The Penguins are staring at another brutal stretch, and the first two stops this week do not offer much breathing room.
After spending much of the past month grinding through a run of opponents that looked a lot like a Stanley Cup contender parade, Pittsburgh is still trying to steady itself. The results have not been clean. Saturday night in Montreal was another reminder of the defensive issues that keep showing up, and Thursday’s 4-3 overtime loss to the Utah Mammoth was a missed chance after the Penguins let a late 3-2 lead slip away.
The problems are not confined to the blue line. The whole defensive zone has been messy, and that has left the goaltenders exposed more often than anyone would like. The netminding has also been uneven at times, which has only made the picture murkier.
Arturs Silovs has been on a nice run, and Thursday’s loss to Utah is not one I would pin on him, even if the winner was probably a save he would want back. He did enough to keep the Penguins alive and get the game to overtime.
Sergei Murashov, on the other hand, is in a rough patch after getting back into the crease Saturday night in Montreal and struggling for a third straight game. That kind of thing should come with the territory for a young goalie with little NHL experience.
The sample is still tiny, and there is plenty of time for him to work through it.
Even with only one point out of a possible four last week, there were two encouraging developments Pittsburgh can build on.
Ben Kindel returned to the lineup and made an immediate impact, finishing with two points and scoring what looked like it should have been the game-winner in regulation against Utah.
And then there was Sidney Crosby’s line on Saturday night. That group was excellent, easily turning in its best performance of the season so far.
Rickard Rakell is also beginning to heat up. If the top line had been producing like that earlier in the season, the Penguins might already have a win or two more on the board.
They will need that kind of production this week, because the schedule does not let up.
Tuesday night brings a home game against the Vegas Golden Knights, and Pittsburgh already saw that matchup once on its recent west coast trip. That one did not go well for Murashov or the Penguins.
There is at least some help in the setup this time: Vegas has won only one of its past five games and will be playing the second half of a back-to-back on the road, with travel. Pittsburgh has had two days off.
A week ago, the Penguins used a similar scheduling edge against the Florida Panthers and rolled to a 4-0 win. They will need something like that again.
Then comes Thursday, when the Boston Bruins visit Pittsburgh in what stands out as one of the more intriguing teams in the league.
Boston made the playoffs a year ago, but the process behind that run was not especially convincing. The team leaned heavily on a couple of top-end players and a lot of Jeremy Swayman, while the underlying play at 5-on-5 and in its own end left plenty to be desired. Some of those flaws are still there, and goaltending is still helping cover them up, but the offense has taken a clear step forward.
The Bruins are generating more chances and have more depth than they did a season ago. After finishing the 2025-26 season 27th in the NHL in 5-on-5 expected goal share, they are up to 12th so far this season.
JJ Peterka has helped, and young players like Fraser Minten and James Hagens have added some much-needed life to a lineup that used to lean too hard on David Pastrnak and Morgan Geekie. That has Boston sitting at 10-4-1 entering the week.
The Penguins finish the week on Saturday night when they open another three-game west coast trip, this one through California, against the Los Angeles Kings.
Los Angeles is only now starting to settle in after a rough opening. The Kings dropped six straight to begin the season, but they have won four of their last seven and are at least collecting points now. They still do not score much, Darcy Kuemper has had a difficult start in goal, and the territorial edge they used to own at 5-on-5 has faded.
So yes, it is another demanding week, both because of the opponents and because the Penguins are heading west again. But at some point, they have to start taking more of these games.
If they want to stay in the playoff race, that has to happen soon. The standings do not move much after the start of December, and points are hard to claw back.
Winning at least two of these three would not just feel necessary. It would be reasonable, given the scheduling break against Vegas and the fact that the Kings have not been very good so far. And maybe Saturday’s breakout from the top line is the spark that finally gets Pittsburgh rolling.
In Other News...
Penguins Just Created A New Opening For Rutger McGroarty
Rutger McGroarty is back with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton after Pittsburgh reassigned the young forward, a move that trims the NHL roster but also keeps the door cracked open for him. Since breaking in during the 2024-25 season, McGroarty has appeared in 34 NHL games and put up four goals and nine points, while his work in the AHL has continued to show why the Penguins view him as a real part of their future.
For now, the assignment gives Pittsburgh a little more flexibility up front and keeps McGroarty in a place where he can keep building confidence and production. He has already shown he can handle the minors with scoring touch and strong underlying numbers over two seasons, so the next step may depend less on what he does in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and more on how the Penguins manage the rest of their roster in the days ahead. [Read more 🡒]
Penguins Loss Just Raised Bigger Questions About Where This Team Is Headed
The loss to the Canadiens did more than add another mark in the standings for Pittsburgh, it sharpened the sense that this season is drifting toward a tougher conversation about direction. There have been bright spots, including Tristan Jarrys consecutive shutouts, but the Penguins have also been living with the kind of uneven play that invites scrutiny from the coach and the front office alike.
Dan Muse now has a team that needs a reset in more ways than one, and the questions around the roster are only getting louder. Trade chatter keeps circling around names like Nikita Kucherov and Dylan Larkin, while the broader NHL landscape keeps moving around Pittsburgh, from Carolinas interest in Simon Edvinsson to the latest international hockey buzz, leaving the Penguins to decide what kind of next step they really want to take. [Read more 🡒]
Penguins Defensive Problems Are Becoming Harder To Ignore
The defensive issues that have followed the Penguins through October were back in plain view after the loss to Montreal, and Dan Muse did not try to soften the picture. Pittsburgh has spent much of the month living with mistakes and breakdowns that turn routine shifts into dangerous moments, and the result has been a team that has struggled to find any consistency in its own end while the rest of the Metropolitan Division sorts itself out around it.
Muses comments fit a larger pattern for a club that has not been able to string together reliable defensive performances, even as the standings continue to tighten. The Penguins have been trying to keep pace in a division where every point matters, but the recurring problems around their net are making the margin for error awfully small, and the next stretch will say plenty about whether these are fixable habits or a more stubborn issue. [Read more 🡒]