The week ahead: Building on Penguins best week of the season
The Pittsburgh Penguins have won three games in a row entering this week. Now it is time to try and build on that.
It was a week ago in this spot where we were looking ahead at the absolute gauntlet of games the Pittsburgh Penguins are going to be facing over the next couple of weeks. Given how bad they had looked in home defeats against Winnipeg and Utah, it seemed like there was a very real chance that things were going to get even uglier very, very quickly.
Then they went out there over the past week and had their best seven-day stretch of the season, winning three straight games against the Vancouver Canucks, Boston Bruins and Calgary Flames.
Not only did they win all three games, they were arguably three of the best games the Penguins have played all season.
They scored goals, they had an expected goal share of 56 percent and higher in all three games, and they got some good goaltending at times when they needed it, especially during the game in Boston with what was probably Tristan Jarry’s best game of the season.
The third period against Vancouver was not great and got a little more interesting than it needed to be, but they found a way to get the job done.
Maybe they just needed Philip Tomasino and Blake Lizotte to change the season.
(I am kidding .... I think. But man has Tomasino looked good.)
This is the week, however, where things really start to get intense.
It starts on Tuesday when the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers come into Pittsburgh riding a three-game winning streak of their own. Their winning streak has seen them completely blowout Toronto and Carolina (twice) by a combined margin of 17-4.
Offensively the Panthers are as intimidating of a team as there is anywhere in the NHL. They are fifth in the NHL with 3.64 goals per game and have one of the league’s deepest lineups. Sam Reinhart, out to prove last year’s goal output was not a fluke, enters the week with a league-leading 18 goals.
Preventing goals has been more of an issue for them, especially as starting goalie Sergei Bobrovsky is off to a sluggish start with an .890 save percentage.
Still, this is going to be a massive challenge for the Penguins and a big test to see if they can hold up defensively against one of the league’s truly elite teams.
So far this season those games have not gone well for them.
On Friday, the Penguins make their first trip to Madison Square Garden of the season and play a Rangers team that dominated them and embarrassed them in their season opener. While the Rangers entered the season as Stanley Cup favorites, they are a team in some turmoil right now. Maybe the Penguins are catching them at a good time? The Rangers enter the week having lost five out of six games (with the only win being a late regulation win against the worst team in the Eastern Conference — the Montreal Canadiens) and play the New Jersey Devils on Monday night.
They are not defending well, they are still struggling during 5-on-5 play, some of their biggest money, highest-paid players are struggling and the general manager has let it leak that he is listening to trade offers for several core veterans. The locker room has not responded well to that on the ice.
The Penguins do not get much of a break after that, returning home to Pittsburgh on Saturday for a back-to-back scenario where they will be hosting the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The one good thing about that game is Toronto will also be playing the second half of a back-to-back with travel, so there will be no rest advantage or disadvantage for anybody (they host the Washington Capitals on Friday).
Despite not having Auston Matthews for most of November, the Maple Leafs still went 7-2-0 without him.
It has been a fascinating start to the season for the Maple Leafs under first-year head coach Craig Berube, with Toronto allowing the third-fewest goals per game in the league and not really scoring like we are used to seeing from them in the regular season. They are 15th in goals per game, while there is a big drop-off in production once you get beyond their top-four players (that is not all that uncommon). The biggest change for them this season has been in goal, where the duo of Anthony Stolarz and Joseph Woll has been mostly fantastic. They both have .921 save percentages on the season, while Toronto’s team-wide all-situations save percentage of .910 is fifth-best in the entire NHL.
How well that style of play holds up over a full 82-game season and potentiall playoff run remains to be seen. So far it is producing results.
This is going to be one of the tougher weeks the Penguins have in terms of quality of opponent and it might be a good barometer to really find out where this team is right now. If they can find a way to get four points out of this week, maybe this recent turnaround is something that can be built on. If they lose all three games it will just make the previous week an example of how even bad teams can have an occasional winning streak.