Every couple of Friday’s we are going to look at some Penguins numbers, both traditional numbers and fancy stats, just to see what is going on with the team and some individual players.
Today is one of those Friday’s.
So let’s look at some Penguins numbers.
The Penguins power play has a problem
I hate to be a “shoot the puck” guy, but …
After Thursday’s game against Boston, the Penguins success rate on the power play has dropped down to just 17.8 percent for the season, placing them 24th in the entire NHL. They failed to score on their one
power play attempt on Thursday, which came after a disastrous 0-for-6 night on Tuesday against the Vegas Golden Knights that saw them fail to score on an extended 5-on-3 in the closing minutes of regulation, just before Tomas Hertl scored a power play goal of his own to win the game for Vegas.
The drop in production from the Penguins power play is just one of the factors that has resulted in an early season regression from the 2025-26 season, and it is not hard to nail down the problem on this year’s power play.
They can not generate shots.
Or attempt shots.
Or do anything with shooting the puck.
As of Friday morning the Penguins power play has the following ranks in terms of shot generation on the power play:
- Total shot attempts per 60 minutes: 32nd (77.13 attempts per 60 minutes)
- Unblocked shot attempts per 60 minutes: 32nd (55.32 unblocked attempts per 60 minutes).
- Shots on goal per 60 minutes: 32nd (33.84 shots on goal per 60 minutes)
- Expected goals per 60 minutes: 32nd (5.69 expected goals per 60 minutes)
- Scoring chances per 60 minutes: 31st (44.08 scoring chances per 60 minutes)
- High-danger scoring chances per 60 minutes: 28th (18.1 high-danger scoring chances per 60 minutes)
Abysmal. Horrid. Rancid. Terrible. Pathetic. Pick a word. Any of them work. If anything, the power play unit is outperforming what it should be doing based on this. They are not just last in almost all of these categories, they are last by a significant margin.
It is especially frustrating because the Penguins numbers in the same categories during 5-on-5 play are consistently top-10 across the board.
The Penguins have a lot of problems defensively.
They have had problems in goal.
The power play is right there with both of those areas in terms of contributing to the early season failures in the standings.
Two things about that: 1) Special teams (both power play and penalty kill) are two of the biggest areas on a team where coaching can make a difference, and 2) that is also an area where the Penguins most experienced, highest paid, and theoretically best players are getting the bulk of the playing time.
Sidney Crosby still off to one of the worst starts of his career
The Penguins top line started to find some juice against Montreal and Vegas, and that includes the captain. But with just 10 points (four goals, six assists) in his first 16 games, this remains the second-worst start to a season in his career.
The only 16-game start worse than this remains the start of the 2015-16 season under Mike Johnston.
He had nine points in the first 16 games of that season.
There is another layer to that: You can point to the early season struggles of Rickard Rakell and his lack of finishing as eating away at some potential assists for Crosby, and that is certainly fair. But Crosby has just 28 shots on goal in these first 16 games.
That is the lowest total through 16 games in his career. The next lowest was 38 shots on goal which he had through the first 16 game of the 2025-26 season. Prior to last season, he never had less than 40 shots on goal through the first 16 games of a season.
Hard to hide from the numbers.
Some quick hit numbers
- The Penguins have had eight different defense pairings play at least 40 minute of 5-on-5 ice-time together this season. None of them have a positive goal differential. They have several that are exactly even, and three that are on the negative side. Nobody is on the positive side. Sam Girard and Kaeden Korczak are 9-9. Erik Karlsson and Spencer Stastney are 5-5. Korczak and Declan Carlile are 3-3. Kris Letang and Stastney, and Letang-Trevor van Riemsdyk are all 1-1.
- Not only does Nicholas Robertson lead the team with seven goals, the Penguins are outscoring teams by a 10-3 margin when he is on the ice during 5-on-5 play. Among players with at least 50 minutes of 5-on-5 ice-time, that is the best on-ice goal-differential on the team.
- The worst? Andrei Kuzmenko at two goals for and eight goals against.
- The Penguins defensive zone play is bad, and it is not just the defensemen contributing to it. The forwards have not been particularly useful, either (with few exceptions). The Penguins goalies are not without blame. Arturs Silovs and Sergei Murashov are a combined minus-4.6 in goals saved above expected. Individually, Murashov is 62nd in the league and Silovs is 47th.
- Kaeden Korczak is the only Penguins defenseman (again, minimum 50 minutes) with a positive on-ice goal-differential during 5-on-5 play (16-14). He is also up to 10 assists in 16 games. He is also second on the team in 5-on-5 points per 60 minutes, trailing only Evgeni Malkin. He’s been really good. Still only 26 years old.
- Going back to the power play and the lack of shooting. Egor Chinakhov has the most power play shot attempts per 60 minutes at 29.5. He also has the third-most individual expected goals per 60 minutes on the power play (1.95). He has not consistently hit the net, and the goal-scoring has not yet emerged, but he also has just 22 minutes of power play time. Move him up. Get that shot on the top unit.
