The Pittsburgh Penguins have three road games this week and they are in for some major challenges.
After winning two out of three games over the past week the Pittsburgh Penguins are continuing their mid-season surge that has seen them become one of the NHL’s best teams over the past month.
Dating back to the night before Thanksgiving game against the Vancouver Canucks, the Penguins are 10-4-1 over their past 15 games, with only three teams in the NHL having a better record during that stretch.
It continues to be a near 180 turnaround almost entirely across the board, with significantly improved special teams play, slightly improved defensive play and some balanced scoring throughout the lineup. While Saturday’s game on Long Island was a little underwhelming, they took care of business in the other two games and bounced back nicely on Sunday night in the second half of a back-to-back with the Islanders.
Given the teams they played this past week (Philadelphia and two with the Islanders) a minimum of four out of six points should have been the expectation.
It is going to be a lot more difficult this week.
Not only because the level of competition is going to increase, but because they are now going on the road for three consecutive games, with two of those games coming against legitimate Stanley Cup contenders.
Before they get to those games, however, they are in Detroit on Tuesday night for a game with the Detroit Red Wings. The Red Wings remain stuck in neutral in their rebuild and are not making much progress, if any at all. Things were so disappointing this season that they fired head coach Derek LaLonde this past week and replaced him with Todd McLellan.
The Penguins and Red Wings have split the first two games of the season series, with Pittsburgh winning 6-3 in Detroit in the second game of the season and the Red Wings getting an overtime win in Pittsburgh a few weeks later.
Overall, Detroit’s flaws are plentiful. The defense is still not particularly great, the offense has seen some significant regression from a year ago and the goaltending has progressively gotten worse as the season has gone on. They have some high-level players at the top of the lineup, including Lucas Raymond, Dylan Larkin, Alex DeBrincat and Moritz Seider, but the depth is not anywhere where it needs to be.
The Red Wings have split the first two games under McLellan as he starts to put his own stamp on the team and the way it plays.
It is going to be a big test for McLellan to get this team on track, and if he is unable to it will be a pretty damning indictment of where the Steve Yzerman rebuild is after six years.
Of the three games this week, this is the one you really want to see the Penguins win. It is also the one they probably need to win given the opponents that come after it.
On Thursday the Penguins are on the road against a Florida Panthers team that is still one of the best in the NHL after back-to-back Stanley Cup Final appearances. There is still very little weakness anywhere on the roster, and there is pretty much nothing they do not do well.
They can score and push play as well as any team in the NHL, they are relentless defensively, and they enter the week with some of the league’s best underlying numbers during 5-on-5 play. They crush teams. The only aspect of the team that has been a little off so far this season has been the goaltending duo of Sergei Bobrovsky and Spencer Knight, as both players enter the week with sub-.900 save percentages. As a team, their all-situations save percentage is 28th in the NHL, one spot below the Penguins.
Despite that, they still have a top-10 record in the NHL and are tied for first place in the top-heavy Atlantic Division. An off night from Bobrovsky or Knight would be the Penguins’ best chance in this game.
The Penguins won the first game between the two teams earlier this month in Pittsburgh in overtime, 5-4, after letting a three-goal third period lead slip away.
The road trip continues on Saturday against the one team the Penguins have never really seemed to match up well against over the past five years — the Carolina Hurricanes. Even when the games are close on the scoreboard Carolina always seems to have a significant edge in the quality of play, and they never seem as close on the ice as they are on the scoreboard.
The Penguins might, however, be getting Carolina at the right time.
Not only are the Hurricanes in a bit of a mid-season slump, having won just six of their past 14 games, they are also going to be getting Carolina on the second half of a back-to-back (Carolina hosts Minnesota on Friday) and their third game in four days while the Penguins will be coming in off a day off. The scheduling edge might help.
Overall, you really want to see the Penguins take advantage of a bad Detroit team and get a win on Tuesday. After that, if they can just find a way to split the next two games that should be considered a successful week and road trip and keep them on track with where they need to be to stay in the playoff race in the Eastern Conference.