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 🙄.