There are two main takeaways I have from the Pittsburgh Penguins 5-2-0 start going into Thursday’s game against the Florida Panthers.
The first is that, along with the record, they have been an objectively good hockey team over these first seven games. The results are good, and there is good process behind the results. They have defended mostly well. They are not allowing odd-man rushes every shift. Opposing forwards are not left alone in front of the net. They are rolling four lines that are all doing
their jobs and doing them well. With few exceptions, everybody is playing well.
They have also been really good from a numbers perspective. They rank in the top-10 in scoring chance share, high-danger scoring chance share and expected goal share during 5-on-5 play. The penalty kill, outside of one brutal game in Anaheim, has been effective. The power play is converting on 26.3 percent of its chances and is sixth-best in the NHL right now. The veterans are playing great. The young players look like they belong. The goalies have been very, very sold.
Vibes are good.
The second takeaway is that all of those results come with one very big asterisk next to them: They have not really played anybody that is any good yet. They have not yet been tested against truly good teams. They have mostly feasted on a lot of below average to even potentially bad teams.
Their opponents so far this season had the following league-wide rankings in the standings a year ago: 6th, 18th, 22nd (played twice), 23rd, 25th, and 32nd.
The highest-ranking team there, and the only team to make the playoffs a year ago, is a Los Angeles Kings team that has mostly stunk so far this season and very likely made itself significantly worse this past offseason.
Even just looking at this season’s small sample size standings, their opponents have the following rankings in points percentage: 13th, 15th, 17th, 23rd (twice), 27th, and 32nd.
Not exactly an early season gauntlet. It has not exactly been daunting.
That does not mean you dismiss the results. You can only play the teams that line up across from you, and if they are not top-tier teams you still want to be able to beat them. If you are a good team, you should beat them. The Penguins have done their job, and they have done so in an enjoyable manner to watch.
But we still do not know what this team is all about when it really gets challenged by a top-tier team. We do not know if this is all just early season noise, or if maybe there is something here that nobody realistically expected this season. Will they play a good team and turn into the team we all expected them to be?
We are about to find that out in the coming games, and that starts on Thursday with a visit to the Florida Panthers.
Even though Florida does not have Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk in its lineup right now, this is still a very formidable lineup that will be, by far, the Penguins’ biggest test of the season so far. Even without Barkov and Tkachuk it’s still a lineup with elite players and a bonafide playoff team.
Columbus will not be a pushover on Saturday when the Penguins return home, while St. Louis was a playoff team a year ago. Then the Penguins go on a four-game road trip that starts a week-and-a-half long run against Minnesota, Winnipeg, Toronto, Washington and New Jersey.
The level of competition is about to increase, and I am fascinated to see how this team handles that.
It also brings me to this: So far my expectations for the 2025-26 season are not really changing, even with this start. It’s early. I still look at some of the weaknesses on this roster (the left side of the defense, the age of Kris Letang, the unpredictability of the goalies) and still imagine things are going to swing in another direction at some point. But have your expectations changed? Are you starting to get a, “hey, what if….” mindset? Or are you still just enjoying the ride for now knowing that it might not continue this season?
Along with that, if your expectations have not changed, what would it take for them to change? How many games into the season do they have to be playing well before your mindset changes?
I was thinking about this yesterday and I think I have it set at 35 games.
That gets you past Thanksgiving, usually a good indicator of which teams are good and which teams are not, and almost to the halfway point of the season. It will get them through some significantly tougher parts of the schedule. If they are still winning and playing this way by that point in the season, my mindset on this team and what to expect this season will start to shift.
Until then, it remains a fascinating and interesting team to watch play. It is going to be even more fascinating to see how they play against better competition. That starts on Thursday against the Florida Panthers.
