The Pittsburgh Penguins have big problems defending leads and defending in general.
For about 50 minutes on Tuesday night the Pittsburgh Penguins looked like they might have been on their way to a solid road win at the New York Islanders and on the verge of putting together a three-game winning streak. It would not have been a season-saving win, but it would have been some nice momentum and two nice points in the standings at the start of an extremely difficult road trip and upcoming stretch of games.
They were winning 3-1, looked to be in decent control …. and then gave up two quick goals to tie the game and send it to overtime. They failed to score on a power play, lost in a shootout and gave away a point in the standings to a division rival that has been struggling to score goals and win games.
Another lead. Another blown lead. Another loss.
It has been the most consistent and common theme of the 2024-25 Penguins seasons.
They can get the lead. They simply can not hold the lead.
The numbers on that are concerning.
- When scoring first this season the Penguins are only 2-5-1, a .250 winning percentage that ties them for the worst mark in the NHL (with the Nashville Predators) for wins when scoring the first goal.
- When leading after one period they are only 2-2-0, and while that is a small sample size that .500 winning percentage is 27th in the NHL.
- When leading after two periods they are 2-0-1, with Tuesday’s OT loss being the one at the end. Another small sample size, but a .666 win percentage in those games that is 28th in the NHL. NHL teams have combined for only four regulation losses so far this season when leading after two periods. There have only been 18 losses overall (regulation or OT/SO) when leading after two periods.
- In their first 14 games this season they have already had five games where they have let a multiple-goal lead slip away. They have lost four of those games.
It probably should not be a surprise that a bad defensive team is struggling to defend and hold on to leads, but it does not take away from the frustration and bleeding away of points that is happening.
It is a real problem in how the Penguins are playing.
Through their first 14 games the Penguins are allowing 3.32 expected goals per 60 minutes of even-strength play when they have a lead. That is an appallingly bad number (27th in the NHL) and is actually worse than their 3.24 mark in all score situations.
Conversely, they are averaging 3.50 expected goals for when playing with the lead, a significant increase over their 3.24 mark in all score situations. They also generate more high-danger chances for themselves with the lead than they do in all score situations. While that is not totally unheard of, it is not what you normally see. There is usually a punch-counter punch thing that happens in a lot of these score-based situations, where trailing teams have to attack more, leading teams take fewer chances and the numbers can get a little skewed.
With the Penguins, they keep attacking, almost as if their goal is to defend a two-goal lead by making it a three-goal lead.
I don’t totally hate that mindset, as long as you have the players to pull it off and as long as you are good at it.
The Penguins don’t, and they aren’t.
Because they not only fail to extend the leads, they end up bleeding even more chances against.
I dug through some expected goal numbers from the Mike Sullivan era and found some (I think) interesting numbers.
First, the Penguins have always been one of the more aggressive teams when playing with a lead under Sullivan and have consistently been one of the top teams in terms of generated expected goals and scoring chances when playing with a lead. And it generally worked out very well for them, not only in terms of still being able to limit chances against, but also in actually winning games.
The table below takes a season-by-season look at the Penguins expected goals against per 60 minutes, expected goals for per 60 minutes, and expected goal differentials when playing with a lead during even-strength play.
The Penguins have always been an aggressive team under Sullivan when leading, and I get it. You have Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and some of the other players they have had here over the years and you can use that to your advantage and dominate teams.
For a long time, it worked.
Really well.
Look at how dominant those teams were in 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18 when playing with a lead. They not only pushed the pace of play and generated chances for themselves, they also completely locked teams down in terms of suppressing changes against.
But those three guys are older, the talent around them is remarkably worse and they are not going to be able to play the same way. The Penguins are still pushing play with the lead, and you can see it from the eye test as much as you can with numbers. But they are not only not adding to the leads, look at how bad they have gotten at limiting chances against.
It is brutal.
That also leads us to another question: Are the Penguins bad at playing with a lead and defending leads, or are they just bad and bad at defending.
The answer, sadly, seems to be yes. To everything.
Here is a year-by-year look at the Penguins expected goals against per 60 minutes of even-strength play in all score situations, versus expected goals against per 60 minutes of even-strength play with the lead.
This is the worst defensive team of the Mike Sullivan era no matter the score and no matter the situation. They are simply bad. But it gets really alarming when you see how much worse they get when having the lead.
The 2018-19 had 2019-20 teams had some problems, but those were also the seasons where former general manager Jim Rutherford seemed to be more interested in building teams that could beat up the Tom Wilsons of the NHL rather than beating teams on the ice.
But again, go back to those first three seasons under Sullivan and look at how much better they were in suppressing expected goals with the lead. Even in recent seasons like 2021-22 and 2022-23 they actually defended better with leads.
(The 2021-22 team, I would argue, was still legimately very good and with better goaltending in the playoffs had a chance to go far, but that is a different argument for a different day).
The talent level is obviously the biggest issue. The best players are older, slower and while still good, are not quite as good as they were five to 10 years ago. Even with that, it is pretty clear that there is also a coaching problem in that the Penguins have been unable to adjust the way the play or change the way the play. A big part of coaching is developing a system and playing style around the talent you have. Not trying to fit the talent you have into a particular system or style. The Penguins have not done a good job building the roster or adapting the style of play to fit the roster they have. The confluence of those two problems is a lot of bad hockey.
[Data In This Post Via Natural Stat Trick]