It could be both.
Just when it looked like the 2024-25 Pittsburgh Penguins season was going to start slipping away from itself, and just when the schedule was starting to get really intense, they went ahead and put together a four-game winning streak that is still going as they head into Friday’s game against the New York Rangers.
It has brought them to within a game of getting back to .500, has them just one point out of a playoff spot (though with more games played than just about everybody else — points percentage still has them further back) and has completely changed the recent outlook.
It has been unexpected.
Especially since they started to beat the exact teams that were dominating them early in the season (playoff teams from a year ago).
They hung on to beat Vancouver, played arguably their two best games of the season against Boston and Calgary, and then managed to beat the defending Stanley Cup champions in overtime earlier this week.
There were still some flaws within those games.
They nearly gave away a huge lead against Vancouver.
They did give away a huge third period lead against Florida.
Starting goalie Tristan Jarry had a great game in Boston, but had save percentages of .862 and .902 against Vancouver and Florida.
It is also true — and important to keep in mind — that even bad teams can put together random stretches of good games. While good teams can put together stretches of bad games. It is an 82-game season and nobody remains perfectly consistent the whole way through.
Of the 10-worst teams in the NHL a year ago, all but two of them had winning streaks of at least three games at some point in the season, while five of them had winning streaks of at least five games or more. A sixth of those teams (the New Jersey Devils) had two winning streaks of three games sandwiched around an overtime loss, which was a 6-0-1 run over seven games.
So, even bad teams are going to have good stretches of games.
Is that all this is for these Penguins?
Or is there some actual hope that maybe this season will not be a complete waste of time?
I think there is some evidence that it might be a little of both.
For one, there are some aspects of this team that are not entirely terrible. Nor have they been even prior to this little run. As of Thursday the Penguins have been one of the best teams in the NHL at generating chances during 5-on-5 play. They are second in the league in expected goals for per 60 minutes, sixth in scoring chances for per 60 minutes and second in high-danger scoring chances for per 60 minutes.
They have simply not always turned that into actual goals with some poor finishing, currently sitting 22nd in actual goals scored per 60 minutes.
That is actually a pretty common theme from recent seasons where they have had a significant gap between their expected goals/scoring chance numbers and their actual goals. For almost three years now they have consistently had one of the biggest gaps between those two numbers.
On one hand, truly bad teams are not able to generate chances at that rate. There is clearly something there offensively with this team. Even though the depth is not great, there are still a few Hall of Famers and All-Star level players on this roster that are capable of making plays and generating opportunities.
But it is also fair to say — and probably true — that their gap between chances and goals is no longer just a case of being unlucky at this point. It has been too many games and too many seasons of the same thing. This is probably just what they are, and a sign that there is not enough true finishing talent or net-front presences to turn all of those opportunities into actual goals.
They also have other issues beyond that.
While they are one of the best teams at generating chances for themselves, they are also one of the worst teams at preventing them.
As of Thursday they are 28th in expected goals against per 60 minutes of 5-on-5 play, 29th in scoring chances against, and 30th in high-danger scoring chances against.
What is truly wild about those numbers is that for as bad as their defensive metrics are, they still come out at better than a 50 percent share of expected goals and high-danger chances. For as much as they are giving up, they are still generating more the other way. It is a truly chaotic team. It might even be a somewhat fun team to watch if you did not have a rooting interest in them.
Say this for them — the games are never boring.
They also have some of the league’s worst goaltending in the league on top of that, sitting at 27th in the league in 5-on-5 save percentage and 27th in all situations save percentage.
Some of those numbers have improved during their recent stretch of games, and especially during the four-game winning streak.
Which brings me to another point: Ryan Graves has not played in any games during the four-game streak. He has not played in seven of the past eight games. In those seven games he has not played the Penguins are 5-1-1. Some of those games have also been among their best, most efficient games of the season. Their expected goals against drops down to 2.57 in those games, compared to 2.87 for the full season.
I am not trying to put all of the season’s problems on one guy, because that would not be fair. There are other problems beyond him. Obviously. Some of those problems still exist. But it is also hard to hide from the numbers and improved team success.
I want to see what this team looks like with Owen Pickering playing in the lineup instead of him on a more consistent basis.
Philip Tomasino and Blake Lizotte have also given them a little bit of a boost.
I want to see what this team could look like with better goaltending, which …. I am not sure how that happens at this point, but I still want to see it.
Here is what else I want to see in the short-term here to make me buy into the recent success.
I want to see them beat the New York Rangers on Friday. Not only do I want to see them beat the Rangers, I want to see them control the game. The Rangers are going through it right now. They are one of the few teams in the league this season that have actually been worse than the Penguins defensively. The only difference between the two teams at this point is the Rangers goaltending has been mostly excellent (what else is new?) and the Penguins’ has not been. I want to see them outplay a struggling team.
Then I want to see them at least be competitive against Toronto on the second half of that weekend back-to-back. They do not have to win that game. They just have to stay in it.
If they can do that, that would get them through what might be one of the toughest parts of their schedule for the entire 2024-25 season far better than anybody could have reasonably expected when it began. Then the schedule softens up quite a bit.
After that Toronto game on Saturday they play Colorado early next week, which is a more winnable game than it looked to be a few weeks ago given the Avalanche’s injury situation and their goaltending situation (which might be the only one that has been consistently worse than the Penguins’ goaltending situation this season).
Then the rest of December is this: Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators, Los Angeles Kings, Nashville Predators, New Jersey Devils, Philadelphia Flyers, New York Islanders, New York Islanders again, and then the Detroit Red Wings.
Of those nine games, only two of them (Los Angeles Kings and New Jersey Devils) are against teams currently in a playoff position by points percentage. That group also includes six games against teams currently in the bottom-10 of the league in overall points percentage.
That is manageable. They have mostly beaten teams like that this season.
But you have to keep building on this recent stretch and you have to show over the next two games that some of this recent improvement is for real. It certainly makes the next couple of games far more interesting than they would have seemed just a couple of weeks ago. That is something.