The pair of weekend games for the Penguins against the Washington Capitals were about as low stakes as it gets in the NHL regular season from Pittsburgh’s perspective. The Pens had already locked up the second seed in the Metropolitan Division, regardless of results the rest of the way.
As a result of that knowledge, the team shifted gears into preparing for the playoffs. 18-year old rookie Ben Kindel was out for both games. Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Bryan Rust, Erik Karlsson, Kris Letang and
Parker Wotherspoon all sat out on Saturday and played on Sunday. Noel Acciari, Anthony Mantha, Ryan Shea and Connor Clifton played Saturday then sat out on Sunday. In a move unrelated to playoff rest, Connor Dewar is now week-to-week with a more serious injury and his status for the start of the playoffs would seem to be in real jeopardy.
While the games themselves had no impact for the Penguins, they can still carry some level of individual importance. Kevin Hayes dressed for his first games in a while, having only played twice since January 11th. Rutger McGroarty and Ryan Graves got in the lineup, both only having played two and three NHL games respecitvely since the start of February. Jack St. Ivany was back after last appearing in the NHL on January 25th, Ilya Solovyov got a chance to play for the first time since being rotated out as a healthy scratch after the March 18th game.
Other recent lineup regulars like Elmer Soderblom, Justin Brazeau and Tommy Novak received opportunities in good spots to continue to make their cases on why they could be options for the postseason. So the games mattered on some level, even if the results did not. Here’s a look at the Game Score cards for both games over the weekend.
On the positive side, Kevin Hayes scored a goal on Saturday and showed well on Game Scores across both games. His skating at this point of his career makes him an overall liability but he was able to pick his spots well. Dewar’s injury (as well as the status of Blake Lizotte coming back from an injury of his own) might add a little drama to the depth chart moving forward. The Pens have no shortage of fill-in depth options and K. Hayes might not be at the very front of that line, though with his 56 career NHL playoff games he could be in the mix at some point.
Ilya Solovyov and Jack St. Ivany had tough days on Saturday – where to be fair, in context the under-manned Pens team had a major uphill climb all game that day when they got out-shot 31-12 – but bounced back with better performances on Sunday. Solovyov especially has shown some skating and puck moving skills with the ability to lineup on the left or right side of the lineup. At this point he probably is factoring in as the seventh defenseman and first one up for the playoffs if needed, which the team can feel a little more comfortable with after seeing his performance on Sunday.
Soderblom also showed enough over the weekend – and more importantly over the last few weeks – to lock down a spot in the lineup for Game 1. That would have been a tougher squeeze had Dewar remained healthy, now the path to a spot is virtually automatic for Soderblom.
On the negative side, Ville Koivunen and Rutger McGroarty let some chances slip away to stand out. So too did Avery Hayes, who was made a scratch for Sunday’s game. Koivunen’s game on Saturday was particularly disappointing with a -0.67 Game Score coming off playing a forward team-high 17:49 in a nice role on a line with Rickard Rakell and Egor Chinakhov, a game where Koivunen did not manage a shot on goal. Overall right now Koivunen is a skilled forward who cannot score, his 5v5 points/60 dropped to 404th out of 407 forwards across the NHL (minimum 400 minutes) and doesn’t look like he will be a factor for the NHL playoffs this spring.
Similarly, McGroarty’s weekend was too quiet, held without a shot in almost 15 minutes on Saturday and then relegated to 9:55 played on Sunday. A. Hayes popped out with a big goal in the March 30th game against NYI, his only point in his last 14 NHL games since his two-goal debut, and the Pens decided to sit Hayes on Sunday following his forward-worst -1.00 Game Score instead of resting a player like Brazeau or Novak in a weekend where plenty of NHL regulars got a game off. Forwards like Soderblom and Acciari performing well lately has had the effect to wall off a spot in the lineup for A. Hayes.
Graves was another player with a disappointing turn, suffering some ugly play on a pair of goals against on Saturday leading to a -3.46 Game Score while playing the fewest minutes among defensemen (15:30) and then returning to become a familiar scratch for Sunday’s game. Not that such a development is particularly surprising at this point given how things have gone for Graves in Pittsburgh, but it sure doesn’t look like he belongs anywhere near a game in the playoffs and his showing this weekend did nothing but reinforce that position.
Overall for the Penguins, this weekend was about getting some rest in and simply checking boxes to get to the playoffs. Every game presents opportunity for someone and there were plenty of positive and negative signs from their depth players to help provide extra information if there becomes a need to dig deeper into the organization for players who need to step in for the playoffs.
