This was a weird week for the Pittsburgh Penguins, and when all was said and done they walked out of it having collected four out of a possible six points in the standings. That was a very reasonable goal
at the beginning, and probably the bare minimum of what they needed to do given the competition they were facing.
They very easily could have walked away with all six points if they could ever win a game in a shootout.
They also could have very easily walked away with only two points had it not been for two late 6-on-5 goals to send their games against the Tampa Bay Lightning and Columbus Blue Jackets to overtime.
Could have been better. Could have been worse. Ultimately ended up being what it needed to be. It just may have had a weird path in getting there. Which is pretty much a great description for what this entire season has been anyway.
They enter this week still holding on to a playoff position, and are in fact in the No. 3 spot in the Metropolitan Division as of Monday morning.
Now they head out west for their Western Canadian (and Pacific Northwest) road trip. The Penguins have seen all four of these teams already this season and produced some mixed results. This needs to be a redemption trip of sorts, because there are some very winnable games on the schedule this week.
The road trip begins on Monday night in Seattle against a Kraken team that already beat the Penguins on home ice earlier this season. It was part of that ugly back-to-back homestand with Minnesota that had head coach Dan Muse fuming when it was over. The Kraken are in a playoff spot, but there is not much overly impressive about how they are doing it.
They do not score goals.
They are 32nd in the NHL in 5-on-5 expected goal share, 29th in shot attempt share and rely almost exclusively on their goaltending to carry them. Given the way the Penguins have controlled possession and defended in recent weeks, they should have a good chance to slow the Kraken down. They just need to find some offense for themselves and figure out a way to solve Seattle’s goaltending.
After playing in Seattle on Monday, the Penguins have a back-to-back situation in Calgary and Edmonton on Wednesday and Thursday.
The Flames are in a very similar situation as Seattle in the sense that they do not score a lot of goals and have some increasingly poor possession numbers. They also beat the Penguins at home, winning a low-scoring game just a couple of weeks ago where the Penguins were unable to beat Devin Cooley
Calgary is also beginning its sell-off having just traded top defenseman Rasmus Andersson to the Vegas Golden Knights on Sunday, so that is one less top-player the Penguins are going to have to face.
Thursday is going to be, by far, the toughest game of the trip. Not only because Edmonton is the best team they will face on it, but also because the Penguins will be playing the second half of a back-to-back, on the road, with travel, against a rested Oilers team.
The Oilers still have some serious depth issues beyond their top players, but their top players are still outstanding and have given the Penguins fits in recent years. They also have Zach Hyman back in the lineup and he is on an absolute tear right now offensively.
The road trip concludes on Sunday against a Vancouver Canucks team that is just simply awful. The Penguins already dominated the Canucks earlier this season on home ice, and the current roster is worse than the one the Penguins saw earlier in the year, mostly due to the fact superstar defenseman Quinn Hughes has been traded away. Vancouver enters the week having lost 10 games in a row and has very little going for it at the moment.
Given the schedule, and the way the Penguins have been playing lately, this has the potential to be a big week for the Penguins. There are three very winnable games on the schedule here, and it would be in the Penguins’ best interest to take care of business in them. This is a week where they should be able to get at least five points, and hopefully six points out of eight that are on the table.
If they can do that it would have them at a 98-point pace going into next week, which would still be an extremely strong position in the playoff race.
