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??