For how some people are wired, today could be considered the last day of summer. Unofficially, of course, but from the pro hockey perspective it’s here. The Penguins report tomorrow for their first day back – though only for headshots, team media and other off ice chores that need completed in preparation for the season. Then Thursday is the first day of practice on the ice with the coaches and off we go. Before you know it the first preseason game will be on Monday, and in this last asinine exhibition
schedule (where the Pens play four times in the first six days or completely unnecessary reasons) will be in full swing.
Here’s one more to consider, what’s more likely for the Penguins this season – a positive surprise or a negative one? Let’s try to paint a few pictures here.
On the bright side: Dan Muse’s coaching helps tightened up the defense a little better than the pure personnel would suggest, and that in turn helps Tristan Jarry have a bounce-back. Maybe the team even gets a surprise when Arturs Silovs figures things out at the NHL level and becomes a capable 1B type of goalie. The roster gets managed to the point where struggling veterans of the past (Kevin Hayes, Noel Acciari, Ryan Graves, Danton Heinen, etc) see their roles drastically reduced, if not taken off the NHL roster entirely via trades or waivers, and in their place young players like Owen Pickering, Ville Koivunen, Rutger McGroarty, Tristan Broz and Avery Hayes all form a 2016-ish type of wave of new talent to help the stars. And the stars shine, Sidney Crosby plays like Sidney Crosby, but the big surprise is that Evgeni Malkin doesn’t go gentle into the night and plays/produces more than last season. It also helps that across the division that none of the Islanders, Flyers or Blue Jackets are better than expected and the Rangers’ strife continues.
And the darker outlook: Dan Muse is Mike Johnston 2.0 as a coach who proves to be better at developmental levels than the NHL. The defensive personnel plays to their talent level, which is not a pretty picture. The goaltending doesn’t have much of a chance, but doesn’t prop the team much up either. Then either through practical purposes or slow markets, the Pens aren’t willing/able to make sweeping changes and drop multiple under-performing veterans, so the Graves/Hayes/Acciari class of players continues to amble along with uninspiring NHL play, blocking younger players to the minors for much of the season. The best players on the team, all 30+, have some injuries in their ranks and players like Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell can’t replicate career-best seasons from last year. Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang’s play continues to diminish. It’s a long, cold winter in Pittsburgh and when it breaks they’re at the bottom of the division and among the lowest-performing teams in the league. That leads to a 7-9% chance of winning the lottery, but they don’t and draw the sixth overall pick.
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So, which is more likely? In actuality, there probably won’t be 15 elements of best case scenario to all hit, one after another. Some items and individual pieces of the season will go well, others invariably will not. It might be easier to see a scenario for this roster construction where more of the bad is easier to fall into place than the good, but teams can wildly out-perform what everyone “knows”, assumes or expects before the year starts. Just within the Pens’ division last year, Washington probably out-performed their point total by 15-20 points and Columbus did even better by 25-30+ points beyond what almost everyone was sure would be a rotten season. Which is to say positive surprises can and do happen when a season comes together.
Are the Penguins there? It would be difficult to say yes with a lot of conviction. Their defense looks awful, and by design the team was willing to take on mid-level (or worse) veteran players like Connor Clifton and Matt Dumba as cap dumps to pile up more draft capital. Pittsburgh isn’t angling towards immediate competition, but they haven’t torn down by trading Rust, Rakell or Erik Karlsson just yet either. That could change in a hurry, but with another season beginning — and no prorated cap to allow contending teams to bank space to load up at the deadline — a trade deeper in the season isn’t as simple as it once was.
A good baseline for the Penguins would seem to be about 80 points (their over/under in most books is 77.5). If there’s about a 10 point fluctuation, are they more likely to end up with 90 points and near the playoff line, or let’s say 67-70 points and down at the very bottom?
