The Penguins’ power play has turned into a real problem, and the numbers make it pretty plain: they are not getting enough pucks to the net.
After Thursday’s game against Boston, Pittsburgh’s power play sat at 17.8 percent for the season, which puts it 24th in the NHL. They went 0-for-1 against the Bruins, then followed up a brutal 0-for-6 night Tuesday against the Vegas Golden Knights, a game that also featured a failed extended 5-on-3 in the final minutes of regulation before Tomas Hertl scored the winner on the other end.
The deeper dive is even uglier. As of Friday morning, the Penguins are last in the league in almost every major power-play shot category: total shot attempts per 60 minutes, unblocked shot attempts per 60, shots on goal per 60, and expected goals per 60. They’re also 31st in scoring chances per 60 and 28th in high-danger chances per 60.
That’s not just bad. It’s a full-blown outage.
And what makes it sting more is that Pittsburgh’s 5-on-5 numbers in those same areas are consistently top-10. So the issue isn’t that the team can’t create offense at all. It’s that the power play is wasting one of the few places where the Penguins should be able to tilt the ice with their best players.
That matters because special teams are one of the clearest places coaching can move the needle, and this is also where the Penguins are leaning hardest on their most experienced, highest-paid, supposedly best players.
Sidney Crosby is part of that story, too. The top line has started to show some life against Montreal and Vegas, Crosby included, but his start is still rough by his standards.
He has 10 points - four goals and six assists - through 16 games, which is the second-worst 16-game opening of his career. The only one worse came in 2015-16, when he had nine points through the same stretch under Mike Johnston.
There’s context here, sure. Rickard Rakell’s early-season finishing struggles may have cost Crosby some assists.
But Crosby’s own shot totals tell another part of the story. He has just 28 shots on goal through 16 games, the lowest mark of his career at that point in a season.
Before last year, he had never been under 40 shots through 16 games.
The defensive side has its own issues, and the pairings haven’t exactly stabilized things. The Penguins have used eight defense pairings for at least 40 minutes together at 5-on-5 this season, and none of them have a positive goal differential.
Several are tied, and three are underwater. Sam Girard and Kaeden Korczak are 9-9.
Erik Karlsson and Spencer Stastney are 5-5. Korczak and Declan Carlile are 3-3.
Kris Letang and Stastney, plus Letang and Trevor van Riemsdyk, are both 1-1.
One bright spot has been Nicholas Robertson. He leads the team with seven goals, and Pittsburgh is outscoring opponents 10-3 with him on the ice at 5-on-5. Among players with at least 50 minutes of 5-on-5 ice time, that’s the best on-ice goal differential on the roster.
At the other end, Andrei Kuzmenko has the worst mark, with two goals for and eight against.
The goaltending hasn’t been able to clean up the mess, either. Arturs Silovs and Sergei Murashov are combined minus-4.6 in goals saved above expected. Murashov sits 62nd in the league, while Silovs is 47th.
Korczak has quietly been one of the better pieces on the roster. He’s the only Penguins defenseman with a positive on-ice goal differential at 5-on-5 among those with at least 50 minutes, sitting at 16-14. He also has 10 assists in 16 games and ranks second on the team in 5-on-5 points per 60 minutes, behind only Evgeni Malkin.
And if the Penguins want a simple fix on the power play, there’s at least one obvious place to start. Egor Chinakhov leads the team in power-play shot attempts per 60 minutes at 29.5 and ranks third in individual expected goals per 60 on the man advantage at 1.95. The goals haven’t come yet, and he’s only had 22 minutes of power-play time, but the message is clear: get him up there and let him shoot.
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Justin Brazeau gave the Penguins an early lift, but the Bruins responded in a way that left little doubt about the direction of the game. Boston spread the offense around and kept building, with Pavel Zacha, Mark Kastelic, Elias Lindholm, Morgan Geekie and Fraser Minten all getting involved as the Penguins were left chasing the rest of the way. [Read more 🡒]