The competition gets significantly more difficult for the Pittsburgh Penguins this week.
The 2024-25 Pittsburgh Penguins have proven one thing to us — they can beat the bottom-tier teams in the NHL, and they mostly did what was expected this past week with wins over the Anaheim Ducks and Montreal Canadiens. While they were not necessarily the most convincing wins on the scoreboard, and while they were almost entirely due to Sidney Crosby doing Sidney Crosby things and putting the team on his back for a couple of games, they still needed to get those four points to at least make the first month of the season not look like a total embarrassment.
What they have not proven to us is that they can beat teams that are not among the worst in the NHL.
They have played six playoff teams from a year ago, have lost all six games, been outscored by a 28-9 margin with a sub-40 percent expected goals share during 5-on-5 play.
They have also not shown they can beat a Metropolitan Division team this season by losing their first two games within the division by a 10-1 margin (New York Rangers and Carolina Hurricanes).
This is all very discouraging news when you realize the week ahead features a three-game road trip against not only Metropolitan Division teams, but Metropolitan Division teams that also made the playffs a year ago.
The road trip starts on Tuesday night against the New York Islanders, which on paper seems to be the most winnable of those games. Not only because the Islanders are the worst of the three teams they are playing this week, but also because the Penguins might be catching them at the absolute right time.
The Islanders are only 4-6-2 in the standings, are still struggling to score goals like they always are, and are also currently dealing with some significant injuries. Mathew Barzal, Anthony Duclair and Adam Pelech are all injured at the moment, taking away a significant amount of offense and one of their top overall defenders. In a bizarre twist from past Islanders teams they are actually dictating the pace of games quite well and enter the week with a 55.3 percent expected goals share, the fourth-best mark in the NHL.
They just have no finishing ability at the moment.
Overall, the Penguins face three of the top-four expected goals teams in the NHL this week.
The Penguins are 16th.
After playing the Islanders on Tuesday the road trip gets significantly tougher, not only in terms of competition, but also in terms of travel as they play a road back-to-back on Thursday and Friday.
The first half of that back-to-back will be in Raleigh on Thursday night against the Carolina Hurricanes.
Carolina has been one of the NHL’s best teams so far, winning eight of its first 10 games (including a decisive and emphatic 4-1 win over the Penguins) and owning the NHL’s best expected goals share at a staggering 62.5 percent. Nobody else in the NHL is currently over 57.4 percent, and only one other team (Los Angeles) is over 55 percent. It is a staggering gap between them and everybody else when it comes to dictating the pace of play. That is a common theme with the Hurricanes, but it is even more noteworthy this season given all of the free agency departures they had over the offseason. They replenished, and young players like Martin Necas and Andrei Svechnikov are producing. They already have six players with at least eight points in their first 10 games. The Penguins, by comparison, have just four players with at least eight points and they have already played 13 games entering the week.
Given those numbers, and the way the Penguins have struggled with Carolina in recent seasons, that is going to be a wildly challenging game.
Things are not going to get any easier on Friday when they play the second half of that road back-to-back in Washington.
The Capitals have been one of the most impressive teams in the NHL, and quite frankly have ended up being exactly what the Penguins hoped to be — a once great team that is still trying to clutch onto competitive hockey while their legends finish their playing careers. The Capitals have simply been better at it. At least this season.
The Capitals snuck into the playoffs a year ago despite having an appalling goal differential and a lackluster team, and quickly realized that same formula was not going to repeat itself this season. They made a lot of changes, and the overall result has dramatically improved to not only produce better results, but a better process as well. They have also only received just a single game from one of their biggest offseason additions, defenseman Matt Roy.
This is going to be an incredibly challenging week, not only because the level of competition is high, but also because these are the exact types of teams that have given the Penguins their most issues over the past couple of seasons. They are also primarily at this point a one-line team with the Crosby, Evgeni Malkin-Rickard Rakell trio carrying everything. That group has outscored teams 5-0 when they are on the ice together. When none of the three are on the ice the Penguins have been outscored 18-7 for the season and by an 8-0 margin over the past five games. That is not really a recipe for sustained success against anybody. Especially not against good teams.
The best chance for a win this week is probably on Tuesday against the Islanders. Anything more than two points in this stretch of games should probably realistically be seen as a bonus or a pleasant surprise.