is one of an average hockey team and nothing more.

Still, Captain Sidney Crosby has had a real strong start to the season -- one of the best in his career in fact.  He currently has 33 points on the strength of 14 goals and 19 assists in 21 games.  He's on an 8-game point streak with 18 points in the last 10 games overall, and on pace for 55 goals and 129 points, both of which would be career highs.

He remains one point behind Steven Stamkos of the Tampa Bay Lightning for the league lead.

Defenseman Kris Letang is 2nd overall in scoring among blueliners with 3 goals and 15 assists for 18 points in 21 games.  He's also a +9.  

For comparison's sake, defenseman Sergei Gonchar -- who signed with the Ottawa Senators in the off-season -- is ranked 13th among blueliners with 4 goals and 13 points.  He's an awful minus 13 on the season, though.

Another guy off to a pretty good start to the season is LW Matt Cooke, who has 4 goals and 11 points in 21 games.  He's also a +8 on the year.

Flipping the script forces us to look at defenseman Zbynek Michalek, who is a -5 in 12 games -- a statistic that doesn't speak highly to the level of defensive excellence he was expected to bring to the team.  I'm willing to continue to give Michalek a pass, however, as the shoulder injury he suffered which cost him 9 games interrupted his ability to get more familiar with the system and otherwise blend more seamlessly with his teammates.  In the second half of the season, I'm expecting him to really pick it up.

Fellow blueliners Alex Goligoski and Paul Martin have cooled considerably from the hot starts they had when the two of them and Letang were 2, 3 and 4 in overall scoring among defensemen in the first 10 games of the season.  

Of course, slowing down after a fast start is nothing new for Goligoski, but it's curious for Martin.  One would have expected him to start slowly in a new system then heat up, but it's been the opposite for him.  

Up front, Hilary Duff's husband (a.k.a. Mike Comrie) is the poster child for how you can't put too much stock in a great pre-season.  

Comrie was on fire before the year started, leading the Penguins in goals and looking like the biggest $500K bargain in the game. 

Since then, he only has 5 assists, is a -4, and has been a healthy scratch enough times that he's only suited up in 15 contests.  He's now riding the pine in favor of Wilkes-Barre call-up Chris Conner and, worse, it doesn't look like Comrie is going to get back in the lineup anytime soon.

Rookie Mark Letestu is another guy that has gone the way of the Antarctic. 

#10 had 7 points in his first 7 games this year and was making a real impact up front for the Penguins, but in the 14 contests that have followed, he's only put up 2 points.

To his defense, Letestu was getting a lot of time in the top 6 during that intital stretch, and he's since been confined to the 3rd line and 2nd power-play unit, but he still has shown he's capable of producing more than he has even in those roles.  I was real excited about the Penguins' having an 'impact' rookie on their roster who wasn't a first round pick for the first time in a while, but my hopes might have been premature.

Finally, a lot already has been said about Marc-Andre Fleury this season, and I'm not sure revisiting all of it here makes much sense.  And that's true even more since his whole first quarter itself has been a dichotomy.  First he was a disaster, and now he looks more like the Fleury of old.  Let's see what happens for him in the 2nd quarter of the season.  At that point, we can better evaluate him at the midpoint.


THREE THINGS THE PENGUINS NEED TO KEEP DOING

1) Keep up the good work on the penalty kill.  The Pens' PK has helped them win games, including against the Vancouver Canucks this past wednesday.  For as long as the power-play keeps failing them, the penalty killers can keep them in the mix.

2) Produce from the backline.  Even with Goligoski and Martin cooling off, the Penguins still have more points from their blueliners than any team in the game.  For a squad with a suspect group of wingers, Pittsburgh needs production from their defense to keep up.  They've been getting it and it makes a difference.

3) Make sure Marc-Andre Fleury stays in his groove.  For as oustanding as Brent Johnson was while Fleury was trying to get his head screwed on straight, we all knew that him playing at that level had a shelf life.  Fleury has put together a string of strong starts and, not coincidentally, the team is on a run as well.  Pittsburgh needs him to maintain that if they are going to climb the standings in the 2nd quarter.


THREE THINGS THE PENGUINS NEED TO CHANGE

1) Keep Jordan Staal out of the trainers' room.  The Penguins have been fortunate the last 4 years to have Gronk on the ice with them game-in and game-out since it's obvious now what they miss when he's not in the lineup.  It's hard to imagine Staal's frustrating run of injuries continuing and that's a good thing because the team is a lot better in both ends with him out there.

2) Do something -- anything -- with the power play.  The Penguins have done a decent job moving the puck around on the man advantage this season, and that's something they've preached a lot more with Head Coach Dan Bylsma running the PP this year.  But even with all the skilled individual talent the Penguins have, skillfully passing the puck to find the open man doesn't always cut the mustard on the power play.  The Penguins need to do a better job outworking other teams and getting dirty goals around the cage when they're up a man.

3) Find a way to get Evgeni Malkin to return to form.  Malkin has shown better signs of recapturing his game during the Penguins' last little run of success, and that may be attributed to sliding him back to his natural center position during that stretch.  It's probably worth keeping him there for the next month or so and not necessarily shifting him back to wing when Staal returns.  Of course, Malkin was subpar last season while suiting up exclusively at the center spot, too, but Geno hasn't been nearly the difference maker he can be, and getting him back up to speed should be just about as much of a team priority as it was to get Fleury back in groove.


Okay boys and girls, that's my quarter-pole analysis.  Feel free to let me know what you think.  In the meantime, I'm looking forward to seeing if the Penguins can continue their run this week leading into the Thanksgiving holiday.

More soon.