Over the summer, a respected voice like Elliotte Friedman really drove home a lot of feelings about the Pittsburgh Penguins in a podcast:
“It’s really hard to make deals right now because there are 31 teams in the NHL attempting to get better….then there is Pittsburgh”
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Turns out the signings of players like Anthony Mantha, Parker Wotherspoon, Justin Brazeau and Connor Dewar didn’t impress many people in the moment. Someone forgot to tell the Penguin players they were going to be uncompetitive this year. Rolling on a six-game winning streak, Pittsburgh has climbed solidly into second place in the Metropolitan Division.
As the Olympic break approaches this Thursday, here’s the picture in the Eastern Conference.
The mission is becoming clear for the Pens: stay ahead of Columbus, Washington, Philadelphia and New Jersey and they will make the playoffs. Considering that Washington has been stuck in neutral for a while, Philadelphia has melted away and New Jersey has yet to put it all together, that mission for the Penguins looks more achievable with every passing game.
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What a shocking season this has been. The two time Stanley Cup champion (and, let’s not forget 3x Eastern Conference champion) Florida Panthers are eight points out of a playoff spot. Other, almost near unanimous preseason playoff shoo-ins like Ottawa, Toronto, New Jersey and Washington find themselves in the bottom-half of the block too.
Pittsburgh is one of many surprise stories and success stories. John Gibson has boosted Detroit, Matthew Schaefer is absurdly good for the Islanders. Buffalo fired their GM and somehow shook themselves out of the doldrums at a most unexpected time. Ditto Columbus, just replace the word ’GM’ in last sentence with ‘coach’.
But, bias aside, Pittsburgh might be the most astounding stories of them all. The team that was pushed to the side and about unanimously picked to finish last – in the division, if not the conference or the entire league, instead has been one of the best teams and stories across them all so far. Now almost two-thirds of the way through the season (at 53 games, they’ve completed 64.6% of it), it’s no fluke or something to be written off as a small sample.
The Penguins have a good process offensively. Defensively they’re nothing special but not to a harmful amount, and they still keep shots down. Both of their special teams are top-5 level. They are getting great goaltending inputs and finishing chances when they shoot. Pick a category, Pittsburgh is pretty darn good at just about all of them.
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Many of the popular models are starting to buy in at this point to shift and adjust their pictures that now include the Penguins in post-season outlooks.
The Athletic: 76%
HockeyStats.com: 90%
Hockey-Reference: 87.6%
Not bad for the team supposedly in a different category from everyone else in the league when it came to assembling a competitive team this season.
