At least from a point production standpoint.
The 2024-25 NHL season is just five games old and Pittsburgh Penguins forward Evgeni Malkin has alraedy reached a couple of huge career milestones.
The most recent came during the team’s 6-5 overtime win against the Buffalo Sabres on Wednesday night when he joined the 500-goal club with a power play tally in the third period. Along with that goal, he finished the night with four total points (one goal, three assists) to take over sole possession of the top scoring spot in the NHL.
His 11 total points are three more than Colorado Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar and any other player in the entire league through Wednesday’s slate of games.
It is an extremely promising start for a player who entered the season with probably the lowest expectations of his career.
But it is actually even more than just promising.
It is also, statistically speaking, the best start to a season that he has ever had in the NHL. At least from an offensive points production standpoint through the first five games.
Prior to the start of the 2024-25 season, Malkin had never opened a season with more than nine points through his first five games to a season (which he had done twice) and had only four times recorded eight or more points through his first five games.
He is already ahead of that number by a significant margin this season.
Perhaps even more encouraging than the actual point production is the fact he just simply looks better. During the 2023-24 season Malkin looked like he had slowed down more than any other member of the Penguins’ core group and was not always playing anywhere near the level we have grown accustomed to seeing from him.
He looks like a completely different player through the first five games this season, and seems to have found the fountain of youth early on in his age 38 season.
It is not only the best start to a season for Malkin in his career, it is also one of the best starts ever for a player in this age range.
In the history of the league there have only been eight other instances of a player age 35 or older having at least 10 points through their first five games of a season.
Sidney Crosby has one of them.
Mario Lemieux has two of them.
Alex Ovechkin, Joe Pavelski, Maurice Richard, Martin St. Louis and Mats Zuccarello also all have one.
That is it.
Whether it is Malkin being determined to prove he still has something left in the tank, or perhaps the fact that Rickard Rakell is playing better on his wing, a combination of the two factors, or something else entirely, the bottom line is he looks like the great version of Evgeni Malkin.
That could be a huge game-changer for the Penguins’ chances this season.
The Penguins needed more balanced scoring this season from the bottom part of their lineup, but it was not just the bottom-six that needed to produce more. The second line needed to be better than it was a year ago.
Malkin’s 2023-24 season was one of the worst of his career from a per-game production standpoint, and the lack of consistency from his line — and from him on the power play — was a big part of the Penguins’ struggles. Some of that was on him. Some of that was on the state of his linemates.
It is still early, but through five games both he and Rakell look like completely different players than they did a year ago.
The Penguins still need to get more from Michael Bunting than what they have received so far on that line, but the play of Malkin and Rakell is highly encouraging.
Nobody should expect a 38-year-old Malkin to keep averaging two points per game over the next 77 games, but if they can keep getting something even remotely close to this level of play from Malkin and Rakell that would go a long way toward solving a lot of issues this team has had offensively.