When the Penguins were at the 41-game mark back in January, we made some calls on which players would have better second halves and which ones might have been in danger of dropping the paces that they had set in the first half. Let’s see how those predictions held up against actual performance.
We started out with a trio of players we thought would be better as the year went along.
Rickard Rakell – this is borderline cheating, courtesy of the long injury absence in the first half. He easily could and
should be scoring more than six goals and 15 points in the team’s next 41 games. Nice little warmup to take the slam dunk when it’s right there.
There was little doubt that Rakell would be better in the second half of 2025-26 than he was in the first half. And boy was he ever. Rakell scored 16 goals and 33 points in 39 games in the second-half of the year to salvage a decent year and become a main portion of the offense in the parts when Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin were out of the lineup.
Ben Kindel – can Kindel keep going or will he hit a rookie wall? With the way he’s played lately (three points in the last two games, four in the last five, eight in the last 12), I think Kindel has the staying power to score 19+ points in the second half of the season. He has been piling up more points as the year has gone on, the Olympic break should help as a natural reset for a young player to get a breather.
Kindel had 8G+10A for 18 points in 38 games in the first half of the season, the second half ended up being almost the exactly the same with 17 points (9G+8A) in 39 games. He didn’t quite make it since he would have needed 19 points but it was nice to see that he stayed close to his production from the first half of the year.
Erik Karlsson goals — It’s a wonder Karlsson has only found the back of the net three times, striking the iron from a post or crossbar and staying out just as many times as good goals. Karlsson should end up with at least seven goals this season and end up scoring more in the second half than he did in the first.
Karlsson was playing so well you just knew he was going to start getting rewarded for it. He went nuts with 12 goals in the second half of the season to finish with 15 on the year as a whole after a slow start in the goal scoring category. He did end up with seven total shots that either hit the post or crossbar and stayed out.
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Next up, we turned to some situations where hot first halves of the season we were unsure would continue from the levels of early production.
Justin Brazeau goals — What would you take on Brazeau scoring 13 goals over the team’s next 41 games? Considering he’s got 12 in 27, it doesn’t sound unreasonable. I’m not so sure the magic of shooting 25.0% keeps going that long, but why not? Whether he remains healthy or not could make or break the outcome for doubling his goals.
Brazeau only ended up with five goals in 37 games the rest of the way. His shooting percentage, frequency of shots and ice time was all reduced as the campaign went along. He looked dreadfully slow and behind the play in the playoff games he wasn’t scratched for. It’s a shame for as much of a pleasant surprise for how well Brazeau was playing early in the year with goals going in left and right, it all dried up in a hurry. It was a classic hot streak turned cold, if anything we could have been a little more bold to see the obvious that the tables would turn, it’s just difficult to predict when a hot run is going to come to an end and it’s nicer to give a guy the benefit of the doubt.
Tommy Novak — Novak has two career 40+ point seasons under his belt, he’s certainly not incapable of the 42 points that he’s on pace for with a good second half, he makes this portion because he’s tough to project. Is Novak a center or wing? He’s played with Crosby on the first line, played on the second line and at times been a bit out of the spotlight on a lower line, what’s the role moving forward? I wouldn’t be surprised if Novak keeps having a quiet but good season, but then again he had a slow start and was barely a focal point of the team early. Does he slip back to that now that a new piece like Chinakhov is around?
What was unknown in early January is that it would be Novak (and not Brazeau or Anthony Mantha) who would actually benefit from the addition of Chinakhov, not get pushed aside because of him. That’s also because Novak’s ability to line up as a center allowed Malkin to slot in as a winger. Thus, one of the more exciting and high-flying lines was created with Novak right in the middle of it. Novak ended up right at 42 points, the exact number he was on pace for at mid-season. So it looks like he was well-categorized as a middle-lane type of prediction for whether he’d go higher or lower in the second half. Turned out he kept it up right down the middle, nice season for Novak.
Ville Koivunen and Rutger McGroarty – One on hand, the output required is so low to hit in this exercise, Koivunen would only need six points over the rest of the season, four for McGroarty to pitch in more. On the other hand, both young players might not get the games and opportunities in the second half with Chinakhov on a forward group that is approaching health. Leaning to the unders for both, but those bars are so low to clear that it gives some pause since that’s basically only a couple of really good games for either to chip in more.
Update: the unders were easily the right call. Koivunen only had two assists in 12 NHL games in the second part of the season. McGroarty’s output was modestly better with a goal and two assists in eight games, to match his first half output of three points, but it’s not like he was able to make a major move either. Neither player, or the organization, can be thrilled with how the development this season for these two. That’s prospects for ya, huh? Not always a smooth road free of bumps.
Evgeni Malkin – Malkin was the Pens best player in the first 10 or 20 games this season. Then he hurt his shoulder and missed a while. He put up 29 points before he got hurt, does he have another 29+ in him for the second half of the season? Missing a chunk of games is always a strong possibility for him too, so I’m torn on this one, it’s not difficult to imagine scenarios where he ends up on either side of second half performances.
Malkin produced 32 points in 30 games in the second-half of the season, so not only was he was able to have his hot start to the year, he was able to keep it going to the same level. There were some frequent breaks to miss games here for injuries, the five-game suspension, the Olympic break, does make one wonder if all the time off helped put more gas in the tank for the 56 games he appeared in this year. Either way, a 61-point campaign for a 39-year old is pretty impressive no matter how many games it took to get there.
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The next segment were calls that we said would be down in the second half of the season.
Sidney Crosby goals – I mean a 38-year old just can’t score 48+ goals in a season, right? That’s not humanly possible (first place all-time for a 38-year old is Brett Hull’s 37. Johnny Bucyk and Alex Ovechkin are tied for second with 31. As a 39-year old buoyed by the record chase, Ovechkin scored 44 goals last season). The head says to bet Crosby doesn’t have 24 more goals in him for the second half of the season, the head also knows by now not to actually believe in limiting what Crosby could be capable of, which could be having the best ‘old guy goal scoring season’ in NHL history if he keeps it up.
Yep, a 38-year old can’t score 48+ goals in a season. Crosby’s goal scoring went way down, notching only five goals in 27 games the rest of the way from that point. The knee injury at the Olympics ensured he would get anywhere close to 40+ goals. In the end he didn’t even get 30, finishing up at 29.
Ryan Shea – now that Shea’s down to the third pair he’s not going to get the chance to play as many minutes with top-end forwards. He’ll still be good at stretch passes and in the offensive zone but probably not record 14+ assists in the second half of the season good.
Shea, to his credit, proved us wrong on this one and ended up with 29 assists on the season, earning 15 assists in the second half of the year after putting up 14 in the first half. Good for him, this was a guy with three total assists in 70 career NHL games entering the season, I think there was good reason to be skeptical that he would fade at least a little bit after a really good start. Turns out he was able to keep going and do even better over the long haul, great stuff from him.
Anthony Mantha – Mantha would need to demolish a career-high of 48 points to have as good of a second half of the season as he did in the first (on pace for 58 points). He’s also a guy that tends to miss some time with injuries over the course of a year and has perfect attendance so far. That spot on the top power play that he’s had for most of Malkin’s injury is going away too. He still is tracking to have a very good season even if it does tail off in the second half.
Well, Mantha demolished his career-highs and was also even better in the second half of the season to end up with 33 goals and 64 points. See above in the Brazeau section, it’s tough to predict when a player’s hot hand will cool off, Mantha’s never did in the regular season. It’ll be fascinating to see what July 1 has in store for him for just how much and how long his new team is going to give to him and how next season goes. Given his lengthy track record, there’s typically been a valley to follow once he reaches a peak like he did this year, but hey, what do we know, we were saying that in January as well.
Kris Letang – maybe having Brett Kulak as a steady and defensively quality partner will help unlock Letang, and his game has been a lot better lately. But do we really think 38-year old Kris Letang is going to end up with 43+ points (last year he ended up with 30 points in 74 games)? That gives some pause, with the concern of injury also very viable to lower the amount of points he produced in the first half.
Letang had 13 assists in 33 games from this point on, finishing well under his production from the first half. He was able to put some points on the board in the playoffs though, so at least that’s something. Now 39, Father Time has got a strong grasp on Letang, who is becoming a shell of the player he once was.
