Defensemen on the Pittsburgh Penguins have struggled to score goals and it's impacting the entire team.
On the blueline, recent Pittsburgh Penguins teams haven’t been very big or physical and that seemed to be a point of emphasis with some of the Penguins’ additions this past offseason. Guys like Jeff Petry and Jan Rutta were brought in to provide some size in an area that has evidently been a problem for the Penguins in recent seasons.
Former Penguins John Marino and Mike Matheson were fairly skilled offensively but didn’t quite make for guys who could clear the net-front on a penalty kill or in an extended period of five-on-five defensive zone time. That explains why they were shipped out by Ron Hextall in the offseason.
In doing so, the Penguins have gotten bigger but have also sacrificed some goal scoring on the blueline. While the defensemen aren’t relied upon to be heavy goals scorers, that doesn’t mean they’re exempt from chipping in more often than the Penguins’ current crop has.
Entering play on Wednesday, the Penguins are tied for dead last in the NHL with the Vancouver Canucks in goals from their defensemen with just 17 through 56 games. A lot of warranted blame falls on the bottom six forward depth for the lack of goals the Penguins have scored but the defensemen haven’t fared much better.
Unsurprisingly, Kris Letang leads all Penguins defenseman with five goals in 38 games. P.O. Joseph has four. Petry and Rutta have chipped in for three a piece. Both Mark Friedman and Ty Smith have scored once. Marcus Pettersson, Brian Dumoulin, and Chad Ruhwedel all have yet to light the lamp.
The pecking order of this isn’t much of a surprise. Letang, Petry, and Joseph have displayed the ability to provide offense. Rutta stands out as a bit of a surprise despite scoring two in the first five games of the season. Smith certainly can provide offense but has only played nine games at the NHL-level this season. The final three are defense-first kind of guys and don’t score very often and almost never see time on the man-advantage.
As constructed, the Penguins don’t have a group of guys accustomed to scoring a plethora of goals. The most offensively gifted one, Letang, has missed 18 games so the number likely is dragged down by that.
The Penguins are 17th in the league in shots/game by defensemen with 1.43/game. That figure ranks in the bottom-half of the league so maybe if they threw a few more on per game, the number would be higher.
For context, the eight teams in front of the Penguins in ascending order are as follows: Ottawa Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs, Chicago Blackhawks, Montreal Canadiens, Vegas Golden Knights, Tampa Bay Lightning, Edmonton Oilers, and Buffalo Sabres.
Defenders scoring doesn’t necessarily translate to more success as evidenced by the Golden Knights, Maple Leafs, Oilers, and Lightning being so low on this list as their scoring depth clearly comes from the front-end. But the other teams on the list do represent some of the lower-end teams in the league as well.
The top-five teams in the league in goals by defensemen are the Florida Panthers, Carolina Hurricanes, New Jersey Devils, Colorado Avalanche, and Detroit Red Wings. All five of these teams currently hold a playoff spot or are within a game or two of holding one. The number one team, Florida, has 36 goals from defensemen which more than doubles the Penguins’ figure.
The Penguins’ defenseman won’t turn into Bobby Orr or Paul Coffey overnight but asking them to pitch in a bit more from a scoring standpoint and try to compensate for the lack of bottom-six scoring hardly seems like a far-fetched thought.
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