Who: Pittsburgh Penguins (6-9-2, 14 points, 7th place Metropolitan Division) @ Anaheim Ducks (9-7-1, 19 points, 4th place Pacific Division)
When: 8:00 p.m. eastern
How to Watch: Locally televised game on Sportsnet Pittsburgh, streaming for out of market at ESPN+
Pens’ Path Ahead: The schedule starts to take a breather after tonight, the Pens go up to San Jose on Wednesday, then head back home to play Ottawa next Saturday and then get four more days off before their next game, which comes at home against
St. Louis on Thursday 11/19.
Opponent Track: The Ducks got a rare Saturday night off to recoup from coming back from a Western Canada swing. It was a successful one, they beat Vancouver and Edmonton by 5-4 scores before dropping Calgary by a 5-3 tally on Friday night.
Season Series: These two teams meet up the next time back in PA on January 21st.
Hidden Stat: Since October 24th, the Ducks are 7-1-1 with a NHL-high 5.29 goals per game in that stretch. (And to be fair, they’ve given up 4.43 goals/game as well).
Getting to know the Ducks
Projected lines
FORWARDS
Alex Killorn – Leo Carlsson – Judd Caulfield
Cutter Gauthier – Mikael Granlund – Beckett Sennecke
Nico Myatovic – Tim Washe – Sam Colangelo
Jeff Malott – Roger McQueen – Nikita Nesterenko
DEFENSEMEN
Jackson LaCombe / Drew Helleson
Pavel Mintyukov / Noah Warren
Travis Mitchell / Tristan Luneau
Goalies: Lukas Dostal and Laurent Brissot
Potential scratches: Ville Husso, Tyson Hinds
Injured Reserve: AJ Greer, Ryan Poehling, Ian Moore
- Judd Caufield, a former Penguins draft pick, has grit and grinded his way into the NHL, currently in a key spot.
- It’ll be interesting to see McQueen, drafted one spot ahead of Kindel in 2025 and often mentioned as a potential Penguin draft pick.
- Kinda funny to see Granlund as team captain after his disappointing run in Pittsburgh. That was known as a bad time for him personally and it’s nice at least to see him rebound professionally. All about timing and it just wasn’t there when the Pens had him.
Season stats
via hockeydb
- Look at ol’ Leo Carlsson, the highest paid player in the game! He’s trying living up to the title at least with a vast increase over last season’s scoring (29G+38A in 70 games), already having over half of his assist total. The Ducks really had no choice but to match for a blossoming 21-year old star center and while he’s certainly not fitting his salary right now relative to the rest of the league, he’s showing why Anaheim absolutely could not afford to lose him.
- Jackson Lacombe was an injury replacement for Team USA and got a gold medal despite not playing in any games, but here’s to betting Lacombe will absolutely be a bigger part of the team in 2030. It’s hard to call him a breakout star when he’s already been a little bit in the spotlight, but by any definition this 25-year old is a prime time player.
- Caulfied’s best AHL season (last year) was 38 points in 71 games, putting up nine points early in this season, his only NHL action, is really impressive. We actually did like his size and tools a lot, ranking him as high as 17th in a depleted year of the Pensburgh T25U25, was this another Ron Hextall bumble?
Key to the game: Shoot to score
See the hidden stat above, Anaheim is playing WIDE OPEN over these past two weeks. Goals are flying into both nets at alarming rates. As such, the Ducks have a great power play and great finishing ability in the offensive zone.
At the same time, they’re wide open to be touched up defensively with terrible goaltending, penalty kill and in general at 5v5 via expectations and results. This isn’t unlike last night’s 5-2 win for the Pens in LA against a leaky defense+goalie combination.
You might have to outscore the other guy tonight. The good news is, if pressing it and making some plays, you probably can. However, the difference is compared to last night that Anaheim is really, really good at scoring goals for themselves and absolutely fine with playing a 5-4 type of game. That’s what they’ve been averaging in the last two weeks. A big salute and good luck to Arturs Silovs.
And now for the Pens
Projected lines
FORWARDS
Rickard Rakell – Sidney Crosby – Evgeni Malkin
Tommy Novak – Ben Kindel – Egor Chinakhov
Ville Koivunen – Hendrix Lapierre – Justin Brazeau
Connor Dewar – Blake Lizotte – Nick Robertson
DEFENSEMEN
Spencer Stastney / Erik Karlsson
Sam Girard / Kaeden Korczak
Declan Carlile / Kris Letang
Goalies: Arturs Silovs and Sergei Murashov
Potential Scratches: Andrei Kuzmenko, Ilya Solovyov
IR: Ryan Graves, Trevor van Riemsdyk, Elmer Soderblom, Bryan Rust
- Long live the Crosby+Malkin pairing. If you’re going to go down, as it looks like after the first 15ish games, might as well have some fun with it to pair the two big boys together and see what they can do.
- That said, breaking up Girard and Karlsson last night might have been the best thing the Pens could have done. Those two just weren’t playing well together, even in a brief look. That was more than enough.
- Murashov played last night, so expect Silovs is in the net tonight for the Pens.
