Flavell's Five Thoughts: Penguins At the Break

Happy holidays everyone!

The Pittsburgh Penguins have made the month of December quite merry for their fanbase as they’ve used a month full of home games to make up a lot of ground in the standings and pad their place among the playoff teams.

Currently, Pittsburgh has 43 points and are eighth in the NHL with a 19-9-5 record. As per usual, the Metropolitan Division is on steroids and the Penguins are third in the Metro despite the high ranking in the league.

The New Jersey Devils are quickly coming back down to earth and only have a three-point cushion on Pittsburgh for second place in the Metro. They’ll see each other for the first time this season on Friday evening. The Carolina Hurricanes lead the Metro and are second in the league behind the Boston Bruins. They’ve beaten the Penguins twice, both in overtime, and will meet one more time next month before a potential playoff series down the road.

We’re 33 games into the Penguins’ season now and almost to the halfway point. Time flies anymore, right? There have been so many storylines, milestones, injuries, etc. that have encompassed the season to this point. I’ll do my best to try and encapsulate all of it into one piece here for your reading pleasure.

At 35-years-old, Sidney Crosby continues to defy all the odds. He’s the NHL’s version of Tom Brady in the fact that he currently sits tied for eighth in the league in the scoring race with 43 points. It’s becoming quite clear that no one will catch Connor McDavid now that he’s got 66 points in 35 games. 30 of those are goals. Yes, you read that right.

That doesn’t mean what Crosby is doing right now shouldn’t be appreciated.

Crosby is playing with possibly the two most talented linemates he’s ever had in Jake Guentzel and Rickard Rakell. They’ve created so much chemistry since the beginning of the year that both of those guys could be on their way to career seasons. He’s lifting players up on a nightly basis at 35 years old. Think about that.

The physical skills that Crosby has always possessed have hardly diminished. He may not have the same speed he once possessed but he’s still one of the strongest players on his skates in the league. There isn’t a more dominant player below the goal line. He will still embarrass you with his hands and his backhand shot. There is nothing the guy can’t do.

35. Years. Old.

Even his goal scoring is on the uptick this season. He’s only surpassed the 30-goal plateau in nine of his 18 NHL seasons. Health permitting, he should push that number into the double digits after this year. With 19 goals in just 33 games, Crosby could push for 40-goals which would be just the third such occasion of his career where he’d pass that plateau.

Need I remind you of his age again? It’s not much longer that we’re going to get to see him do this. I mention this often and I can’t stress it enough: Take in every second of it and cherish it because it won’t last forever in Pittsburgh.

A perennially cap strapped team like the Penguins will always run the risk of losing players in the nature of keeping things fair around the league with a salary cap. They were able to keep the core three together last season by signing Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang to deals as well as making sure that Rakell and Bryan Rust were taken care of further strengthening that core.

This season, the Penguins face four pending UFA’s needing contracts for next season. Jason Zucker and Brian Dumoulin would need to take significant salary cuts to return to the club next season. Teddy Blueger might play himself out of the Penguins’ price range with all of their higher end contracts.

The most important one of all is the guy who tends the twine for the Penguins on a nightly basis in Tristan Jarry.

Jarry looks to be on track to play in his third career All-Star Game. He’s been a rock for the Penguins most nights this season when their energy lacks on a given night.

Head coach Mike Sullivan has lightened Jarry’s workload this season as he’s started just 22 of the team’s 33 games so far. Jarry’s 15 wins and .920 save percentage both stand as the fifth best figures in the league. His miserable start to the season has hampered those numbers a bit too but he’s been a top five goaltender in the league since Thanksgiving.

Everyone would sign up to pay the Jarry that has been available in the regular season the past few seasons. The issue has always been his play in the playoffs or his lack of availability come that time of year.

General manager Ron Hextall faces a tough decision. Do you re-sign Jarry before the playoffs and hope for the trend to revert so you can potentially save some money or do you wait and see his playoff performance?

There is always the risk that he prices himself out of the Penguins’ range if he does well in the playoffs and the Penguins then have a huge hole in their lineup in the backend years of the Crosby, Malkin, and Letang era. But if you sign him now and his playoff performance this season leaves a lot to be desired, you might be stuck in purgatory.

I don’t envy the decision Hextall will have to make because regardless of his decision there is going to be a lot of flack coming his way from fans on one side of the hill or the other.

Crosby, Guentzel, Rakell, Malkin, Brock McGinn. One of those names is not like the other.

Yet, those are the team’s five goal scorers with double-digit goals on the season.

McGinn fell out of favor with the fans during the playoffs last season after a lack of scoring in the Penguins’ bottom-six and his foolish penalty in overtime against the Rangers in game seven of their playoff series. He’s responded to that by scoring 10 goals in the first 33 games of the year and putting himself on pace to shatter his former career high of 16 that he set back in 2017-18’.

His efficiency comes across as a bit surprising considering the inconsistencies of his linemates. His most common linemates this season have been Jeff Carter and Kasperi Kapanen. Carter is looking like a slower version of his former self and has just four goals in 30 games. Kapanen, of course, was sent to the press box for nearly a month before he was given a chance to get back in the lineup. He scored four goals in his first three games back but has been shutout the past four games.

McGinn was part of the first free agent class that Hextall brought to Pittsburgh. He was handed a four-year deal, something that I don’t suggest handing out to bottom-six players but he’s starting to justify the deal.

With 22 goals across 97 games with the team, McGinn has shown a scoring ability that he hadn’t flashed much with the Hurricanes before coming to Pittsburgh. He’s got two short-handed goals on the season and he’s been a huge part of the Penguins’ penalty-kill that currently is tied for first in the entire league.

Good on McGinn for becoming a really good piece of the Penguins’ third-line after a mixed-bag in year one of his deal. The Penguins’ penalty-killing resurgence likely doesn’t happen without him and his newfound goal-scoring touch has been a welcomed part of his game.

It’s funny how things work, isn’t it?

P.O. Joseph’s stellar training camp and pre-season seemed like nothing more than a nice audition for his future new hockey home. Instead, he’s taken that same form, carried it into the season, and has potentially entrenched himself into the left side of the Penguins’ blueline for years to come.

Joseph hasn’t provided a ton of scoring from the blue line but he’s been very good at driving offense and playing a sound defensive game to go with that.

Joseph’s play has seen him bumped onto the Penguins 2nd power play unit in the absence of Jeff Petry. That’s a pretty big deal for a 23-year old former first-round pick who wasn’t quite sure if he’d be spending much more time in Pittsburgh back in October.

He has spent most of his time playing on the third pairing with Jan Rutta this season. Injuries have shuffled the lines a bit and have him currently on the opposite side of Chad Ruhwedel, another solid defensive defenseman who certainly would defer to Joseph in the way of offense.

With continued success, Joseph could find himself in Pittsburgh’s top four next season assuming Brian Dumoulin heads to free agency. A left side of Joseph, Marcus Pettersson, and Ty Smith could certainly keep the Penguins’ blue line strong for many years to come.

Good teams win their home games. The Penguins have passed that test so far by getting 23 of a possible 32 points at home. They’ve played well against playoff teams and taken care of the bad teams, much like a good team should do. The Penguins are a good team.

However, they are the oldest team in the league. Their core is composed of three guys who are in really good physical shape but do have father time going against them. Yet, they’ve parlayed all this into 15-straight playoff appearances. They’re chasing number 16 this season and are in prime position to do it. The question will be if they can fight the mid-season lull and continue to compete in a division that will have at least four, if not five, playoff participants come April.

The Hurricanes look like a mortal lock to go dancing. The Devils started hot but have since faded. They’re a young team and have to find a way to fight the current rut and right the ship so that they don’t spiral out of control. The New York Rangers still have Igor Shesterkin and a solid core of players that pushed through to the Eastern Conference Finals last season. Washington is in a situation similar to the Penguins, an older core of players but a team capable of going somewhere. The New York Islanders are a well coached team with an all-world goaltender in Ilya Sorokin.

The Penguins are the sixth team of that group. The top three teams in each division make the playoffs. Then, two wild card teams make it. Numerically, one of these six teams can’t make the playoffs. The Penguins surely hope they aren’t on the outside looking in when the party starts in April because they believe they’ve fallen on some hard luck the past few playoff seasons and want a chance to make another run with a group of guys that thoroughly enjoy playing with each other.

Who are we to tell them that they can’t?

Merry Christmas, everyone!

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