Pens' Cup Chances Take A Hit With Losses To Winnipeg And Utah - Now What?

The Pens continue to go through the motions until their pending Trade-a-Thon.

The Pens lost Friday to the Jets, 4-1, and Saturday to the Utah Hockey Club, 6-1. They’re now third from last in the league in points percentage, above only San Jose and Chicago, and have a league-worst minus-34 goal differential, 7 goals worse than the next-worst team. Some thoughts:

1. Everyone in the locker room clearly knows none of this matters

I’m not in the Penguins’ locker room, and don’t profess to be an actual on-the-ground reporter with his finger on the pulse — I’m just some guy typing takes into a computer for a small group of devoted email addresses and lil’ twitter avatars. But as I said at the beginning of the season: If I can look at the Pens’ offseason and determine that they are clearly not “trying” this season, then I’m guessing that this thought may have also crossed the minds of Sidney Crosby, Mike Sullivan, and all the other actual professional hockey players on the Pittsburgh Penguins.

If this wasn’t clear at the beginning of the season — or if players’ competitive instincts caused them to think, “so what, we’ll compete anyway!” — it’s become thuddingly obvious to every person in the locker room by now. The consecutive silent and/or booing home crowds in the Pens’ most recent back-to-back multigoal losses seem to have figured it out too.

The result? The Penguins players can say whatever they want about needing to “play the right way” and their poor attention to detail and inconsistency and unwillingness to want to “pay a price,” and all that’s true. But underneath it all, the players in that locker room know that at least one third of them won’t still be there after the trade deadline, and that Mike Sullivan will not be the coach of the next Penguins team that’s “trying” (if he’s even there next week.) Yes, the players are pros. Yes, they’re prideful. But they’re also human. And it’s very hard to expect a group of guys to give 1000% lights-out effort night after night when they all, to a man, know deep down that none of this *really* matters.

2. Is it finally time to fire Mike Sullivan? (NOTE: Copy-Paste this for all future recaps until it happens)

I’ve already written my thoughts about whether or not the Pens should fire Mike Sullivan. In short, he 100% definitely should not be back next season. They could keep him this season just to finish out a lost season and get a high draft pick, and there’s no reason for the Pens to hire a “turnaround” coach when their season’s already lost, like the Blues just did with Jim Montgomery (though he would’ve been a great coaching hire for the Pens next season.)

But I think the Pens are approaching the point where even just switching to an interim coach like David Quinn or Mike Vellucci to finish out the season might be best for all parties concerned, rather than forcing everyone to keep going through the motions with Sullivan. The Pens are going to finish with a lottery pick regardless, but even just playing with a little bit more spark to hopefully boost the trade values of some of their free agents is probably worth it. Plus if the Pens plan on bringing up most of their younger players after the trade deadline or sooner, they wouldn’t want their first NHL experience to be on a team that’s floundering this hard.

3. Alex Nedeljkovic has quietly been very bad this season

The Penguins have a bottom-3 team defense right now, and Tristan Jarry’s struggles have been extremely well-documented. Between those two much larger concerns, and the way last season ended with the Pens’ two goalies, I haven’t heard many people talking about how Alex Nedeljkovic has also really struggled for the Pens in net this year.

After allowing 6 goals to Utah, Nedeljkovic now sports an .877 SV% on the year, and has only finished above 90% in 3 of his 11 games played this season. Again, obviously the bad defense is a major factor, but behind that same defense, rookie Joel Blomqvist had a .904 SV% through 8 games, and finished over 90% in 5 of those games. Even Jarry’s been at .906 in his two games back from the AHL, despite his late meltdown against Tampa. Moneypuck’s goalie statistics, for what it’s worth, have Nedeljkovic at -7.3 goals saved above expected, the 5th worst mark out of 63 goalies who’ve played at least 5 games.

I really think there’s a decent chance that a month from now, Jarry will have a higher SV% than Nedeljkovic. Criticizing Nedeljkovic feels nitpicky while the whole team’s burning down, but the team’s many bigger concerns have totally overshadowed Ned’s unsightly .855 SV% in his last 6 appearances. If Jarry were .855 over a six-game span with 5 losses and one shootout win over San Jose, we’d notice.

4. It’s time for Matt Grzelcyk to hit the press box and/or waivers

There might’ve been a world in which Matt Grzelcyk signed with a deep, structured defensive team to be their #6/7 defenseman, played in a sheltered role, and posted decent numbers to rebuild his value. Instead, he signed on to play a top 4 role with the Pittsburgh Tanking Suckos, and has looked completely overmatched. Sorry, dude!

Grzelcyk has the second-worst on-ice 5v5 expected-goals-for percentage (43.5%) of any of the Pens’ defensemen, above only Jack St. Ivany, despite getting some pretty favorable offensive zone deployment. He also looks completely lost out there, and he’s a 30-year-old pending free agent who won’t be on the team past the trade deadline. I’m not sure a team would even trade a 5th rounder for him right now. The Wilkes-Barre Pens have had a number of injuries on D, but as more players get healthy, I think it’s time to pull the plug on Grzelcyk and just play anyone else.

Teams always need depth defensemen — the Rangers traded a future 4th rounder for Chad Ruhwedel last year (who was much more effective in his ice time than Grzelcyk has been) — but I think we’ve seen enough of Grzelcyk to determine that playing him for another month here or there isn’t gonna suddenly bolster his value, and may in fact do the opposite. Not all their one-year signings are gonna be flippable for picks.

5. Don’t forget - the Pens don’t have their 2nd round pick this year

In the continuing ongoing bummer that was Kyle Dubas’ first Summer with the Pens, one bonus indignity that looms over the team is that they also gave up this year’s 2nd rounder in the Erik Karlsson trade. At the time, the Penguins and the Sharks probably couldn’t have possibly guessed how high those picks would end up being, but with the Pens’ sudden pivot to rebuild-mode, losing those picks is gonna be a tough pill to swallow.

A contender moving a 1st and a 2nd rounder in successive years to overhaul their roster and move a ton of salary seemed, at the time, like a sensible gamble. Instead, the Pens will have traded away the 14th overall pick in ‘24 and what will probably end up being the 33rd-40th overall pick in ‘25 — an earlier pick than they used to select camp phenom Harrison Brunicke this Summer.

The Pens should be able to recoup a fair amount of draft capital in their forthcoming roster purge, but other than Marcus Pettersson, I doubt anyone will bring back something higher than the ~38th pick. Have we mentioned that Dubas’ first Summer did not go well??

Lightning 3, Penguins 2 (OT): You're Telling Me The Pittsburgh Penguins Blew A Two-Goal Lead??

The Pens *almost* flipped the script - then rewrote the same script word for word.

The Pens lost in overtime to the Lightning 3-2 Tuesday night, dropping their 4th game in their last 5 (though they earned OT points in two of them.) Some thoughts:

1. The REAL reason the Pens keep blowing two-goal leads

I have to double check this stat, but by my count, in 21 games this season, the Penguins have blown 5,354 two-goal leads, or roughly 254.9 blown two-goal leads per game. That’s just not a way to win consistently in the National Hockey League.

As for why the Penguins keep blowing two-goal leads, I don’t have some great silver-bullet all-encompassing “aha!” answer, but I don’t think it’s as much of a specific “thing” as it seems. I don’t think they “go into a defensive shell” when they go up two goals (does this team ever go into a “defensive” anything?), and I don’t think they’re “fragile” or whatever. I just think they’re a really bad defensive team, they’re a really high-event team that trades quality chances with everyone, and they haven’t gotten consistent goaltending. The result of those three things is, whenever they go up by two goals, it’s very easy to also give up two goals.

I don’t think they suddenly change the way they’re playing when they have leads. If anything, they probably should change the way they’re playing when they have leads. They just suck defensively and bleed goals. I don’t think it’s much more complicated than that.

2. The Pens have to keep playing Jarry

For fifty minutes, the script for this game wrote itself: Tristan Jarry actually outdueled Andrei Vasilevskiy. Is Jarry’s confidence back??

Even after Tampa tied the game on a weird pass in front that Jarry poke-checked (correctly!) into his own net (incorrectly!), the Jarry game story still mostly held: the Pens got blown out of the water by a superior Tampa team, got outshot 35-19 with a 16-7 edge in high danger chances, and Jarry still played well enough to get them to overtime. Then, in OT, Jarry went flying out of the net towards a shot that never came, the puck slid down behind the net to Brayden Point, and a flailing Jarry couldn’t recover in time to stop Point from tucking the puck in on the short side. It was a really baffling, sloppy goal all around that almost totally undid any “maybe Jarry can build off this” sentiment built up in the previous 63 minutes and 58 seconds.

That said, the Penguins have no choice but to keep playing Jarry. There’s no other alternative. He’s not tradeable right now. Some people have floated attaching a sweetener to move his contract, but the Pens are in rebuild mode right now. They’re taking other teams’ bad contracts for picks themselves. They’re not in a position to trade a pick to get someone to take theirs (if it were even possible.) They just have to play Jarry through it. Goaltending is weird! If he bounces back, then maybe a “trade him for someone else’s bad contract” comes back on the table. If he struggles, well, you’re tanking anyway. You’ve got to burn at least another year before you can consider a buyout. And, honestly, if Jarry puts together just a couple more .914 SV% games like tonight, he really won’t be that far behind where Alex Nedeljkovic is right now.

3. The kids are… fine

Whenever the Penguins call players up, the initial reaction from the masses is almost always the same: “I thought [Player] played fine!” or “I didn’t think [Player] looked out of place!” There’s an initial honeymoon phase with any new callup where, when they simply don’t look immediately-bad, we’re slightly impressed, plus we notice whatever couple positive things they do a little extra-hard in their first couple games. (Ponomarev made a PASS!! Brock McGinn never did that SHIT!!!) Plus we’re always temporarily happy to see anyone other than the bozos we’ve been stuck watching (and that goes for any season, not just when the team’s sucking.)

But that’s always the first very simple step of any callup’s career. Almost any decent AHLer wouldn’t just look immediately terrible if they were dropped into an NHL game. But over time, sometimes you’ll look up and realize, “oh, this guy has 1 point in 30 games.” Going from “not looking out of place” to “making an impact” is a HUGE leap that can take prospects multiple years to make.

That’s not a criticism of the new players! I think the roster will be half-filled with younger players after the trade deadline, and no matter how the team’s playing or what their record is, this will be the right decision. But I think it’ll mostly be an “everyone is just getting their feet wet” type first season for most of the Pens’ prospects. I don’t expect any of them to suddenly look like 15-20 goal scorers out of the chute or anything, and that’s fine. It takes NHL prospects a long time to become even decent NHLers, and some never will. Might as well use a lost season to start finding out.

4. The Pens finally improved OT… and still keep losing

This is a crazy stat from Bob Grove:

Remember how painful the Pens were to watch in OT last year?? They were 6-12 in OT/Shootouts, and often looked completely clueless in the process. This year, they’ve apparently made adjustments and managed to dominate in overtime… and STILL have a losing record in games that go past 60 minutes.

It’s truly one of the most “it miiiight not be their year” stats imaginable.

5. “His fellow countryman”

99.9999% of the time the phrase “fellow countryman” is ever spoken by anyone in the world in any context, it’s an NHL announcer calling a play where two players from the same European country square off.

At one point in the Tampa game, Vasilevskiy stopped Malkin, and I thought I was gonna get a “makes a save on his fellow countryman!” call from Josh Getzoff, but didn’t. But then sure enough, a couple minutes later, Malkin bumped into Kucherov and we got the “runs into his fellow countryman!” call. Whew! I was waiting for it.

It’s every announcer for every team in every situation. Usually Russian players, but you’ll get the occasional Swedes or Finns. It’d be funny to just constantly keep doing it for North American players too. “Owen Pickering LAYS the hit on his fellow countryman Nick Paul!!!” (Both Canadian)

Red Wings 3, Penguins 2 (OT): Pens Bounce Back To "Regular Bad" After Dallas Fiasco

The Pens lost an even OT game to resume their dignified tank.

The Pens lost to the Red Wings Wednesday night in Overtime, 3-2. They earned a point in their first game after getting embarrassed by the Stars, but still sit third from last in the conference in points percentage. Some thoughts:

1. Anthony Beauvillier is leading The Tradeables™

Anthony Beauvillier notched his 5th goal of the season and will likely continue to see ice time with Sidney Crosby and Rickard Rakell for the time being. That puts him on about a 22-goal pace for the season, which would be around the high-teens in goals by the trade deadline. That should make him pretty tradeable for something — I’d guess a 4th round pick, but maybe if he gets really hot that’d tick up to a 3rd.

Elsewhere on trade watch, Marcus Pettersson had a nice primary assist on Beauvillier’s goal. I thought Drew O’Connor had some jump against Detroit, but he’s gotta start getting on the scoresheet to up his value. Matt Grzelcyk is more likely to end up on waivers than the trade market at the moment. And Kevin Hayes and Cody Glass remain TBD.

If the Penguins ever do really open things up trade-wise, though, I just keep thinking what a perfect fit Bryan Rust would be for the Oilers. Send them Rust and take back Evander Kane’s contract for a 1st? Who says no?

2. Alex Nedeljkovic was over .900 for only the third time this year

Alex Nedeljkovic hasn’t felt like he’s played poorly this season, but his performance against the Red Wings — stopping 28 of 31 shots — was only the third time this season in nine games that he finished the game with a save percentage over .900. Granted, a lot of that has to do with the Pens’ comical defense, but rookie Joel Blomqvist has been over .900 in 5 of his 8 appearances behind that same D.

Generally, I think Tristan Jarry’s struggles have been so glaring and received so much attention, that it’s taken all the pressure off Nedeljkovic and shielded him from much criticism or even analysis. He definitely hasn’t been bad, but I think him swooping in after Jarry’s struggles last year gave fans the impression that he’s been playing great, when really he’s been about league-average in his Pens career so far, and a tick below this year. He’s still been completely fine for a $2.5 mil 1B goalie — there’s value to be had in just having “a guy,” as the Jarry meltdown has shown — but I do wonder how the Pens will handle their goaltending load moving forward. Blomqvist is clearly the most intriguing of the three, but contract-wise, they just can’t give up on giving games to Jarry and Nedeljkovic. And as the Dallas game showed, Blomqvist hasn’t really suffered many setbacks in his young career yet. We’ll see how he responds and what the rotation looks like.

I expect Jarry to get the start in Columbus. It’s an easier game than Dallas or Detroit, and he’ll be on the road so the crowd won’t be booing him. Although…it’ll be loaded with Pens fans. Uhoh!

3. The Pens have the worst goal differential in the NHL

The Dallas game did a number on the Pens’ stats, but as of Wednesday night, the Pens have the single worst goal differential of any team in the NHL at -22. I only think that’s significant in the sense that, whenever people say “the Pens should be rebuilding but they have too many pieces to really tank,” one has to think… do they? Just look at their raw numbers. They are absolutely one of the worst teams in the NHL right now. They’re not “stuck in the middle” of anything. Especially if these next two games go south…

4. This week is set up like a gauntlet of increasingly bad games to blow

As embarrassing as the Dallas game was, at least the Stars are a legit Stanley Cup contender who probably would’ve beaten the Pens anyway. The rest of the week, however, goes Red Wings > Blue Jackets > Sharks. The Blue Jackets have lost 6 straight, and the Sharks have the next-worst goal differential in the league after the Pens (a mere -21.)

Basically, each game the Pens lose this week will be increasingly more embarrassing than the previous one. If they lose all four, I really think we’re in “pull the trigger on Sullivan” territory.

5. Do the refs still hate Michael Bunting?

Michael Bunting was very obviously hooked by Patrick Kane in the third, but there was no call. I usually don’t make too much of a stink about missed calls, because there’s a dozen a game and it’s baked into the sport, but it’s rare you see a player clearly do the “I’m going to intentionally take a penalty here to break up this scoring chance” move and it still doesn’t come. It made me think back to the discourse (with evidence!) that the refs in the league truly do not like Michael Bunting because of his propensity for agitation and embellishment.

Then, Bryan Rust clearly got slashed on a mini-breakaway on what was again a player consciously choosing to trade a penalty for breaking up a scoring chance, and that one wasn’t called either. Maybe because Rust is Bunting’s teammate and the refs just hate him that much??

6. Why was the entire TNT broadcast out of sync?

Why was the audio a half second ahead of the action for the entire Pens / Red Wings game? And why were the wide shots and tight shots out of sync? How is a national broadcast noticably worse at a very standard technical aspect than every random regional cable game? I thought it was just my cable, but I saw other people mentioning the problem too, and I toggled over to the MAX feed and it had the same issue.

TNT’s broadcasts have mostly been very good, I’ve thought, but it reminded me of ESPN’s first year after reacquiring the NHL when every national game on ESPN had the audio out of sync. How does this happen on marquee broadcasts on major networks? And when it does happen, how is there not someone watching the first period saying, “oh man, there’s a huge lag between the audio and video, we’ve gotta fix that?”

They never did. The announcer called Edvinsson’s game winner before he shot the puck. Maybe his ability to come unstuck in time fooled Nedeljkovic?

Penguins Make An Underwhelming Lars Eller Trade To Jumpstart Their (Not) Rebuild

The Pens were always gonna trade Lars Eller, but the return was nothing special.

The Penguins traded Lars Eller to the Washington Capitals for a 3rd round pick in 2027 and a 5th round pick in 2025. It’s the first of what should be a mass exodus of the Penguins’ veteran pending free agents this season, as the Penguins — who are definitely not rebuilding!!! — attempt to, let’s say, acquire assets so that they might “construct” a stronger roster down the line. Since they used to have a strong roster, I suppose you could call it a “RE-construction,” of sorts. It is NOT any other words that are very similar to that, though.

Why The Return For Eller Wasn’t Impressive

The Penguins were obviously going to trade Eller — they dangled him at the trade deadline last year, but teams all around the league had trouble moving players with term remaining on their deals — and getting anything for him is better than holding onto him. But given some recent comparable returns, getting just a 3rd rounder three years from now and a very late pick next draft doesn’t strike me as such an enticing return that the Pens had to jump on it ASAP.

Eller is 35, so he’s certainly up there, but he still put up 15 goals and 16 assists last season in a third-line-center role. Per Natural Stat Trick, he controlled 52% of the expected goals while he was on the ice despite only starting about a quarter of his shifts in the offensive zone. He was deployed in an extremely difficult defense-first role with a rotating cast of not-great wingers and he still mostly controlled play even on the defensively-challenged Pens, and notched 15 goals to boot. He’s on a similar scoring pace this season.

Centers are always in high demand. Last deadline, Alexander Wennberg, a defense-first third line center for the Kraken, got dealt to the Rangers for a 2nd rounder and a 2025 4th. Wennberg is younger than Eller, but put up similar stats (9 goals and 16 assists in 60 games last year at the time of the trade). Seattle retained half of his contract, which increases the return, but that still only brought his cap hit down from $4.5 mil to $2.25 mil — very similar to Eller’s $2.45.

I was holding out hope Eller could fetch a 2nd. A 3rd seemed like the very least, let alone a 3rd three years from now. He fetched a 2nd at the 2023 deadline, and hasn’t really declined. Most of the other true centers traded last season — Tomas Hertl, Sean Monahan, Elias Lindholm, and Adam Henrique — fetched 1st rounders. Eller’s nowhere near on the level of those players (though Henrique is 34), but those were pretty much the only true centers that got dealt all season, besides Wennberg and the extremely-washed Evgeni Kuznetsov (who still fetched a 3rd!) Centers are scarce, and cheap centers are even more scarce. A defensively-responsible center with Cup-winning experience who’s still scoring at a 15-goal pace and only makes $2.45 mil (which would be pro-rated to less than half that at the deadline) is a pretty decent asset!

So Why Make The Trade?

Other than the obvious reason, that the Penguins are all-in on acquiring futures and don’t have much need to keep around a 35-year-old pending free agent (albiet one who’s served the team extremely well), there are two silver linings to the Pens pulling the trigger on this deal now:

One: The Pens didn’t retain any salary. Retaining half of $2.45 million doesn’t mean anything to the Pens, but, teams can only retain salary on up to three contracts at a time, and the Pens are already retaining on two: Jeff Petry and Reilly Smith (Smith, by the way, fetched a 2nd.) Not retaining on Eller gives them the option to still retain on one more contract at the trade deadline, which they’ll need if they end up doing something “bigger” (either retaining on Pettersson to improve his market, or, god willing, if they can make some huge Karlsson type deal.)

The Pens also clear around $2 mil in cap space themselves, which they can use to take on another contract-for-an-asset like they did with Kevin Hayes and Cody Glass, or take back a bad contract as part of another deal to improve the return. Or use it to add a player (haha! Kidding.)

Two: The Pens open up playing time. Dealing Eller now opens up a third-line-center spot (and sometimes a second-line-center spot) for some of the other players the Pens are showcasing to trade, and for younger players down the line. When Kevin Hayes is healthy, he’ll likely get a crack at one of the center spots. Cody Glass might too. Later in the year, we’ll probably see Vasily Ponomarev there, or possibly Sam Poulin or Tristan Broz. If the additional ice time ends up helping to pad Hayes or Glass’s numbers and re-establish them to the rest of the trade market as true centers, maybe their eventual trade return will sort of “count” as part of this Eller trade. And we’d all much rather see Ponomarev and Broz get their feet wet in the NHL in the Spring than see 35-year-old Lars Eller run out the clock at the end of a lost season.

So, overall, this wasn’t an amazing return for Eller, but certainly fits with the Pens’ plans for this season, and won’t be their last player-for-futures trade. Whenever a deal like this goes down, there’s a tendency to think “I guess that’s what this player was worth after all,” and we’ll never know what else they could’ve gotten if they’d held onto him, so we’ll always be arguing hypotheticals. But given the scarcity of available centers around deadline time, and the return a similar player in Alexander Wennberg fetched last year, I expected a little more.

Farewell, Lars Eller! You were the best acquisition in Kyle Dubas’ Summer of Sucking™.

Penguins 4, Capitals 2: The Penguins Have Beaten A Playoff Team, Folks

The Pens have quietly played better for 2 weeks - should we read into it?

The Penguins beat the Capitals 4-2 Friday night, capping (!) off a 1-1-1 road trip through the Metropolitan Division. Some thoughts:

1. The 3rd Period was the most uncanny period of the season so far

I truly don’t know what to make of the 3rd Period of the Caps game. The Penguins were on a road back-to-back, a night after losing badly to the Hurricanes, facing a rested Caps team that’s off to a great start this year. Then in the 2nd, the Pens completely collapsed, allowing twelve high-danger chances to the Caps, including the game-tying goal on one of many odd man rushes. Joel Blomqvist played extremely well and the Pens got to intermission, but the writing seemed on the wall: they were gassed on the second night of a back-to-back and had reverted back to their “defense optional” factory setting.

Then, in the 3rd, they…dominated? I truly have no idea where it came from — maybe the Pens just dig a little deeper and care a little more when it’s a game in Washington, no matter how their season is going — but the Pens outshot the Caps 10-6, got the go-ahead goal, killed a (very bad) penalty on Valteri Puustinen, and salted things away with an empty netter. What the hell?

2. Was the win over the Capitals a total fluke, or does it mean something?

I still believe — as I’ve said many times — this is a write-off season for the Pens where they’re set up to be deadline sellers, miss the playoffs, and take whatever draft pick they can get. BUT! If you’re going to take a glass-half-full look at the last two weeks, their past five games look like this:

- Win over Anaheim
- Win over Montreal
- Shootout loss to the Islanders in a game they led and outshot the Isles
- Loss to Carolina even though they outshot the Canes 36-18
- Win over Washington

Granted, Anaheim and Montreal are two of the worst teams in the league, and the Pens did their trademark Two Goal Lead Blow™ in both the Islanders & Caps games. But still, both in terms of process and results, that’s a much spiffier looking five-game set than their 0-for-4 Canadian road trip followed by a meltdown in the Fleury game.

It may mean nothing. It’ll probably mean nothing. But it happened!

3. Joel Blomqvist is the Pens’ best goalie right now

I still remember the Pens’ preseason game against the Sabres when Blomqvist started in net. I couldn’t watch the game, but my dad was watching and texting me updates, and at one point, I looked down to see five unread messages, that unfurled like this:

At that point I figured, no big deal, Blomqvist is going back to the AHL anyway, plus they have Filip Larsson if they ever need a third goalie and he’s got some NHL experience already.

Flash forward to Blomqvist not only making the opening night roster because of Alex Nedeljkovic’s injury, but also now posting a .913 SV% through 7 games — an incredible feat behind this Penguins defense. Nedeljkovic, who hasn’t even played that badly, is sporting an .883 through 7 games. Blomqvist has stopped over 90% of the shots in 5 of the 7 games he’s played this season; Nedeljkovic has only done it twice. Blomqvist has started against Washington, Edmonton, Carolina, and Toronto, too, so it’s not like he’s solely taking the easy halves of back-to-backs either.

Seven starts is only seven starts, but so far, Blomqvist has been maybe the brightest bright spot of the season for the Pens.

4. What does the Capitals’ “on the fly” rebuild mean for the Penguins?

For the past couple seasons, the Capitals have been executing an “on the fly” rebuild that’s very similar to what Kyle Dubas has seemingly prescribed for the Pens: they haven’t totally sold off all their older vets (if they even could), but they’ve made tough decisions to sell players at the trade deadline, held onto their picks, made extremely shrewd low-risk high-reward free agent signings, leveraged their assets expertly, brought their young players into the fold gradually, and this year, finally, they added in the offseason.

So far this year, the Capitals are one of the best 5-on-5 teams in hockey despite no longer getting huge contributions from most of their leftover old core; Kuznetsov is gone, and Backstrom & Oshie aren’t playing. But is this really a model the Pens can follow? For one, the Pens are starting now, much farther along into the core’s careers than the Caps did, so by the time any wave of young players is ready to come up, they’ll all likely be pushing 40. And secondly…are the Capitals actually contenders? I really like their goaltending tandem, and the way they’ve leveraged their assets the past few years is genuinely impressive, but I’m not quite ready to say they can take the Hurricanes, Panthers, or Rangers in a 7-game series, or that they’re clearly better than the Devils, Leafs, or Lightning. And if they aren’t a Cup contender quite yet, and don’t have a franchise talent coming their way anytime, what will they have to do in the next 2-3 years to get back to “legit contender” status? Will they be able to swing some Eichel type mega-trade?

I still think the Pens’ “not calling it a rebuild” rebuild is their only path forward. But I think they’ve started too late for their current core to really impact their next “wave” of talent. Even if they were to pull it off perfectly, I don’t know if “getting back to where the Caps are right now” is an ideal endgame for a franchise. Anyway, this is a way bigger topic than can fit in one bullet point in a game recap — just thinking out loud, typing it down, not answering it, and leaving YOU, the reader, to solve it. MUAHAHAHAHAHA!

5. Have we seen the end of the permanent Crosby-Malkin line?

The Crosby-Malkin-Rakell line helped carry the Pens’ offense over the past two weeks. Obviously, though, bumping up Malkin comes at the cost of really thinning out the second and third lines, and against the Capitals, the second line struggled so badly, Sullivan reverted Malkin back to 2nd line center for the third period. The Pens don’t have to set anything in stone at this point, but I have to imagine that they’ll revert back to Malkin being their 2nd line center as the default, and can always bump him back up to Crosby’s wing mid-game if the team needs a spark.

Besides, this way Crosby and Malkin can both pump up the values of the team’s tradable wingers. Also they can win more, I GUESS 🙄.