Penguins Projections

I don’t know about you. But for me, math and fun don’t often go together. Especially if we’re talking trigonometry or calculus (shudder).

Still, having reached the halfway mark of the 2016-17 NHL season, I thought it might be kind of enjoyable to do some Penguins projections.

There’s no rocket science involved, but some subjectivity. For skaters who’ve played a full slate of games, I simply doubled their present output. The same goes for “bubble” players and call-ups like Eric Fehr and Steve Oleksy, and goalies Marc-Andre Fleury and Matt Murray.

In the cases where players have missed time due to illness or injury, such as Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang, I assumed a full complement of games in the second half and applied their present scoring rate.

For an extra twist, I compared the projections to their career averages entering the current season, based on the estimated number of games played for ’16-17.

On a team basis? The black and gold is on pace to go 52-20-10, with 114 points. Which would represent the second highest win and point totals in the club’s storied 50-year history.

If the Pens continue to produce at the same rate? They’ll tally 284 goals, the most since ’96-97, and yield 236, the highest since the ’08-09 Cup winners.

SCORING
*2016-17 Season*						*NHL Career Average*
Player	POS	GP	G	A	PTS	G	A	PTS
Crosby	C	76	56	41	97	36	65	101
Malkin	C	82	34	56	90	38	59	97
Kessel	RW	82	26	56	82	30	33	63
Sheary	LW	75	24	31	55	12	5	17
Letang	D	70	7	46	53	10	34	44
Schultz	D	82	14	38	52	9	24	33
Hornqvist	RW	76	22	28	50	23	24	47
Kunitz	LW	76	9	28	37	22	29	51
Bonino	C	82	12	24	36	14	23	37
Rust	RW	79	21	14	35	7	12	19
Cullen	C	82	14	18	32	15	27	42
Hagelin	LW	82	10	22	32	17	23	40
Cole	D	82	4	26	30	3	13	16
Daley	D	77	6	19	25	7	17	24
Wilson	LW	79	10	13	23	16	3	19
Fehr	RW	70	10	4	14	13	13	26
Dumoulin	D	70	0	14	14	1	12	13
Kuhnhackl	RW	65	5	8	13	8	15	23
Guentzel	LW	10	6	2	8	—	—	—
Maatta	D	80	0	8	8	8	20	28
Ruhwedel	D	10	2	2	4	0	1	1
Murray	G	40	0	4	4	0	0	0
Oleksy	D	18	0	2	2	1	5	6
Sestito	LW	16	0	2	2	1	1	2
Fleury	G	52	0	0	0	0	1	1
Pouliot	D	14	0	0	0	1	3	4
Warsofsky	D	8	0	0	0	1	1	2

GOALTENDING
*2016-17 Season*						*NHL Career Average*
Player	POS	GP	SH	GAA	SV%	SH	GAA	SV%
Murray	G	40	4	2.28	.925	3	2.00	.930
Fleury	G	52	0	3.12	.908	3	2.56	.912