Thought about holding it off for the official clinching of a playoff ticket by the Penguins, but it’s an off day and close enough. Here’s a doozy to revisit from only seven months ago in mid-September, though it seems so much longer ago now. The Pensburgh article is entitled: “Bigger surprise for Penguins: playoffs or last place?” Now that we know how the season played out, it’s fun to see.
“In actuality, there probably won’t be 15 elements of best case scenario to all hit, one after another.”
Is how the article wrapped up, and it still feels fairly unbelievable that just so much went right for the Penguins. In fact, you can even find 15 scenarios that worked out as just about the best possible way.
Advertisement
-
Anthony Mantha has 31 goals and 61 points, scoring an eye-popping 2.62 points per 60 at 5v5
-
Erik Karlsson has been playing at about a Norris caliber level, particularly in the second half of the season
-
Dan Muse is in the conversation for the Jack Adams award
-
Egor Chinakhov appeared out of thin air and has 17 goals and 33 points in 40 games with the Pens, producing at an almost unheard of 2.92 5v5 P/60 rate
-
Ben Kindel did what almost never happens as a non top-10 draft picking stepping into the NHL at draft+1 and often being one of the better players on the ice as an 18-year old
-
Parker Wotherspoon went from NHL bargain bin free agent signing to legitimately solid first pair defenseman
-
Ryan Shea continued his progression into a steady and confident player
-
Evgeni Malkin increased his statistical output from age-38 (50 points in 68 games) to his age-39 season (59 points in 54 games), taking his 5v5 P/60 from 1.65 in 2024-25 (a career-low) back up to 2.49 this year, his highest rate since 2019-20
-
Justin Brazeau (17) set a career-high in goals, more than doubling his career total of 16 goals that he entered the season
-
The fourth line became a massive positive difference maker; Connor Dewar notched highs in goals (14) and points (30), Acciari got back to double-digit goals for the first time since 2022-23, Blake Lizotte has been amazing when healthy.
-
Tommy Novak shrugged off a bad 2024-25 and got back to his 2022-24 levels of a 40+ point season
-
Sidney Crosby remained Sidney Crosby, even at age 38 (72 points in 66 games)
-
The power play sits at 6th in the NHL at 24.7%, essentially holding status quo from finishing 6th last season (25.8%)
-
Penalty kill is 8th in the NHL at 81.7%, after spending much of the season in the top-5, improving from 18th in 2024-25
OK, that’s 14, but you get the idea. Maybe in the preseason it could be hoped for a few of those bullet points working out, though some are beyond the realm of even dreaming up and counting on happening. Turns out, every single one of them did. That’s how a team becomes a shocking success story when so many over-perform realistic expectations.
Let’s see just how much the bright side hit, from the preseason prognostication:
On the bright side: Dan Muse’s coaching helps tightened up the defense a little better than the pure personnel would suggest, and that in turn helps Tristan Jarry have a bounce-back. Maybe the team even gets a surprise when Arturs Silovs figures things out at the NHL level and becomes a capable 1B type of goalie. The roster gets managed to the point where struggling veterans of the past (Kevin Hayes, Noel Acciari, Ryan Graves, Danton Heinen, etc) see their roles drastically reduced, if not taken off the NHL roster entirely via trades or waivers, and in their place young players like Owen Pickering, Ville Koivunen, Rutger McGroarty, Tristan Broz and Avery Hayes all form a 2016-ish type of wave of new talent to help the stars. And the stars shine, Sidney Crosby plays like Sidney Crosby, but the big surprise is that Evgeni Malkin doesn’t go gentle into the night and plays/produces more than last season. It also helps that across the division that none of the Islanders, Flyers or Blue Jackets are better than expected and the Rangers’ strife continues.
A lot of that came to pass, starting with Muse who infused a new energy and freshened up the place. Silovs has had his ups and downs but as technically still an NHL rookie (by league classification) he’s done well. Goaltending for the Penguins has been better than the previous year, but it’s really not carrying them or a leading reason they had a successful season. It’s been an offensively-led club, Pittsburgh’s 3.55 goals/game ranks second in the NHL and while everyone could see that the Pens had some quality forwards it would have been fairly crazy to predict they’d be a top-five goal generating team in the league this year, until it happened.
The Penguins may have collected bad contracts but the nuance is that they didn’t play bad players K. Hayes saw his games go from 64 in 2024-25 to just 25 this year, Dumba, Graves and Heinen were all waived. Acciari, as he’s destined to do, soldiered one and rightfully kept a spot in the NHL lineup through his play. Connor Clifton also settled into a regular spot when picked up for nothing.
Advertisement
The young player glow-up didn’t come from expected ways. Koivunen and McGroarty both disappointed, Pickering hasn’t been seen in the NHL. It took Kindel, Chinakhov, Avery Hayes and Elmer Soderblom to give the lineup some youthful flourishes. But the team didn’t succeed mainly because of youth, it remained older players in key roles. Malkin had a solid season, Sidney Crosby is Sidney Crosby. Bryan Rust has 64 points in 70 games, Rickard Rakell missed time with injury but still managed 24-goals and 48 points in 54 games. Mantha exploded, Karlsson played like a Hall of Famer. That’s the backbone of the team and besides the fading Kris Letang, almost every single 30+ year old veteran had incredibly awesome seasons (well, Graves is 30 too but everyone has long since given up hope for him, so you get the idea).
The other unknown element from September would be how Kyle Dubas would improve the team. Tristan Jarry started hot, but as he always does, plays worse in the second half of the season than the first and has now lost his starting job in Edmonton. Getting Stuart Skinner wasn’t a massive upgrade, but it did give a steadier goalie, plus Brett Kulak, who became Sam Girard. The Chinakhov find deserves every bit of praise and joy it gets, adding Soderblom also looks like a good call. Dubas has had that managerial magic touch lately where all his moves seemingly hit.
Here was our worst case scenario at the other end of the spectrum:
And the darker outlook: Dan Muse is Mike Johnston 2.0 as a coach who proves to be better at developmental levels than the NHL. The defensive personnel plays to their talent level, which is not a pretty picture. The goaltending doesn’t have much of a chance, but doesn’t prop the team much up either. Then either through practical purposes or slow markets, the Pens aren’t willing/able to make sweeping changes and drop multiple under-performing veterans, so the Graves/Hayes/Acciari class of players continues to amble along with uninspiring NHL play, blocking younger players to the minors for much of the season. The best players on the team, all 30+, have some injuries in their ranks and players like Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell can’t replicate career-best seasons from last year. Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang’s play continues to diminish. It’s a long, cold winter in Pittsburgh and when it breaks they’re at the bottom of the division and among the lowest-performing teams in the league. That leads to a 7-9% chance of winning the lottery, but they don’t and draw the sixth overall pick
You never know the impact of a coach, it’s safe to say Muse has past the test to show a level of competency in his first season, to say the least. The other main element that you have to put yourself in shoes from seven months and almost 80 games ago is the defense. It did look horrible; Karlsson was spinning his wheels, Wotherspoon and Shea hadn’t earned trust or demonstrated their competency, Girard wasn’t even a trade rumor, etc. The defense still even might not be great, but well above passable compared to the perception it had coming into the year.
Advertisement
Not too much of the pessimistic case hit. Letang’s decline hasn’t been graceful but that’s about the single area that fits – besides Koivunen, McGroarty and Pickering all being in Wilkes-Barre for most the season. That says more about their own personal development at this point, unfortunately, than it does about being blocked by middling vets who don’t have any business blocking them out of NHL opportunities.
Add it all up and it was an unpredictable year of massive success for the Penguins. Their playoff spot is all but confirmed as they rocket along towards what looks like a second place finish in the division. It took a year of surprises and best case scenarios playing out to get to one of the more exciting and fulfilling seasons this team has had in a long time.
