The Pittsburgh Penguins are playing better and have some big tests this week ahead.
Not only are the Pittsburgh Penguins 6-2-1 over their past nine games, they are also playing some reasonably good hockey.
It’s not just good results masking bad process.
The process is getting better.
Over the past nine games the Penguins’ 5-on-5 goal share is 54 percent, up to 14th in the NHL.
Their expected goals share of 54.5 percent over that stretch is up to the sixth best in the NHL.
Even more impressive is the fact they are allowing just 2.28 expected goals per 60 minutes, which is up to 12th in the NHL over that stretch.
That’s something. Especially since they have played some reasonably good teams over that stretch including Vancouver, Boston, Toronto and Colorado. It would have been nice to get the extra point in Ottawa on Saturday night and get back to .500, but there is still pretty strong objective evidence the play is getting better.
But again, it goes back to the question from a week ago as to whether or not this is real, consistent improvement, or just the type of random hot streak that even bad teams can be capable of over an 82-game season. The underlying numbers are encouraging, but it has to continue.
As such, the Penguins have a pretty big series of tests this week that will again tell us a lot more about what we are looking at here with this group.
It starts on Tuesday night against a Los Angeles Kings team that is playing some tremendous hockey and has one of the best records in the league.
The Kings will not wow you offensively (they are middle of the pack in goals per game), but Anze Kopitar still has some juice left to his game and Adrian Kempe is a legitimate top-line scorer.
What separates the Kings is their defensive play, and it remains relentless and smothering. That is especially impressive after they lost Matt Roy in free agency and Drew Doughty to a preseason injury. It is a defensive group where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, while they also have an emerging impact player in Brandt Clarke. They are one of the toughest teams in the NHL to generate offense against, and they do a tremendous job insulating a questionable goaltending situation.
The Kings are in the middle of an extended road trip so the rest/travel aspect is on the Penguins’ side a little bit, but this is still going to be a massive test.
On Thursday the Penguins get a different type of opponent — an underachieving one.
That is when they travel to Nashville to play a Predators team that entered the season with Stanley Cup goals after an offseason spending spree, but is tied for the worst record in the league (by points percentage) entering the week.
Despite a solid roster on paper, there is absolutely nothing this Predators team has done well this season.
They are below average defensively, have the worst offense in the league by goals per game and enter the week having lost nine of their past 10 games.
It also might be a chance for a Philip Tomasino revenge game. Maybe he has a little extra motivation for that night. They might need it.
Because things get really tough on Saturday when the Penguins visit the New Jersey Devils.
New Jersey’s bounce back season should not be a surprise to anybody. This team was never as bad as last year’s record seemed, and it should have been pretty clear injuries and goaltending were the two biggest factors in their disappointment.
The injury luck has done a complete 180 so far this season with everybody, as pretty much all of their core players have played in every game, while the additions of Jacob Markstrom and Jake Allen completely revamped the goaltending situation. Neither player is great, but the Devils did not need great. They just needed passable. They just needed somebody to not lose them games.
They are getting that with Markstrom and Allen. Markstrom is also playing some of his best hockey of the season right now.
While Nashville does nothing well, the Devils are a team that does pretty much everything well and has one of the game’s best high-end players in Jack Hughes. But even he is not their leading scorer this season, an honor that goes to Jesper Bratt who is off to an incredible start with 41 points in 33 games.
This is going to be, by far, the toughest game of the week. Not only is New Jersey the best of the three teams, it is also on the road in a place where the Penguins do not always play well even in the best of times.
Getting more than three or four points this week is going to be tough. But if the Penguins can at least split the week, and continue to show the same strong process they have over the past two weeks, it would be a really encouraging sign. It would also help set the stage for the remainder of the December schedule that features four games that should all be winnable against the Philadelphia Flyers, New York Islanders, New York Islanders and Detroit Red Wings. This is their chance to get back in this.