2022-23 NHL team preview: Pittsburgh Penguins

LAST SEASON

If there’s any surprise from the Penguins’ 2021-22 season, it’s how well they weathered the storm for the first month without Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. While a 3-2-2 record is far from perfect, they held their own until Crosby came back on Oct. 30, when they started to return to a more normal amount of Penguins success, and then they were 20-9-5 by the time Malkin returned on Jan. 11.

Their season wasn’t exactly in jeopardy without it, though, as like every other playoff team in the Eastern Conference, the Pens qualified by an extremely comfortable margin, which for them was 19 points, with a 46-25-11 record, good enough for third in the Metropolitan Division. However, their playoff aspirations were cut a bit short, with a first-round exit in Game 7 overtime to the New York Rangers, partially due to all of the goalie injuries Pittsburgh had to deal with.

But the biggest storyline of the Pens' season wasn’t on the ice, it was off the ice. Both Malkin and Kris Letang needed new contracts at the end of 2021-22, and it sounded like they were both growing further and further apart in negotiations as free agency approached. It went to the 11th hour, but both players signed new deals, and on top of a revamped defense corps, we have an interesting Penguins team for 2022-23.

KEY ADDITIONS & DEPARTURES

Additions
Jeff Petry, D
Ty Smith, D
Jan Rutta, D
Josh Archibald, RW
Drake Caggiula, C
Ryan Poehling, C
Dustin Tokarski, G
Xavier Ouellet, D

Departures
John Marino, D (NJ)
Mike Matheson, D (Mon)
Evan Rodrigues, C (Col)
Louis Domingue, G (NYR)

OFFENSE

It’s hard not to talk about the Penguins' offense without first talking about the two-headed monster down the middle in Crosby and Malkin. Both players are still insanely good, even as they find themselves at 35 and 36 this season, with both finishing above a point per game last season and Crosby tying for the team lead in points with 84 despite missing 13 games. Those two will continue to be a tough matchup for teams, especially when you can’t heavily match up against one without letting the other one loose.

Beyond them, Jake Guentzel continues to impress as a scoring winger for the team and is one of the few the Pens have had in this era who isn’t entirely a product of his two centers. He was the guy Crosby tied with in points, notching his second 40-goal season in the process. Likewise, Bryan Rust has also proven to be a player worth holding on to, as he got his contract extension and continues to make a great pair with Malkin.

Beyond that, the Pens still have some strong top-six options to surround those pieces. They brought back deadline acquisition Rickard Rakell to complement this group after he performed well in his brief time in Pittsburgh last season, and one of Jason Zucker or Kasperi Kapanen will likely round out that group. Zucker has certainly underperformed since the team acquired him at the 2020 deadline, while Kapanen continues to be a player with a good toolbox of skills but who struggles to turn that into results in the NHL. Whoever falls onto the third line will play with Jeff Carter, the team’s third-line center, who still has a scoring touch even at 37.

DEFENSE

On the back end, the staple piece is Letang, who brings the most offense from Pittsburgh’s defense corps but also is a criminally underrated defender with his offense tricking many into thinking he’s just an offensive defenseman. Somehow at 35, he had his best offensive season with a career-high 68 points, showing he’s still got plenty of gas left in the tank.

Behind him, it’s a completely revamped defense group. Brian Dumoulin and Marcus Pettersson are all that remains of last year’s blueline, with Mike Matheson and John Marino both out the door. Dumoulin has struggled a bit more as a defender since his prime years during Pittsburgh’s 2016 and 2017 Cup runs, but he still handles the shutdown minutes and brings a physical edge, while Marcus Pettersson is more of an analytics darling and is one of their better play-drivers on the back end.

New to the team are Jeff Petry, Jan Rutta, and Ty Smith. Petry has almost consistently been a great defender throughout his career, with the exception being last year, so the Pens are banking on him doing better now that he’s away from Montreal. Rutta is a bit underrated from those Tampa Bay Cup runs, although he probably only has a few good years left in him at 32 considering his play style. Smith likely rounds out this group, and certainly brings potential as a first-round pick of the New Jersey Devils, but he hasn’t quite figured it out in the NHL yet.

GOALTENDING

The Pens will once again look to Tristan Jarry and Casey DeSmith in net, a duo that has proven to be reliable for them when healthy. Jarry rebounded from a rough season in 2020-21 with a .919 save percentage in 56 games, although injuries sidelined his postseason appearance until Game 7, where he was thrown to the wolves against Igor Shesterkin of all goalies.

It feels like DeSmith has been with the Penguins forever, but this will be just his fifth season for Pittsburgh, and he’s been about as steady as backups go, comfortably falling into that .910-.920 SV% range every year. He had a .914 mark in 2021-22 and was supposed to be the team’s starter in the playoffs with Jarry out but got hurt halfway through the second overtime period and didn’t return, although he stopped 48 of 51 shots in that game.

COACHING

This season will be Mike Sullivan’s eighth behind the bench for the Pittsburgh Penguins, as he has already coached the second most games for the franchise with an overall 237-126-42 record. They also rank eighth in shot attempt share and fifth in expected goal share at even strength since he took over, thanks to a strong offensive system that revolves around the big three in Pittsburgh.

If there’s any concern with Sullivan, it’s the team’s lack of success in the postseason since those Cup wins in 2016 and 2017. They have just one playoff series win since, coming against the Philadelphia Flyers in 2018, and have lost five straight series since then, including a surprising upset to the 12th seed Montreal Canadiens in the playoff bubble in 2020. However, the Pens gave Sullivan a three-year contract extension just a few weeks ago, running until 2027, so there aren’t any internal concerns about his effectiveness yet. Despite the Pens battling injury woes year in and year out, he keeps them competitive.

ROOKIES

Honestly, it’s hard to see any rookies making noise for the Penguins this season, for two reasons. First, they seemed to have a lot of their roster decided, with plenty of experienced NHL-caliber players to choose from, even further down the depth chart. Secondly, they don’t exactly have a strong prospect pool to choose from, the result of almost two decades of success, and therefore low draft picks, in the Crosby era, as well as dealing plenty of picks and prospects to keep the roster competitive.

Maybe the best prospect likely to get some time with the team is defenseman Pierre-Oliver Joseph, who still qualifies as a rookie with just 20 games under his belt at this point. He’s looked great so far in his brief stint, and certainly deserves a look when he can get one, although he still sits seventh at best on their depth chart on defense. He’ll have to beat out Smith if he wants to crack the opening-night lineup. Aside from Joseph, it’s slim pickings for the rookies, so I wouldn’t expect too much out of that group for the Penguins in 2022-23. Perhaps right winger Samuel Poulin forces his way into the picture later this season if he makes strides in the AHL.

BURNING QUESTIONS

1. Can this team get one more Cup out of the Crosby era? While the Penguins haven’t been consistently winning championships in the Crosby era, they are still one of the most successful teams since he joined the league, and their three Cups tie the Chicago Blackhawks for the most in the salary cap era. But the main core is also much older than it was on Pittsburgh’s past Cup-winning teams, with just one playoff series win since their last Cup as well. Will this year’s iteration be any different from the last five?

2. Can Tristan Jarry get it done in the playoffs? Jarry has established himself as a quality starter in the NHL, something the Penguins have lacked since the tandem of Marc-Andre Fleury and Matt Murray in the 2016 and 2017 Cup-winning years. But Jarry hasn’t been able to do the job so far in the postseason. Part of the problem has been staying healthy, with two playoff runs that saw him play just one game (and lose both), but a 2021 playoff showing where he posted a .888 save percentage in the Pens’ 4-2 series loss to the New York Islanders shows it isn’t just the injuries. If the Penguins want another Cup before the old core retires, he needs to show that he can be consistent in the playoffs.

3. How will the revamped defense corps look? Gone are Marino and Matheson, in come Petry, Rutta and Smith. Petry is a great addition if he can rebound from a horrendous season in Montreal, which seems likely considering that everyone was horrendous on Montreal last season, and Rutta can still be a reliable defender for the first couple of years of his new deal. However, Smith is a bit more of a wild card, especially considering he’s part of the return for Marino. The Penguins made the biggest changes on the blueline in the offseason, so that’s likely going to be the difference maker from last season if they want another Cup.

PREDICTION

As long as the main group of Crosby, Malkin, and Letang stay healthy and don’t fall off a cliff, this team will still be competitive and probably make the playoffs. It’d be quite the spectacle to see how bad it would have to be for them to miss it, but if it was going to happen, it would have been last season when Crosby and Malkin were out to start the season.

The real question with this team is always how far they go in the playoffs. They haven’t made too much noise there since their Cup wins, and they’ll need to soon if they want to get at least one more Cup while their big guns are still in the NHL. I think they can hold their own against any team in their division, but I also thought that for the last few years, so it’s just a matter of if they can piece it together and get hot at the right time.