At The Quarter Pole: The Penguins, After 20 Games

From other teams’ perspective, this is becoming a good horse race.  However, from the perspective of the Pittsburgh Penguins, the defending Stanley Cup champions are reluctantly slowing down and coming back to the pack of horses chasing them as roughly one-quarter of the 2009-10 regular season has elapsed.  After twenty games, including a highly entertaining 6-5 overtime win at home over Boston this evening, the Penguins are 13-7-0 and sit in fourth place in the Eastern Conference.  Not bad at all, as this projects over an eighty-two game schedule to a theoretical record of 53-29-0 and 106 points, certainly well within the standard range of a division winner or top playoff seed.  Unfortunately, the Penguins’ recent 2-4-0 record thus far in November stands in stark contrast to the torrid start Pittsburgh had in October when they posted an 11-3-0 mark.

The Pittsburgh Penguins were more like Pittsburgh thoroughbreds in October as they came flying out of the starting gate when the opening day bells sounded.  Starting with their opening 3-2 win against New York Rangers on Friday, October 2, the Penguins won nine of their first ten games including key road victories against Atlantic Division rivals New York Islanders and Philadelphia Flyers.  Goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury won his first eight starts and posted a sparkling 1.96 GAA and .926 SV% before he finally lost, to New Jersey, 4-1 on Saturday, October 24 at Mellon Arena.

Captain Sidney Crosby, as expected, was a big contributor to the team’s opening month success.  During Pittsburgh’s first twelve games, Crosby scored nine goals including a hat trick in a 6-1 romp over Montreal.  In a home game against Florida, the Penguins looked listless, down 2-0, until Crosby took over after the second intermission.  He scored on the power-play and shorthanded in the third period to tie the game, then scored the only shootout goal to give Pittsburgh the victory.  The following week at Columbus, Crosby again carried the team when he assisted on the game-tying goal with under three minutes remaining in regulation, then scored the lone shootout goal again to steal the game away from the Blue Jackets.

Yet during the Penguins’ October success, there were signs that their scorching pace would not continue due to a rash of injuries to key personnel.  In a home game versus St. Louis on October 20, power-play quarterback Sergei Gonchar suffered a broken left wrist, forcing him to the sidelines for four to six weeks.  Following the loss to the Devils on October 24, it was announced that right wing Tyler Kennedy, who had three game winning goals in the Penguins’ first six games, would be sidelined due to an undisclosed injury.  He missed three games, returned for a win at Anaheim contributing two assists, but has not played since then, missing five more games.  Also, after the victory over Montreal on October 28, Evgeni Malkin went to the sidelines with a shoulder strain that required two weeks of rest.  Malkin had scored four goals and ten assists in twelve games at the time of his injury.

Like a cruel joke, the Penguins’ injury situation escalated almost by the game.  Defenceman Kris Letang suffered a right shoulder contusion during a 5-0 shutout loss at San Jose.  In the next contest this past Tuesday at Boston, defenceman Brooks Orpik left in the first period with a lower-body injury that will keep him out of action for at least two weeks.  Then, this morning, the Penguins announced that left wing Chris Kunitz would similarly be on the shelf with a lower-body injury for two weeks.

Predictably, with one-half of their defence corps hurt plus key forwards Malkin and Kennedy sidelined, the Penguins were mired in a four-game losing streak before winning tonight.  Pittsburgh did not score on twenty-five power play chances without Malkin in the lineup.  Players from Pittsburgh’s AHL affiliate at Wilkes-Barre Scranton have been pressed into service including defenceman Deryk Engelland (no previous NHL experience) and Ben Lovejoy (two NHL career games).  Speedy forward Chris Conner, since returned to the AHL, played six games for the parent club while tonight, forward Mark Letestu made his NHL debut.

In addition to the downgrade in experience and talent level, the addition of newcomers means that Pittsburgh has to constantly shuffle line combinations and defence pairings.  It can be very difficult for forwards to mesh quickly when they have had very little time, except in a game-day skate, to play together.  The same concept is true for blueliners.

Hope is on the horizon however.  Malkin returned tonight against the Bruins, leading all forwards with 26:37 of ice time, was +3 and notched three assists including the game-tying helper on Bill Guerin’s goal with four-tenths of a second remaining in regulation.  Maxime Talbot, who has not played a game this season due to off-season shoulder surgery, has been practicing and may be ready to play in ten days while Gonchar had the cast removed from his wrist recently and may be ready for full-contact practice in one week.

Sources: penguins.nhl.com, Yahoo! Sports Penguins’ page