Penguins Update: Secondary Scoring Woes by the Numbers

There’s been a ton of attention drawn to the Penguins’ secondary scoring issues of late. I thought I’d dig into the numbers to see just how offensively challenged our guys have been.

Picking a starting point was a little tricky…and arbitrary. Our depth scoring began to tail off as early as late December. In the case of Evan Rodrigues, his steep production decline coincided almost perfectly with Evgeni Malkin’s return on January 11.

In the end, I chose to track our secondary scoring from the start of Teddy Blueger’s stint on IR on January 25. His absence…and the subsequent line shuffling…really seemed to accelerate our bottom-nine scoring woes.

As I wrote in a recent post, a picture’s worth a thousand words. Numbers tell a story, too. Without further ado, here they are:

Player		GP	G	A	PTS	PPG	DIFF
Aston-Reese	Prior to 1/25	33	1	7	8	0.24	-0.12
	Since 1/25	17	0	2	2	0.12
Boyle	Prior to 1/25	28	4	1	5	0.18	0.07
	Since 1/25	16	2	2	4	0.25
Carter	Prior to 1/25	35	12	13	25	0.71	-0.42
	Since 1/25	17	1	4	5	0.29
Heinen	Prior to 1/25	37	9	9	18	0.49	-0.16
	Since 1/25	15	3	2	5	0.33
Kapanen	Prior to 1/25	40	9	15	24	0.60	-0.48
	Since 1/25	17	0	2	2	0.12
McGinn	Prior to 1/25	38	9	5	14	0.37	-0.19
	Since 1/25	17	2	1	3	0.18
Rodrigues	Prior to 1/25	41	15	15	30	0.73	-0.44
	Since 1/25	17	1	4	5	0.29
Simon	Prior to 1/25	35	2	6	8	0.23	-0.17
	Since 1/25	17	1	0	1	0.06

As you can see, the drop-offs (plummets) have been quite significant, especially in the case of E-Rod, Jeff Carter and Kasperi Kapanen.

No surprise that it’s affected the team’s performance. Prior to this recent 17-game stretch, the Pens had a record of 26-10-5, good for 57 points and a points percentage of .695. We’d tallied 139 non-shootout goals, an average of 3.39 per game. Of that total, 61 were supplied by the players listed in the table above, which represented a healthy 44 percent of the team’s production.

Since then? The Pens have gone 8-5-4, amassing 20 points with a .588 points percentage. We’ve scored 47 goals, an average of 2.76 per game. Only ten came from the “snake-bit eight”…or a paltry 21 percent of our output.

Wish I had an answer for our malaise. Other than trying to work players like Radim Zohorna and Drew O’Connor (seven goals and 14 points in 13 games with the Baby Pens) into the mix and giving them a legit shot to show their wares, I’m as much at a loss as anyone else.

Well, maybe I have one suggestion. In an effort to wake up his slumping snipers during our ill-fated 1975 playoff series against the Islanders, coach Marc Boileau dedicated an entire practice to shooting the puck into an empty net.

Great idea that didn’t work. We lost the pivotal Game 7, 1-0.