The Penguins: 2023-2024, S.O.P.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same”, we have all heard that refrain. Many of the faces and names of our favorite flightless fowl have changed but every time I think I am about to hear a new tune from this hackneyed franchise, the drum beat strains of the song remains the same, S.O.P.

The above table lists our Pittsburgh Penguins opening night line up from last season (2022-2023) on the left and the line up Capfriendly is projecting for opening night 2023-2024. Even though team officials have given lip service to the idea of roster spot battles, the lack of certain prospects who played very well during the prospect challenge invited to training camp, while prospects that didn’t play as well are on that roster tells me that barring a prospect walking on water, the Capfriendly projection may be very close to the actual opening night lineup.

When I look down the two rosters and compare them, our forwards will be 1.5 years older, the same height but heavier a little more than 3lbs; so much for our forwards really being all that much faster, older, and heavier would seem to me to mean slower. Add in the complexity of our Coach’s system and there may be times when they will look like they are skating in mud.

On Defense they stayed roughly the same age, however, they shrunk a full inch and lost a little more than 3lbs. Unlike the forwards, these guys may be a little faster, but outside of Ryan Graves, the rest of that roster will be hard pressed to protect their net any better than last seasons empty sweaters, particularly when they will be asked to chase the puck around the defensive zone like 6-year-olds in our teams inverted system.

If you were simply looking for change, our new Penguins GM, Kyle Dubas gave you your wish, there will be many new faces and names on the roster this season. Rather than changing out the one person that could truly effect change on this team (the Coach), the Penguins brain trust chose to switch out players, wholesale.

Perhaps the 3 biggest changes to our black-and-gold roster will be the loss of Jason Zucker with Reilly Smith replacing him in an exchange of free agents, the block buster trade involving Jeff Petry and Erik Karlsson, and the signing of Lars Eller with the fans desire to remove Jeff Carter from the lineup. I am not going to bog down this post with Comparison Tables sewn in between my prose, but if you look at the end of the post, I will include several comparison charts.

Zucker vs Smith

I will start comparing Zucker to Smith. Looking at both the Individual and the on-ice numbers of Zucker and Smith, the team possibly did trade up a hair. Zucker has been a better Goal (G) scorer than Smith and drives more team offense in terms of Team G/60 minutes 5-on-5. However, Smith seems to be a better playmaker (Primary Assists/60 minutes) and better defensively with better CF% and GF% while having a lower Offensive Zone Start %.

See Table: 2

However, Zucker’s numbers may have been depressed from the number of injuries and the amount of time Coach Mike Sullivan kept trying to force the square peg into the round hole of playing with Evgeni Malkin. Zucker and Malkin only started to click as linemates last season.

More importantly, with both Sidney Crosby and Malkin often deferring from shooting to pass to Wingers, the addition of a playmaking Winger may not have been the most effective of moves. At this point in their careers, both “Core” Centers would better be served with shooters than playmakers.

Petry vs Karlsson

Looking at Petry’s and Karlsson’s numbers, if the team gave away a little personal offense for better team defense by exchanging Zucker for Smith, they reversed it big time in swapping our Petry for Karlsson. Karlsson has certainly put up better, personal offensive numbers compared to Petry, but when looking at team Offense and Defense Petry has certainly played better, particularly when looking at O-Zone Start %s. Despite benefitting from more than 11% more O-zone starts Petry’s numbers have been better over the last 3 seasons.

See Table 3

Letang vs Karlsson on the Power Play

Now there are some people who are looking forward to an improvement in the Penguins Power Play (PP). Therefore, I am going to delay talking about the Carter vs Eller issue to address some misguided thoughts.

Unfortunately, when crunching the numbers, the Kris Letang haters lose. The Core Defenseman has had better PP numbers all the way around over the last 3 seasons compared to Karlsson.

See Table 4

People can try and argue that Karlsson hasn’t had the benefit of playing with Crosby and Malkin before but the Crosby and Malkin that will be playing this season isn’t the Crosby and Malkin of 2015-2017. More importantly, our Penguins really haven’t been all that much better than the San Jose Sharks these past 3 seasons. Our Penguins may have snuck into the playoffs, unlike the Sharks, but they stunk once they got there. Their best chance to get to the 2^nd round was when the New York Rangers took them too lightly and their Goalie had a serious mental meltdown.

As anyone who has ever read anything I have written, over the last several years, I am no Letang fan, at least in the past. However, the results are the results and even though there were times I recommended trading him, he has shown to be the better PP Quarterback

Carter vs Eller

Jeff Carter has been a lightning rod and scapegoat for all of our Penguins’ ills. Many fans would blame him for everything from the Penguins failure to make the playoffs last year to the Economic woes and Climate Change. Nobody wants to look to closely at the Coach’s systems. Bad news Jeff Carter’s Haters Society, he has a full blown No Movement Clause (NMC). He isn’t going anywhere. You can’t even escape his contract by forcing him to retire. Since he was paid more in the first year of his contract, his Cap Hit would remain even if he retired.

More importantly, and please don’t mistake me for endorsing holding on to a fossil, but he has been at least equal, if not superior to Free Agent (FA) signing Lars Eller. Penguins’ management failed to really provide an adequate exit strategy to Carter. Capfriendly still lists Carter as our 3^rd line Center over Eller, on their Penguins Depth Chart, and the numbers support their projection.

See Table 5

Jarry

In the Department of complete lack of change, we still have the same old starting Goalie all the way around.

Sorry people, the signing of Tristan Jarry to his 5-year, $5.375 million per year contract may be the biggest blunder of this off-season. I am not going to weigh down this post with the numbers I posted this past summer, but not only has Jarry had a bad case of the injury bug at times, he also has displayed a pattern of disappearing after the 22^nd game he plays every season. Yes, he has been tapped to be in the All-Star game, thanks to the strong play of his first 22 games and the fact that the All-Star games rules have traditionally held that each team send a representative. (If anyone wants to argue about Jarry’s lack of ability after game 22 read my previous post in the archives section).

There are rumors to the effect that Dubas asked other team officials if there was a better alternative than Jarry and no one would offer up an alternative.

Sorry, but the question should have been is Jarry better than all the other alternatives and that answer would have to have been a definitive NO! if there is any honesty, integrity, and ability to judge talent in the organization. With Jarry not able to play more than 22 Games without tanking, he is a back-up Goalie and no back-up Goalie is worth $5+ million for 5-years. If the team is going to get poor Goaltending after the 22^nd Game Played (GP) they could do it far cheaper than $5+ million and in doing so, devote some of those resources to better Defensemen, ones capable of defending their own net.

Conclusions

The 2023-2024 Pittsburgh Penguins should be better than the team the post Trade Deadline 2022-2023 Penguins. However, that is no endorsement of this team’s chances to even get into the playoffs. The post Trade Deadline team couldn’t even beat 2 of the worst 3 teams in the league to sneak in the backdoor of the playoffs. In truth, the team that will, in all likelihood, start the 2023-2024 season may not be as good as the one that started the 2022-2023 season.

It is not that I don’t see possibilities in the organization. I do think there are players that could sneak this team back into the playoffs. My lack of faith in this team stems from the same old faces making the same old decisions.

There are no real battles for roster spots. Sullivan has already made up his intractable mind. The only way anyone outside Sullivan’s limited ability judge talent will even hope to get a chance later on this season (after injuries force our Coach’s hand) is if that player walks on water and displays generational talent. And even then, if that player is not in competition for the roster spot of a Coach’s pet.

If Sam Poulin and Jordan Frasca were given legitimate shots at the 3^rd and 4^th line roster spots, I would feel a lot better.

If Valtteri Puustinen was give a legitimate spot at a top 6 to middle 6 Right Wing spot, I would start having a little faith that there was a real change in the air.

If Dillon Hamaliuk and Radim Zohorna (although Zohorna may already be a little too old – thanks to Sullivan’s shriveling of prospects on the vine) were given a real look at a middle 6 spot, there would be some ray of hope.

If Isaac Belliveau were given extended ice time during preseason games (I think he still may need some time in Wilkes Barre – Scranton, but the exposure would do light years of benefit in fully and rapidly developing him) then I would believe the Coach finally learned something from his many past mistakes.

If Joel Blomqvist and Taylor Gauthier got good looks during preseason and if they earned it, occasional starts, even at the beginning of the season, with the big club, in an effort to form an exit strategy for Jarry, my blood pressure may stabilize.

If, when Jake Guentzel gets back, and Bryan Rust slips into one of his funks, Rust gets dropped to 3^rd line and Puustinen keeps his top 6 spot, there will be a real chance for the season.

If Jarry gets traded during his traditional hot start, I would stop being so depressed about our favorite flightless fowl’s future.

To paraphrase Jack Webb, “the season we are about to see is a rerun, only the names have been changed to defraud the fans into thinking the results will be different.”

Appendix