It only took about 27 hours in real time for the Pittsburgh
Penguins to stack up two wins this weekend. At 7:00 PM on
Friday they were 13-11-6 and looking unsettled after just a 1-1-1 road trip
that featured many opponents at the bottom of the league’s standings. But by
about 10 PM on Saturday, the Pens were up to 15-11-6 and a grasp on third place
in the Metropolitan Division. Not a bad stretch there.
Here’s five takes of what we’re thinking after those quick
wins over the Bruins and Kings.
#1: PITTSBURGH DODGES MAJOR BULLET ON LETANG INJURY
The most important note, by far. With about 5 minutes left
in Friday night’s game, the Penguins star defenseman collided with an opponent
and his knee appeared to hyper-extend back a bit upon impact. Letang was
in huge pain, and slowly dragged himself immediately to the locker room on one
leg.
Luckily, it was not the worst case scenario of a major
injury as Coach Mike Sullivan updated the status on Saturday.
To say this is a major bullet dodged is an
under-statement. Letang has
been an absolute workhorse for the Pens this season averaging 25:55 per game (4th in the
league).
There’s value in eating all those minutes, since not too
many are capable of playing that much, but what’s more telling is what Letang
is able to do in all those minutes. As Adam Gretz noted in his weekly update
here on PensBurgh, Letang’s been playing some of his best hockey
as of late too:
Kris Letang played
62 minutes of 5-on-5 hockey this past week. In those minutes the Penguins were
a 68 percent shot attempt team (93 for, 43 against), a 70 percent scoring
chance team (42 for, 18 against), a 65 percent high-danger scoring chance team
(21 for, 11 against), and outscored teams by a 2-1 margin. He not only deserves
to be in Norris Trophy consideration this season, at this point he should be
one of the front-runners. For the season his 0.83 points per game average would
be the third highest of his career while his 56.1 percent shot attempt share
would be the best mark of his career. He is also leading the team in shots on
goal with 99 entering play on Friday. Simply the best player on the team right
now.
It seems that Justin
Schultz (who has missed almost the entire season getting
hurt in the fourth game of the season) is something of a forgotten man when it
comes to evaluating the Penguins now, and what they might hope to become in
April. Having one right handed defenseman like that out has been a huge loss.
Losing Letang for an extended period of time might be the season’s death blow.
Fortunately it doesn’t look like that is the case.
#2: FINALLY, SOME SECONDARY SCORING
With Patric Hornqvist and Dominik Simon both
also hurt, the Pens badly needed some supporting players to step up and
tangibly contribute.
And perhaps the most unlikely sources have provided it
in Bryan Rust and Matt Cullen.
Rust has
been a surprising recent contributor if only for a terrible start to the season
with just one goal in the first 28 games. He broke out in a big way before the
weekend with a hat trick against Chicago, but the momentum has rolled beyond
that. Rust played
a season-high 21:52 against Boston (odd how chipping in goals will earn more
time, eh?) and also fired seven total shots on goal this weekend. Before
Chicago, it took Rust EIGHT games from November 27 - December 8 to total seven
shots on goal. So Rust is firing, and it’s working- he scored last night
against LA and is obviously a player brimming with confidence right now.
Cullen barely
looked like an NHL player when this season began, he appeared to be a shell of
himself and his results and presence on the team were more negative than
anything. After returning on December 12th from a three-week injury of his
own, Cullen looks
refreshed and better. He’s got two points in three games since his return, both
of which were great plays on his part with a nice pass to Derek Grant against
Boston and then making a huge difference and scoring a short-handed goal
against LA. Cullen isn’t
around to score a ton of points, but his timing to produce this weekend was a
standout performance.
#3 GOALIES SEEING SOME SERIOUS RUBBER
On Friday night Casey DeSmith was
definitely one of the best players on the ice, stopping 48 of 51 shots against
the Bruins.
Saturday night, in his first game back from injury, Matt Murray saw
41 shots on his net, and he did well to stop 38 of them.
The Pens aren’t exactly a team that excels in shot
suppression and limiting other team’s looks on net, but giving up an average of
46 shots on goal this weekend probably isn’t a sustainable way to find success.
Alas, for a team used to getting average (at best) goaltending overall in the
2018-19 season with 16th placed save percentage entering the weekend, there’s
no doubt for this small stretch they got above-average play in net. The longer
that lasts, the better a chance the team has to continue to win games.
#4 PEARSON’S PRETTY PLAY
One great thing about Tanner
Pearson is he has the ability to show flashes of
brilliance. In a no doubt inspired effort against his old team on Saturday
night, he showed that by stealing the puck off Drew Doughty (impressive!)
and patiently out-lasting Jonathan
Quick and then finishing it with a perfect shot.
#5 WELCOME BACK DUPUIS
It was great to see Pascal Dupuis back in Pittsburgh again.
A lot of fans were left wondering why Dupuis didn’t
immediately jump into an off-ice role with the team, but it wasn’t so simple to
just snap a finger and switch gears like that for Dupuis.
As Jason Mackey
wrote for the Post-Gazette, it was a difficult transition from
playing career to retirement for Dupuis:
Being back in Pittsburgh also led Dupuis to reflect a little
on the end of his career and why he left town the way he did.
It was absolutely intentional … but not because he was
unhappy or didn’t love the city. More it was something he felt he had to do for
his own health.
After finishing his Penguins career as a part-time scout,
Dupuis said he has started to think about a possible reunion with the
organization. But he doesn’t question for a second what he did a couple years
ago, that intentional break to make sure he didn’t try for another comeback.
Dupuis loves hockey and no doubt it’s a tough hand to take
from being on a line with Sidney Crosby one
day, to having a medical condition that would prevent him from playing high
level hockey the next. It’s good to see he’s found some peace and acceptance
with the end of the playing line for him, and hopefully he will be a part of
the organization moving forward. You definitely want guys like Dupuis and Billy
Guerin around if you can get them.
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