The Pittsburgh Penguins play a bunch of division games this week before taking the 4 Nations pause.
It has been a pretty hectic few days for the Pittsburgh Penguins.
They have won back-to-back games going into Monday, started trading off more players by sending defenseman Marcus Pettersson and Drew O’Connor to the Vancouver Canucks, and now get ready to close out the first half of the season with three divisional games before the league pauses for the 4 Nations tournament throughout the middle part of February.
If the Penguins were still somewhat in the playoff race this would be a gigantic series of games, but there is little doubt at this point as to where the organization’s focus is.
The biggest thing now, for me, is seeing what players remaining on the roster can do to further boost whatever trade value they might have.
Mostly because it appears to be a seller’s market at the present time.
Who else can the Penguins pump some value out of?
While I want Joel Blomqvist to get more playing time, if Alex Nedeljkovic is going to keep playing the way he has over the past 10 games I am not going to be mad about it if it tricks somebody into giving up a draft pick for him.
If Mikael Granlund and Cody Ceci go for a first-round pick, is there a chance somebody absolutely blows you away with an offer for Rickard Rakell?
As for the games themselves, the week opens on Tuesday night at home against the New Jersey Devils. I am still torn on what the Devils are this season. I love the roster. They should be a legitimate contender, especially after fixing their goaltending issues from a year ago, and their underlying numbers are among the best in the NHL.
But they are also scuffling a bit over the past month, entering the week just 5-8-3 over their past 16 games dating back to the end of December. Goal-scoring has been their big issue over that stretch, averaging just 2.4 goals per game since then.
Even with that, the Devils have been a nightmare matchup for the Penguins the past few years.
The divisional matchups continue later in the week when the Penguins make a visit to Madison Square Garden to face the New York Rangers.
The Rangers were one of the teams over the past week to make a blockbuster trade, adding J.T. Miller from the Vancouver Canucks. I am still not sure what, exactly, that does for them. Miller is good. He is objectively better than Filip Chytil. But there is something about a Rangers team in the middle of the standings, out of the playoffs, trading a younger, cheaper player for an older, expensive player that does not seem like smart business for me. Is that going to fix all of their issues?
The week concludes with a game in Philadelphia this weekend against the Flyers.
The Penguins and Flyers enter the week in identical spots in the standings, with both having made significant trades over the past week to start selling off players.
Philadelphia sent Joel Farabee and Morgan Frost to the Calgary Flames in a deal that brought the back Andrei Kuzmenko and a couple of draft picks.
The more intriguing story in Philadelphia right now might be the saga between head coach John Tortorella and the team’s young star, Matvei Michkov. That dynamic was always going to be one to watch this season, and for the most part I feel like Tortorella has mostly said the right things and handled it well. He understands what Michkov does well, is trying to improve areas of his game without taking away his skill and creativity, and he has mostly put him into a positive positions where he can succeed. But it seems like a situation where Tortorella might eventually start to lose his mind and go nuts, and this past week the two were seen in a shouting match on the bench. That resulted in Michkov being benched for the remainder of the game.
The Flyers enter the week having lost three games in a row, getting shut out in all three of them.
They have lost five of their past six games overall.
Big picture outlook for the week: The Penguins are going to struggle against the Devils and Rangers. Both teams are better. The Penguins are selling and do not have Evgeni Malkin. Those will probably end up being defeats. The Flyers game is still winnable. Not that points matter right now, but anything more than two points with these games should be seen as a surprise.