This isn’t so much an article as me poking into some things regarding our Penguins that piqued my curiosity. I thought I’d share my findings with our PenguinPoop readers.
It’s been mentioned numerous times during the team’s telecasts that we’re one of the best second-period clubs in the league and one of the worst in the third period, but I’d never seen the hard numbers. So I decided to track our goals for and against by period to see how we stacked up.
Stats are courtesy of NHL.com. An asterisk indicates a tie in the rankings.
| Period | Goals For | Goals Against | Diff | GF Rank | GA Rank |
| 1st | 62 | 72 | -10 | 18* | 21* |
| 2nd | 90 | 71 | 19 | 9* | 9* |
| 3rd | 78 | 90 | -12 | 20 | 24 |
| OT | 8 | 9 | -1 | 4 | 27* |
As advertised, the Pens are, indeed, one of the better second-period teams in the NHL. But in the first and third periods?
Woof.
We’re firmly entrenched in the bottom half of the league. And we rank among the worst teams in the league in goals allowed in the third period and overtime.
No great surprise, I guess, given our aging wheels and difficulty protecting leads.
Along those lines, I also wanted to get some sort of handle on how many games we lost that we should’ve won. By my very subjective and far from official tally, I count the following ten games.
| Date | Team | Result |
| Oct. 17 | MTL | 3-2 OT Loss |
| Nov. 1 | BOS | 6-5 OT Loss |
| Nov. 12 | MTL | 5-4 OT Loss |
| Dec. 28 | DET | 5-4 OT Loss |
| Jan. 28 | SJS | 6-4 Loss |
| Feb. 17 | NYI | 5-4 Loss |
| Mar. 9 | NYI | 4-3 OT Loss |
| Mar. 19 | MTL | 6-4 Loss |
| Mar. 20 | OTT | 2-1 Loss |
| Mar. 28 | DET | 7-4 Loss |
In nearly all these games, the Pens blew leads…often multiple-goal leads.
Shift them into the win column? We’d be 46-23-5 with 97 points and challenging for a top spot in the Metro, instead of scratching and clawing for a wild-card slot.
Alas, as the old saying goes, “If ifs and buts were candy and nuts.”
What hurts even worse? Seven of those losses are to teams well outside of the playoff picture. Then again, it’s been that kind of season.
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