The Penguins on Average

Typically, I like to do an update on the Penguins Prospects the first day of every new month during the season and I am planning on doing it. I have most of the what I want to post done. However, this is the last day of the old month and I want to wait and include the latest, updated stats for the month. Also, before I talk about the kids in the Penguins farm system and deeper, I want to talk about the state of our hometown hockey heroes.

In their last game of the month of November our favorite fightless, flightless fowl lost in overtime (OT) to a stripped-down version of the Carolina Hurricanes, a Canes team with 6 players on IR.

Now, if you are a critical reader, you no doubt picked up on the touch of negativity in my above comment. I am not completely down on our Penguins, we are not as bad as the Columbus Blue Jackets, Chicago Black Hawks, or Anaheim Ducks. However, I am realistic. The Black and Gold is an average team.

A quick look at the league’s average Points percentage (Pts%) shows the average Pts% as 0.554. Our Penguins have a Pts% of 0.565 this morning. In terms of actual points in the standings, the average team would have 25.484 points compared to our Penguins 26. We are average.

(If you are wondering how 0.554 is the league average and not 0.500, remember that OT losses count as 1 point while the winning team gets 2 points. That causes some games to be worth 3 points instead of 2, messing up the Pts%)

That begs the question, “How can a team that boasts Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin only be average?”

 A knee jerk answer might be that Crosby and Malkin aren’t as young as they once were and that much is true, but even at their ages Sid and Geno are still the 2 best forwards on this roster. In terms of Primary Points (Goals and First Assists)/60 5-on-5 (PP/60 5-on-5) our generational talents are still well above the league average at 2.75 and 2.30 respectively while the league average for a forward with more than 108 min played is 1.33. Therefore, our big Centers aren’t the problem.

(108 minutes of TOI was chosen as the cutoff point as it is 1 standard deviation below the mean for forwards.)

Jake Guentzel and despite the lack of love shown toward Kasperi Kapanen, Kapanen are also significantly above the league average at 2.30 and 2.02.

The players dragging down the forwards are Brock McGinn, Bryan Rust, Josh Archibald, and Jeff Carter. Unfortunately, the media and fans seem to give these forwards a pass and focus their criticisms on Kapanen.

On Defense, despite the fact that the media loves to tout how great our puck moving “D” are, only 1 of our regular 6 blueliners to be over the league average in PP/60 5-on-5 for Defensemen playing over 120 minutes (0.51 PP/60 5-on-5) is Jan Rutta. The rest of our D-Corps is not contributing to the offense, regardless of how the media and Coaching staff loves their puck moving skills. As I have written many times when the team tries to drive the offense through the defense, we are not the 1993-94 Washington Capitals. There are no guys named Sylvain Cote, Al Iafrate, Kevin Hatcher, or Calle Johansson on this roster.

(120 minutes of TOI was chosen as the cutoff point as it is 1 standard deviation below the mean for Defensemen.)

Looking at our Goalies, Tristan Jarry is well above the league average for Save Percentage (Sv%) 5-on5 for Goalies playing 240 minutes or more (0.930 vs 0.916). However, Jarry’s Goals Against Average (GAA) 5-on-5 under the same conditions is hovering more around the average (2.32 vs 2.56). That is usually an indication that the teams defense is not really cleaning their own zone up that well. Jarry is doing his part to keep from dropping below average.

Casey DeSmith on the other hand is below the league average in both Sv% and GAA (0.908 and 2.84).

So, what was the point of this exercise?

I have gone on record to say I don’t have a problem keeping the old core together, even if they lose some games as long as they are losing those games with younger players in supporting roles, younger players who can get better. However, I do have a problem with keeping an old core together and surrounding them with an old supporting cast.

This team is old, old and fighting to keep the final Wild Card spot in the playoffs. They are not Cup contenders. They are also rans hoping to have someone ask them to the Dance.

In a world of possibilities, if you want to argue that there is a possibility of them winning the Cup, if they get their foot in the door, you are right, there would be a possibility.

However, possibilities and probabilities are 2 different animals. Just because something is possible doesn’t make it probable. Furthermore, if the team continues to use the same players and same strategies, the probability of turning a possibility into reality gets smaller and smaller until it actually approaches zero.

And that leads me to the reason of this exercise, a lead into tomorrows post about our Penguins Prospects. It is time to stop playing the same old players hoping for different results. It is time to actually give one of the kids in Wilkes Barre – Scranton (WBS) a legitimate chance on the parent club. Our Coaches strategy of robbing Peter to pay Paul buy moving Rickard Rackell of Malkin’s line to buoy up Crosby’s line when Rust went cold was a tired and useless strategy. He should have brought up a kid from WBS and actually let that prospect get a chance to play with legitimate NHL talent.

And I don’t want to hear the pathetic status quo attempt of an excuse of the kid has to earn. Stop being a hypocrite. The veterans aren’t earning it either, so it is time to let give a kid a chance. The only two players our Penguins drafted under Mike Sullivan to get to the NHL for more than a whistle stop are Calen Addison and Filip Gustavsson and neither of those player went through our farm system, nor were buried by a coaching staff that doesn’t know how to teach kids how to play.