Pens @ Jets Recap: Pens' D Reaches New Lows As They Lose To Another Good Team

The Pens are, objectively, one of the worst defensive teams in the NHL.

The Penguins fell to the Winnipeg Jets 6-3 on the first leg of their Western Canada trip, dropping them to 3-4-0 on the year. Some thoughts on the game and where the team currently stands:

1. The Pens are one of the worst defensive teams in the league

If you’ve watched the Pens this year and thought “this team sure seems bad defensively,” you’re extremely right! JFreshHockey’s model had the Pens giving up the third-most 5v5 expected goals against in the league before the Jets game:

The Pens gave up 37 more shots on goal and 6 more goals (one empty-netter) against Winnipeg, though did have 42 shots of their own.

Sometimes, fans who mostly only watch their team have a tendency to overrate a team’s strengths or flaws, thinking they’re more pronounced than they really are — I’d bet money every MLB fanbase thinks their team, specifically, is “bad at fundamentals” — but in this case, Pens fans aren’t lacking any perspective when criticizing the team’s defensive play. If anything, it might be worse than people think. Seven games into the season, the Pens are on par defensively with Montreal, Anaheim and San Jose. Alarming stuff.

With no defensive overhaul or coaching change coming anytime soon, I don’t expect this to radically change. But the least they can do is climb from “worst in the league” to “passable” defensively, which should be within their reach. We have yet to see it.

2. Penguins Defeat A Good Team Ever Challenge, Difficulty Level: Impossible

The Pens have played 4 games against playoff teams from last year. They’re 0-4 and have been outscored 20-6 in those games. They’ve played 3 games against non-playoff teams from last year and are 3-0 in those games.

Coming into the year, the Pens looked like a team that wasn’t ready to hang with the league’s legit contenders, but still had enough talent to stack up against the league’s weaker teams. So far, that’s played out exactly how someone might’ve predicted. So predictably, in fact, it’s almost surprising? Usually there’s a little more noise and unpredictability in the NHL season, but so far, the Pens have played the part of “ok team that can only beat bad teams” about as literally as one could imagine.

Will they eventually beat a good team?? Or lose to a bad team??? What a season of possibilities…

3. One of Cody Glass, Tristan Jarry, or Noel Acciari is going to get waived

The Pens are right up against the cap now, and Blake Lizotte and his $1.85 mil cap hit are currently on injured reserve. If Lizotte gets healthy and ready to return, and no one else goes on IR between now and then (which always could happen), the Pens are gonna need to clear most of that 1.85 million to activate him.

Waiving Valteri Puustinen or Anthony Beauvillier won’t get the Pens there. They’d have to waive a higher-salary player, and the only ones that fit the bill are Glass ($2.5 mil), Acciari (2 years left at $2 mil), or Jarry ($5 mil cap hit; putting him in the AHL would save the Pens $1.15 mil.) All three of these players should easily clear waivers. Just sending down Jarry wouldn’t give them enough space, but he might get sent down anyway, which then would open up other options to get Lizotte activated. But most likely, Glass or Acciari goes down. Neither one has been scratched yet this season, so it’s not clear yet which one Sullivan prefers; obviously he was quite partial to Acciari last year, but he did just promote Glass to the third line, and Acciari’s extra year left on his deal makes him extra-unclaimable. So, we’ll see.

ED. NOTE: Actually made a mistake here, (thanks CedTownsend!) Lizotte’s only on regular IR not LTIR, so his cap hit’s still included in the team’s total. So they could send anyone down to make room for him. Blomqvist wouldn’t have to pass through waivers, but it sure seems like they prefer him to Jarry, plus then they’d be healthy-scratching two forwards a night. I think Puustinen probably gets waived, but it could be Glass, Beauvillier or Acciari. I don’t think they’d waive Ryan Shea and only keep 6 D. Or someone could get hurt on this road trip and make the decision for them.

4. Tristan Jarry is extremely in the doghouse

Mike Sullivan (like most coaches) will absolutely go to bat for his players in almost any situation and goes very far out of his way not to single guys out after bad games or during bad stretches. But he’s now very conspicuously benched Jarry for a long stretch last season, benched him for the rookie Joel Blomqvist a couple times this season already, and now, chose to dress Alex Nedeljkovic and Blomqvist against Winnipeg and healthy-scratched Jarry. This is as much as Sullivan has ever “called someone out,” short of the time he benched Daniel Sprong mid-game and refused to dress him again until he was traded to Anaheim.

Alex Nedeljkovic seemed like he played pretty well, but finished with an .861 SV% nonetheless. Such is the current state of the Penguins defensively.

5. Crosby still hasn’t been Crosby

Sidney Crosby was reunited with Drew O’Connor and Bryan Rust for this game. He finished with no points, 5 shots on goal and was a -3 in 20:22 of ice time. His line controlled a slight edge in shot attempts when he was on the ice, and was about even in terms of quality of chances generated vs. given up, so it's not like they got dominated. But when Sidney Crosby’s on his game, his line’s generating quality chances shift after shift, not just sorta generally breaking even with whomever they’re up against.

Crosby has looked like this for stretches in the past. Around the trade deadline last year and right after, while the Pens were really plummeting, Crosby went cold; from February 29th to March 22nd, in 13 games, he scored 1 goal and had 6 assists, and the Pens lost 10 of 13 games (beating San Jose, Detroit and Columbus.) Yes that’s an arbitrary cutoff point, roughly a month surrounding the trade deadline while Guentzel was out, but I remember thinking at the time that with Guentzel injured then traded, Crosby was either medium checked-out or just flat-out struggling down the stretch. But in the last 13 games of the season, playing mostly with O’Connor and Rust, he had 9 goals and 16 assists — back up to nearly two points per game.

I mention these arbitrary periods just to say, there’ve been times in the past where Crosby’s line suddenly isn’t dominating, and while we might strain for some explanation for it — is he hurt? Does he miss Guentzel? — he can just as quickly snap right back into looking like Sidney Crosby. I don’t think we’ve really seen it this year, which is a little worrisome, but wouldn’t be surprised in the least if he just suddenly snaps back into it in some random game and goes on one of these tears. The Pens are gonna need it to stay in anything resembling contention.