A Monday night loss to the Sharks in San Jose was no question a low moment but just the latest of many for the Penguins amid a rough stretch.
Since the holiday break, into which the Penguins surged to briefly reenter the Eastern Conference playoff picture, the club has gone 4-9-3. The Penguins are tied for the NHL’s third-fewest points since Christmas, better only than the Sharks and the Blackhawks.
Per MoneyPuck, the Penguins, effective Tuesday, have just a 0.8% chance of making it back to the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time in three years — odds much lower than those of securing the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 draft.
“We just got to keep fighting,” coach Mike Sullivan told reporters in San Jose after Tuesday’s practice at SAP Center. “That’s the world that we live in. And so we can’t do anything about what’s happened in the past.”
For as well as the Penguins played to enter the holiday break with a solid 16-15-5 record, just about everything has gone wrong since. Here’s a look at five different reasons, statistics and explanations for the Penguins’ sputtering ways:
Scoring struggles
The least of the Penguins’ concerns throughout the first few months of the year was scoring. Rickard Rakell and Bryan Rust each potted goals at sensational clips, and Sidney Crosby more than compensated for his scoring drought with a plethora of assists. Though the Penguins weren’t the talk of the league in the offensive end, they were at least average, with 3.08 goals per game.
But over their last 16 games, the Penguins have scored just 2.44 goals per game, which ranks 27th in the NHL. The club has scored only one goal in four of its last five games, too, and dropped each of those contests.
“The fact of the matter is it’s hard to win when you don’t score very many five-on-five goals,” Sullivan said Tuesday. “We’ve got to get more production through our lineup.”
Per Natural Stat Trick, the Penguins have scored roughly 18 goals fewer at five-on-five than expected this season. At this rate, the Penguins are on track to make it three consecutive seasons with fewer goals scored than expected in five-on-five play.
Defensive deficiencies
What’s taken a slight step forward in recent weeks has been the Penguins’ team defense, if only because of Tristan Jarry’s returning to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. The Penguins are now yielding 3.50 goals per game, which is fourth worst in the league but better than the 3.64 per contest they were giving up prior to the holiday break.
Even with Jarry’s departure, giving way to rookie Joel Blomqvist, goaltending has been an issue in Pittsburgh. The trio of Jarry, Blomqvist and Alex Nedeljkovic has combined to give up 17 more goals than expected, per Natural Stat Trick.
It hardly matters what the Penguins are or aren’t able to manifest on offense considering their defensive deficiencies.
Penalty kill problems
Aside from the occasional slip-up, the Penguins penalty kill was quite stingy for the first half of the season. The club successfully killed off opposing power plays 82.4% of the time before Dec. 25, which ranked ninth best in the league.
From Christmas onward, though, the penalty kill has slipped to 23rd in the league with a 72.1% kill rate. The Penguins have tried all sorts of combinations depending on injuries and efficacy, with 11 different players receiving at least 10 minutes of ice time on the penalty kill over the team’s last 16 games.
None of it has stuck, though, and the Penguins instead remain searching for answers at five-on-four.
Ill-timed injuries
A development that perhaps bodes worse for the future than it already has is the Penguins’ fickle health. Evgeni Malkin is out on a week-to-week basis with a lower-body injury, which has prompted Cody Glass to assume the position of second-line center in the interim.
Rust, meanwhile, missed last Saturday’s game due to an injury he sustained in Anaheim. Though Rust is back in the lineup, the Penguins’ second-leading scorer’s absence was felt during their loss to the Kraken, which should have been a winnable game against one of the Western Conference’s worst but was instead a lopsided defeat.
It remains to be seen for just how long Malkin will be sidelined. But if he can’t go again until after the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament next month, the Penguins could be in for a long February.
Devoid of depth scoring
As has been the case around these parts for the last few seasons, depth scoring remains an issue for the Penguins. Blake Lizotte and Kevin Hayes are tied for tops in scoring among regular bottom-six players, with each forward having logged eight goals this season.
Lizotte, who has missed the Penguins’ last three games due to illness, hasn’t scored since Dec. 23. Hayes, meanwhile, primarily scores on the man advantage — half of his goals have come on the power play — and it’s worth noting he was a healthy scratch for most of December before returning to the Penguins lineup as the third-line center to start 2025.
Former first-rounders like Glass and Philip Tomasino have each flashed, but offensive contributions have been inconsistent. Tomasino got off to a strong start and has cooled significantly since. Glass, meanwhile, has been snake-bitten when it comes to putting the puck in the net this season. He only has three goals in 39 games.
All told, it’s been another challenging season for the Penguins bottom six in the offensive end — especially so over the past month’s worth of games.
First Published: January 28, 2025, 10:23 p.m.
Updated: January 29, 2025, 3:00 a.m.