Trending Ups and Downs: Rickard Rakell can’t stop scoring goals

Our check in of who things are going well for, and who they’re not

It’s been about a month since the first iteration of when we checked in on some individual ups and downs, and now is a good time to look back at it.

Stock Up

Rickard Rakell — In a way, you might say that Rickard Rakell won the Jake Guentzel trade. It didn’t take very long for Rakell to fill the opening for Sidney Crosby’s wing that Guentzel’s departure created, and the results have been incredible. Rakell has a team-high 22 goals this season. He’s got 12G+10A in the last 18 games (which just so happens to line up with the time after Team Sweden announced their 4 Nations tournament roster, without Rakell on it). Rakell is night and day from the player that battled through a shoulder injury and only scored 15 goals in 70 games last season. At 31, he’s having perhaps his finest NHL season this year. Should Sweden have a need for an injury replacement for next month’s tournament, Rakell has played his way into a no doubt inclusion.

Marcus Pettersson — Pettersson’s game score of 3.34 against Tampa last night was the highest on the Pens. Pair that with the recent Edmonton game where Pettersson played over 25 minutes, recorded two assists, blocked five shots and was a +3 and it’s been a very positive recent past for the defender. Pettersson’s season has only been OK so far, but his level of play is certainly up, and in a major way, since returning from an injury on December 31st. For obvious reasons with the trade deadline looming, it’s a great time for Pettersson to start putting some solid tape out there to demonstrate his current form is high, the good news is he is trending in a very positive direction.

Michael Bunting — Bunting has nine points (6G+3A) in his last 10 games played. For as cold as he was at the start of the season (which was pretty darn cold), he’s that hot at the other end of the spectrum now. Seemingly every player on Ottawa wanted to kill him on Saturday, which is a good sign for the pesty Bunting that things are going the way he wants them to go. Bunting’s play near the net has been the key to the recent power play turnaround, he’s not a sheer net-front anchor that posts up and take the goalie’s eyes away like a Patric Hornqvist, but Bunting has great puck skills and a high motor to be effective down low.

Kevin Hayes — It’s a moderate stock up, not a “driving the team and being a dominant player” type of mention like some of the others on the list, but it’s nice to see Kevin Hayes get back in the lineup and score some goals as of late just the same. Hayes has played in the Pens’ last six games in a row, scoring three times. Nice impact for a guy who was a scratch for every game from December 10th – January 3rd and only played in eight games in almost two months during a stretch that lasted from early November to early January. He’s slow and limited but found a way to pitch in a little bit when called upon.

Sidney Crosby and the power play — Crosby has nine power play points over the last 12 games. Crosby on the power play in 2025 is quite the sight to see, he’s not out there with Evgeni Malkin (even before Malkin’s injury), there’s no Erik Karlsson or Kris Letang. And, of course, Guentzel is long gone, which makes the puzzle look very different than it has in so many recent years. The shift to make the Pens’ top power play out of the regular Crosby line plus Bunting and Matt Grzelcyk has been a stroke of genius. It’s freed Crosby to roam more over the ice and not defer to others like Malkin and Karlsson, it’s made a big difference.

Stock down

The goalies — The Pens can’t find answers for no matter who they turn to in net.

That outlook doesn’t include Jarry giving up three goals on 1.7 expected last night against Tampa. Tristan Jarry has had a sub .900 save% in three of four starts after the Christmas break. Alex Nedeljkovic is right there with him in that regard, three of his five post-Christmas starts are in the same boat. As soon as it looks like one might be gaining some traction — like Nedelkovic’s impressive 40-save outing against Edmonton, it gets followed up by the 12 saves on 17 shot performance the next game against Ottawa. The Pens don’t make it easy on their goalies, but they also just don’t get enough saves and consistent performances in net, that’s a real problem.

Ryan Graves — Graves was pushed into action during a period when the Penguins had multiple defensemen out of the lineup at the tail end of 2024, but is right back to healthy scratch territory in each of the last five games. It’s a new career low when the current Pittsburgh third pair is a 20-year old rookie (Owen Pickering) and a replacement level retread (P.O Joseph) and both are doing reasonably well enough to push Graves back to the margins of the roster. It’s difficult to see how or why that situation changes in the near future.

Anthony Beauvillier — Over the last month, Beauvillier has one goal and no assists and his average ice time has slumped to just over 10 minutes per game (the lowest on the team among forwards in this stretch). He’s become a non-factor on a team with too many passengers.

Cody Glass — Similar to Beauvillier, Glass has been too vanilla this season. He doesn’t stand out, he doesn’t get to dangerous areas with the puck, he just doesn’t do much of anything. That’s resulted in no goals and two assists in the last 14 games this month, which for a player who has been bouncing between the second and third lines isn’t going to cut it.

Noel Acciari and his usage — Acciari is an easy target given the recency effect of giving away the game with his crucial turnover against Tampa, which he readily acknowledged afterwards. Acciari’s averaged almost 14 minutes of ice time in the last month, a lot of that is PK, which has also been struggling lately (eight goals against in the last seven games, to only a 55% success rate). It’s one thing for Acciari to be a lineup regular when the focused area and reasons he are in there are working, but it’s not working right now.