Game Preview: Pittsburgh Penguins @ Anaheim Ducks 1/23/2025

Looking into tonight’s game against the Ducks

Who: Pittsburgh Penguins (19-21-8, 48 points, 7th place Metropolitan Division) @ Anaheim Ducks (18-23-6, 42 points, 7th place Pacific Division)

When: 10:00 p.m. ET

How to Watch: Broadcasting on Sportsnet Pittsburgh and KCOP-13 and in the local markets, streaming nationally on ESPN+

Pens’ Path Ahead: The Pens start a rhythm today of playing every other day through the end of their road trip. Up next is a trip to Seattle on Saturday (4:00pm eastern time start!), followed by a trip to San Jose (one more dreaded 10:30pm puck drop) on Monday followed by heading over to Utah for the first time in franchise history in the Beehive State on Wednesday (9:30pm). Then, finally after all of that, the Pens return back East.

Opponent Track: Hasn’t been pretty, Anaheim has only won two of their last 10 games (2-6-2), and dropped two straight to Florida in perhaps the longest distance example of a home-and-home series in the NHL. The Panthers beat the Ducks 5-2 on Tuesday in Anaheim.

Season Series: Pittsburgh won the first meeting, a 2-1 OT victory back on October 31st. Sidney Crosby would end up providing all the offense, scoring both of the Pens’ goals on the night.

Hidden Stat: The Penguins rank fourth in the NHL in power-play percentage (27.1%) and have gone 4-for-7 (57.1%) through the first three games of their seven-game road trip, per Pens PR.

Hidden Stat 2.0: From Bob Grove: Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin scored a goal in the same game for the 125th time Monday night in LA, the Pens have a 109-10-6 in those games. Overall, the Penguins are looking for their 400th all-time win when Crosby and Malkin record a point together in the same game (an overall record of 399-90-49).

Getting to know the Ducks

Projected lines

FORWARDS

Frank Vatrano – Ryan Strome – Troy Terry

Trevor Zegras – Leo Carlsson – Alex Killorn

Cutter Gauthier – Mason McTavish – Robby Fabbri

Nikita Nesterenko – Jansen Harkins – Brett Leason

DEFENSEMEN

Jackson LaCombe / Radko Gudas

Pavel Mintyukov / Jacob Trouba

Brian Dumoulin / Olen Zellweger

Goalies: John Gibson and Lukas Dostal

Scratches: Ross Johnston, Isac Lundestrom (day-to-day injury), Drew Helleson

IR: Brock McGinn

—Bad news update for former Penguin Brock McGinn. His season ended on December 23rd with a torn ACL and recently had surgery to repair it. He will finish up the four-year contract that he originally signed in Pittsburgh on the IR.

—Classic defensive strategy with pairing one kid with tremendous upside (LaCombe, Mintkyukov, Zellweger) with one veteran to show them the ropes (Gudas, Trouba, Dumoulin). Boy, two of those latter names are not like the other…

—Zegras returned last game for the Ducks for his first contest since Dec. 4th, the forward missed 22 games with a torn meniscus. It’ll be interesting see what the Ducks do with Zegras, who has now had two injured seasons in a row after putting up two other seasons of 60+ points prior to that. Zegras is still is only 23-years old! A lot going on there, it feels like if Anaheim resorts to trading him that they will be starting to enter the danger zone of a mid-stage Sabres rebuild cycle (when they traded players like Sam Reinhart and Jack Eichel in their primes and reset their clock along the way). It’s getting to an unavoidable pointg for the Ducks and they might have to choose soon to commit to Zegras for the long term or throwing in the towel and restarting part of the process again.

Player stats

(via hockeydb)

—A lot of the Ducks’ young players are showing promise and have at least made the NHL level, but they all have a lot of growing still left to do. The team’s young core (McTavish, Gauthier, Carlsson, Zellweger, Mintyukov and even Dostal, and eventually 2024 first rounder Beckett Sennecke) have a lot going for themselves. There might not be a future scoring champion or Norris winner in the bunch but collectively the group is pretty impressive for the promise and potential that they hold. Now it’s just a matter of the waiting game to put all that collective potential together and climb out of the gutter.

—Gibson, 31, is statistically having his best season in ages, going back to since 2018-19 to be exact. I’m convinced no one actually knows if he is good or not, it’s so difficult to accurately judge goalies playing behind dreadful teams. Surely his statistics have not been good in recent years, but bad stats don’t always have to align with declaring a goalie as poor. Gibson “only” has 2.5 more seasons to go on his contract with a big-for-a-goalie $6.4 million cap hit, he’s been in trade rumors forever but has a contract too tricky to be traded. One day that will change as time ticks away and his term shortens up. It’ll be great to see him in a spot where he can compete and play meaningful hockey again.

Team matchups

The Ducks have picked in the top-10 of the draft for six straight years (and have three top-3 picks in the last four). All indications are pointing to them closing in on another high draft pick this summer. Their special teams stink, their offense stinks and they’re fortunate to have some quality goaltending to stay somewhat respectable.

The Ducks give up 32.1 shots against per game (31st in the league), so ending up 21st in goals allowed speaks to the strong performances of both goalie. Pittsburgh, btw, is bottom-five in the league with 31.2 shots, and last in goals allowed, an inverse to the Anaheim goalie performance.

Otherwise, it’s still the Anaheim Yucks as one of the worst and most unimpressive teams across the board in the league, the classic rebuilder that’s yet to show any tangible on-ice signs of building despite going on a decade of futility, since cycling down from their 2005-18 run of being one of the better clubs in the NHL.

This chart is in agreement with the other stats above, the Pens might only be a few spots ahead of the Ducks in the standings but Pittsburgh is still a world away from being at a level like the Ducks are. However, the only two edges Anaheim have on the graph above are goalie related and the Pens are no strangers to seeing an opponent’s goalie stand on his head. Which goes to remind that any result in the NHL can happen on a given night, a victory for Pittsburgh is far from guaranteed.

And now for the Pens

Projected lines

FORWARDS

Rickard Rakell – Sidney Crosby – Bryan Rust

Michael Bunting – Evgeni Malkin – Cody Glass

Anthony Beauvillier – Kevin Hayes – Philip Tomasino

Drew O’Connor – Blake Lizotte – Noel Acciari

DEFENSEMEN

Marcus Pettersson / Kris Letang

Matt Grzelcyk / Erik Karlsson

P.O. Joseph / Owen Pickering

Goalies: Alex Nedeljkovic and Joel Blomqvist

Potential Scratches: Matt Nieto, Ryan Shea, Ryan Graves

IR: none

—Was last week a turning point for Nedeljkovic when Tristan Jarry got waived? Maybe it was an internal kick in the rear end or some other kind of wake up call, but whatever it was it doesn’t seem like a complete coincidence that Nedeljkovic has stopped 65 of the last 68 shots he’s seen (.956 save%) and won both his starts since Jarry was scrapped. Ned has scored as many even strength goals scored (1) as ES goals he’s allowed (1) in the last two games! Obviously those numbers aren’t going to hold for long, but it sure is interesting how Nedeljkovic (whose season statistics weren’t THAT much different than Jarry) has strung together arguably the two best starts of his whole year immediately after the team made their move on Jarry.

—Those two games did come right after one of the worst starts of Nedeljkovic’s season too, when he gave up five goals in just 27 minutes against Ottawa on January 11th. Which speaks to the unpredictability and range of performance: in recent games Nedeljkovic has ranged from absolutely outstanding (throw the 40-save game against Edmonton on Jan. 9th in there with the recent Buffalo an LA games) to totally dreadful (that Ottawa game). Who knows what version you’ll get tonight.

—Rickard Rakell flew back to Pittsburgh this week due to his pregnant wife being admitted to the hospital with what she described in an Instagram story as a scary situation. Happily there was a positive turn for the better, she talked about being discharged from the hospital on Tuesday. That allowed Rakell to fly back and rejoin the team in California in time to practice on the top line yesterday. Lots of miles and stress for him in the past few days but hopefully that is in the rearview mirror.

—Cody Glass, with two goals in his last three games, bumped back up into the second line at practice yesterday. Kevin Hayes is hot too and now he has two good skaters on either side to hopefully keep it rolling.

The Stylish Machino hitting on all cylinders in Southern California

Southern California is a place where Evgeni Malkin often shines and you can tell this is a guy living his best life. It’s shades of early ‘90s Jagr with all this denim he had going on yesterday looking like he stepped out of a Saved By the Bell episode or something.

Malkin has reason to be feeling it, he scored a big goal on Monday against the Kings to give the Pens some breathing room and has done quite well over the years playing across the way in Orange County, which bodes well for tonight. From the Pens:

Evgeni Malkin enters today’s game with multiple points in five of his last eight games versus Anaheim (5G-8A). In 24 career games against the Ducks, Malkin has recorded 29 points (11G-18A), and his 1.21 points-per-game average against them is tied for sixth in NHL history (min. 20 GP):

Points-Per-Game Leaders vs. Anaheim, NHL History

Player GP PTS PTS/GM

Connor McDavid 30 53 1.77
Leon Draisaitl 35 49 1.40
Wayne Gretzky 23 30 1.30
Nathan MacKinnon 34 44 1.29
Mika Zibanejad 20 25 1.25
Evgeni Malkin 24 29 1.21
John Tavares 24 29 1.21
Sidney Crosby 25 30 1.20