Categories: PenguinPoop

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
Rick Buker

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