From the moment the 2025-26 season began, the Pittsburgh Penguins biggest flaws were pretty obvious. Even as the forward depth proved to be better than anybody could have anticipated, and even as they continued to exceed expectations and win games, those flaws were still there lurking beneath the surface.
We all knew what they were.
Defense.
Goaltending.
A team that, while younger than it has been in some areas, still has a lot of veteran players and does not really excel at playing a faster, speed game.
Over the course of an 82-game season the Penguins were able to mask a lot of those flaws, or at least overcome them.
When it comes to a best-of-seven playoff series against the same team every night, and when that team is doing more extensive scouting, more in-depth game-planning, and more aggressive line-matching, there is nowhere to hide. Those flaws will eventually come to the surface and get exposed. The Penguins are finding that out in a big way in their first-round playoff series against the Philadelphia Flyers. All of the flaws are showing themselves.
Let’s start with the defense.
The Penguins have mostly had one defense pairing they have been able to rely on consistently this season, and it’s been the Erik Karlsson-Parker Wotherspoon duo. While they have not played up to their regular season level in this series, it is still true that they are the one pairing that is most reliable.
One of the reasons I thought the Penguins had a great chance in this series was the improvement the Kris Letang-Sam Girard pairing showed down the stretch. After some rocky moments early on, they became an extremely effective duo during the stretch run of the regular season and looked like they might be forming a strong second-pairing that could have taken some of the pressure and workload off of the Karlsson-Wotherspoon pairing. It was one of the X-factors I had for the Penguins going into the playoffs.
But just three games into the series it is becoming clear that late-season improvement was not something that was going to be sustained. They have not only regressed back to the form they showed when they first started playing together, this might be some of the worst hockey they have played since Girard joined the team.
Letang simply looks like his time as an effective NHL regular has run its course.
Girard is back to looking tentative and like he is over-thinking and over-doing it every time he touches the puck. I am not totally ready to give up on Girard beyond this season because I have seen more than enough defensemen initially struggle with a new team for a season before figuring it out .
(Two very notable exceptions with this very franchise are Paul Martin and Karlsson.)
Maybe he comes back next season with a fresh start and plays like the player the Penguins thought he could be.
But for now it is just …. bad.
The third-pairing of Connor Clifton and Ryan Shea is not performing much better, while Clifton in particular has had some really bad shifts that have resulted in goals against.
I know the Penguins are struggling to generate offense and score goals, and a lot of that blame has to fall on the forwards and power play, but when you have a deep, talented group of forwards that are struggling to score it typically comes down to one of two factors: 1) some bad luck, and/or 2) Issues with the defense when it comes to breaking the play out of the defensive zone and moving everything in the right direction.
While I do think there is an element of puck luck to some of the Penguins’ offensive struggles, the bigger issue is the simple fact there is no crispness to their breakouts or play through the neutral zone, and it is their defensive shortcomings that are sabotaging a lot of their potential for 5-on-5 offense. And it is a problem in all three zones of the ice.
Fixing it has to be one of the top priorities of the offseason.
The other big issue this season has been the lack of consistency from the goalies.
While it would be unfair to point the finger at Stuart Skinner for the 3-0 deficit, mostly because he was their best player in Games 1 and 2 and the only reason they had much of a chance in those games, he gave up two absolute softies in Game 3, at the worst possible time, that helped swing the game away from them. For the series he is also at -2.8 goals saved above expected. That’s not ideal. It’s also not ideal that the Penguins lost the two solid games he played at the start of the series. Nor is it ideal that they rarely get goalies to steal games for them.
The good news here for the future, and perhaps as soon as next season, is the Penguins at least have somebody in-house that could help solidify the position.
Then there is just the simple fact that in a lot of areas the Flyers just look faster.
They are faster on pucks. They are faster through the neutral zone. They are faster on the forecheck. The Penguins don’t have an answer for any of it. I still can not get the Game 2 play out of my mind where Owen Tippett won a defensive zone face-off forward, split through the Penguins defense, and then blew through the neutral zone on a breakaway that ultimately ended with him getting a penalty shot.
Whether the Penguins win this series or not, it is clearly not a Stanley Cup team. Even as the Penguins turned themselves into a playoff team during the season nobody ever really had that sort of expectation. They were always going to lose at some point, and the second round always seemed to be a likely ceiling. Losing this series would also not make the season a waste, or a sign that they did a poor job from a front office perspective. This was supposed to be a rebuilding year, and I do believe that is the way they approached it. It just naturally took on a very different direction. There are still going to be a lot of positives to take out of this season, and they are still going to enter the offseason in a pretty good position when it comes to adding talent.
But this team, as exciting as it was at times, was always a severely flawed team. There is no hiding it anymore. It at least makes it easier to know what to focus on whenever the season is complete.
