By Dave Molinari, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/
The Penguins stumbled to a 1-3 start this season, and closed out the first quarter on a 4-0-1 run.
Seems only fitting, considering the extreme highs and lows they experienced through the first 21 games.
They had goaltending that ranged from awful to awesome. Penalty-killing that was as outstanding as their power play was exasperating. Evgeni Malkin would be magical in one game and go missing the next.
Peter Diana/Post-GazettePenguins forward Sidney Crosby has scored 33 points this season.
The reassuring thing for the Penguins, if there is one, is that their 11-8-2 record puts them on pace for a 94-point season, even though they haven't come close to playing their best with any sort of regularity.
There's no guarantee they ever will, of course, but if they do, those who projected them as a serious contender for the Stanley Cup will have a reasonably good chance of being correct.
Some facts, figures and reflections from the first quarter of the season:
• It is impossible to say, with any degree of certainty, that Sidney Crosby will win another scoring championship or league MVP award this season. If he continues to perform the way he did through the first six weeks, however, betting against him will be no way to get rich.
• The Penguins have proven they're capable of playing pretty well in their own end. What they haven't shown is that they are able, or perhaps willing, to do in game-in and game-out. On more than a few occasions, their team defense has been about as airtight as a window screen.
• The No. 1 power-play unit features two of the most gifted forwards in the world, Crosby and Malkin, yet the Penguins enter the second quarter having scored on just 13.5 percent of their chances with the extra man. That was good for 25th place in the NHL rankings going into Saturday night's games and, based on the quality of the Penguins' work with the man-advantage much of the time, they're lucky to be that high. While there's nothing easy about this game, is getting pucks and bodies to the net as hard as the power play has made it look at times?
• Remember when rookie center Mark Letestu stunned people by putting up four goals and three assists in the first seven games? He has no goals and two assists in the 14 since. A reasonable level of production for Letestu, who is not in the league solely because of his ability to generate points, is somewhere in the middle.
• The Penguins have shown a willingness to block shots, especially when they're shorthanded. They're averaging 12.8 blocks per game, but that's down from 14.4 last season. The Mark Eaton/Jay McKee factor, perhaps?
• Few things in this sport are more obvious than when Marc-Andre Fleury is playing with confidence, as he has during his past five starts. He's much more patient and under control, and a lot less likely to rely on the poke-check that seems to cause him more problems than it solves. Fleury has, at various points in his career, shown just how good he can be. His challenge for the rest of this season -- and the balance of his career -- is to make protracted slumps a rarity, not a staple of his routine.
• A month and a half ago, signing Mike Comrie for $500,000 looked like it had real potential to be a classic low-risk, high-reward winner for general manager Ray Shero. It didn't take long for Comrie to play his way out of the lineup, however, and unless something dramatic happens, it's hard to imagine at this point that he will be much more than an afterthought here before moving on.
• If the Penguins got a point in the standings for every blind, backhand pass thrown by Crosby and Malkin, they'd have clinched home-ice advantage for every round of the playoffs by Halloween.
• Looking for a reason to believe the Penguins can improve on their record? How about this: Crosby is the only one of their big-ticket talents to regularly produce to expectations this season. Malkin and Fleury have been up and down, and newcomers Paul Martin and Zbynek Michalek have not played to the level they routinely reached with their former teams. If the top-earners on this team get their games in sync and keep them there, this group could do some serious damage.
• Most people seemed to recognize before this season that Jordan Staal was an important member of this club. Nothing he ever did on the ice, however, made that point as emphatically as his absence during the past six-plus weeks. If Staal is in the lineup, it's hard to imagine that things like the Penguins' third-period implosion against Boston Nov. 10 happen.
• The Penguins have taken seven of the past eight points up for grabs at Consol Energy Center. That's an encouraging pace, considering how poorly they fared there through the early weeks.
• Part of the reason the Penguins are reasonably well-positioned in the Atlantic Division and Eastern Conference races, despite all that has gone wrong so far, is the play of supporting-cast members like Deryk Engelland and Brent Johnson. The toughness and timely goaltending, respectively, they've contributed has been invaluable.
• Is it too late to fire Mike Yeo over the Penguins' wretched power play? Sure, he left the staff many months ago to become head coach of Minnesota's American Hockey League affiliate in Houston, but this has to be his fault, doesn't it?
Dave Molinari: dmolinari@post-gazette.com.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10325/1104968-61.stm#ixzz15vlI0JSu
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