Don’t get your hopes up yet, while last nights win was a pleasant surprise, the powerplay was held scoreless once again. I have come to terms with the fact that Whitney isn’t playing that bad even though he is a team worst -8 (on defense) while playing mostly on the top line. The problem is lack of a shot from the point on the powerplay. I scream every time I see the point position take a “wrister”. I’m pretty sure when you look at the top points on any powerplayin the league, they are not there because of there great wrist shot.
The powerplay has scored 3 goals in 45 attempts (6.66%) including being shut out again last night since Whitney is back and they put him at the point and move Malkin up.? In that time the Penguins have had 3 shorthanded goals scored against them making the Power(less) play even for the last 11 games. The day before Whitney came back, Goligoski scored two goals from the point on the powerplay and was really starting to click with Malkin. As a matter of fact the powerplay was clicking at above a 33% range the ten games before Whitney came back. To put that into perspective, Detroit has the league leading powerplay at 27.4%.
Put Malkin back at the point so we have a slapshot from there, without a shot from the point the other team concentrates on our three forward attackers making the powerplay very easy to defend. This would all be temporary until Gonchar comes back in March.
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