Four games into an 84-game season, the Penguins are already giving people a little bit of everything: a strong opener, some rough patches, and a few moments that make you wince. That’s the danger this early. The sample is tiny, but the warning lights are real.
The safest read right now is also the least dramatic one: Pittsburgh is probably not as sharp as it looked in the opener, and it probably isn’t as broken as it looked at points against Winnipeg and Washington. There were stretches in the Washington game where the Penguins started to settle in and control play, especially in the second half.
Then came two brutal turnovers that wiped out all of it. That matters.
But cleaning up a couple of self-inflicted errors is a much more realistic fix than completely changing how a team drives play over the long haul.
Still, a few concerns are starting to stack up. Sidney Crosby’s start.
The defense. Arturs Silovs.
Those are the big ones.
Crosby’s early-season line has been quiet in a way that stands out even by the standards of a player who has spent years making the impossible look normal. Wednesday night in Washington was the latest reminder that time catches everybody eventually. Crosby and Alex Ovechkin were both non-factors in the game, which is not what anyone had in mind for what was supposed to feel like the next chapter of that rivalry.
Ovechkin logged 14 minutes, finished with no points and had two shots on goal. After weighing his future, he played two games this season and then decided this was going to be it.
Crosby was minus-4 and largely invisible. For a player who is almost two years younger than Ovechkin and has been the better all-around player for years, including recently, it still lands as a shock when he looks this muted. He is 39, though, and the truth is unavoidable: nobody stays at the top forever.
Through four games, Crosby has zero goals and two assists. The Penguins have been outscored 3-5 with him on the ice at 5-on-5.
Even more telling, the team has looked significantly better when he is off the ice. With Crosby on, the Penguins have a 54 percent expected goal share despite heavy offensive-zone starts.
Without him, they are outscoring opponents 9-4 and carrying a 60 percent expected goal share, while those lines have mostly been getting defensive-zone starts.
That’s not just a box-score quirk. It lines up with what the eyes have seen, too. His line has already cycled through three different wingers in four games, which tells you the staff is searching for something that works.
None of that means Crosby has suddenly fallen off a cliff. He has been a slow starter in recent seasons, and he had less time than usual to get up to speed in training camp and the preseason.
The points will likely come. The decline, when it arrives, will probably not show up in one neat little burst.
But after four games, it’s fair to say something looks off.
The defense has its own issues, and most of them have been self-inflicted. There are pieces there that make sense in the context of this roster, even if the group looks more middle-of-the-pack on a broader NHL scale. Compared to what the Penguins had on the blue line in 2025-26, there’s at least a case that this unit can be better.
The problem is that the early mistakes have been ugly.
Wednesday’s game was the worst example. Trevor van Riemsdyk had two baffling plays, one of which directly led to a goal off the opening face-off and another that led to a power play that eventually turned into a goal and killed Pittsburgh’s comeback momentum.
Kris Letang and Declan Carlile also had plays that directly led to goals. These weren’t gray-area breakdowns.
They were the kind of errors that stop a team cold.
And it wasn’t limited to one night. Similar issues showed up in Monday’s game against Winnipeg, too.
That’s what makes this tricky. It’s one thing to believe a team can clean up a few mistakes.
It’s another to trust that it will. There’s a real possibility this group is going to keep giving away stretches of games with those kinds of plays - good for 30 minutes, then suddenly two or three self-inflicted messes that undo the night.
Concern level: 6.5/10
Then there’s Arturs Silovs, who may end up shaping a lot of what this season becomes. Goaltending was always going to matter, and Silovs and Sergei Murashov both have enough upside to steal games. They also come with enough volatility to drag the Penguins into trouble fast if things go sideways.
Silovs opened with a shutout, but since then he has allowed 10 goals in his next two starts and has slipped to minus-1.4 in goals saved above expected, according to MoneyPuck.
The issue isn’t just one bad outing or even one bad week. It’s broader than that.
The concern goes back to last season and the same patterns keep showing up. He has had strong games, and he seems to rise when the stakes feel bigger.
But there are also too many moments where the performance just isn’t competitive enough, especially with the puck and on rebound control. The gap between his best nights and his worst ones is huge.
That kind of spread is hard to trust. And right now, that’s the part that stands out most.
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The schedule will give Pittsburgh and Washington plenty of chances to add to the story, and the matchup still carries the familiar contrast of Ovechkins finishing power against Crosbys all-around excellence. Even with the rivalrys loudest individual milestone now settled, the broader head-to-head remains one of the NHLs most recognizable measuring sticks, and every meeting will feel like another entry in a book both cities have been reading for nearly two decades. [Read more 🡒]