Don't sleep on the Pittsburgh Penguins star, no matter what his age is.
Training camp opened Thursday morning and the Pittsburgh Penguins are operating with their usual star core. Sidney Crosby will be joined by his longtime teammates, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang, for yet another grind towards a Stanley Cup that has eluded them since 2017.
Eventually, father time will catch up to the Pittsburgh Penguins as they’ll enter the 2022-23’ season as the oldest team in the NHL. Whether they’ll finally miss the playoffs this season will be dependent on how far their mid-30’s superstars take them. Maybe they have one last run. Maybe they miss the playoffs entirely.
Crosby and Letang are in impeccable shape for their ages and don’t seem to show any signs that their game’s will all of the sudden deteriorate to levels that would deem them “washed”. Malkin is often the one who is questioned the most.
Malkin enters his age-36 season with a brand new contract that increasingly seemed like it wasn’t going to come to fruition. Rumors swirled that Malkin was prepared to test free agency until the wee hours of the night on July 12 when the Penguins announced, with no leaks from insiders before the official team announcement, that Malkin would return to the team on a six-year deal.
After months of feeling like a second fiddle to Letang in terms of the organization’s eyes, Malkin still re-signed in the waning hours before free agency.
If you don’t think Malkin will have a chip on his shoulder this season, you’ve got another thing coming.
Despite a notion that Malkin’s decline began last season, quite the opposite actually happened. Malkin potted 20 goals and 41 points in 42 games. His recovery from knee surgery lasted into the season which limited Malkin to a half season. A point-per-game pace through 42 games is an impressive feat for someone on the decline. All he did in the Rangers’ series was score three goals and six points across the seven-game playoff.
The other narrative is that Malkin’s 5-on-5 play had become bad enough that he couldn’t be considered anything more than a power play specialist. Contrarily, Malkin had 22 of his 42 points at even strength with 11 of them being goals. He played with a myriad of wingers, many of which underperformed for a large part of the season.
Malkin will enter this season as close to 100% as he’s been since before he needed the surgery. It was clear that Malkin didn’t always have his legs and that is due to jumping right into the thick of things halfway through a season. He entered the states earlier than he has in years past to begin skating with the team and sharpening up ahead of the new campaign.
He’ll get a full training camp under his belt. His training camp participation and preseason minutes will likely be monitored by the coaching staff to ensure they keep the 36-year old Russian star fresh for the upcoming season.
Instead of chasing the money, friendship and a desire to bring one more Stanley Cup title back to the Steel City fueled him to re-sign with the Pittsburgh Penguins. I’m not going to be on the train of people that doubt the Russian Bear prior to this season. That hasn’t seemed to work well for those in the past that do.
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