Pittsburgh Penguins Scouting Report: What to Watch for This Year

Jake Guentzel: For a first-line, star winger, he was not overly noticeable in most of the games I watched. Guentzel has a quality snapshot and one-timer from his off-wing. He drives the net well and doesn’t peel away once he gets close like many players do, which speaks to his fearlessness and why he is an effective goal scorer. He also provides a net-front presence on the power play, though as he is undersized, I am concerned about the longevity of his back. Also, he’s not a driver at all, he very much needs someone to create the play for him.

Bryan Rust: Rust’s biggest problem last season was consistent engagement. While I’d read repeatedly last season that he’d lost a step, the truth is that his wheels seem to show up, simply not consistently. He often got caught not moving his feet and took a penalty as a result. Teams that win consistently in both the regular season and playoffs do not take many of these types of penalties.

Evgeni Malkin: Malkin is a puck-driving offensive savant, even on borrowed time with those knees. His vision for what’s to come and ability to read the play is impeccable. In multiple games, Malkin created scoring chances by driving to the left around compromised defensemen. He seemed somewhat averse to contact though (unless the player was much smaller), and the pure sniping ability you can see is still in his mind did not translate to his hands or shot accuracy. His 27 goals on 240 shots (11.25%) last year is a clear downturn from his career 13.5% shooting percentage, and not likely to improve at age 37.

Rickard Rakell: Ten games worth of watching tape and this is all I’ve got: Great shot, great ability to get open, clear chemistry with Malkin. Good skater. No feel for him defensively; that would have to change come playoff time. He’s not a driver, however, he is a pure finisher, someone teams need to win big games.

Reilly Smith (from his playoff games with Vegas Golden Knights): Solid top-six or top-nine forward (small flag that he doesn’t flash as an absolute top-six). Good skater who has some feistiness to his game. Good hands. Defensive value has been overblown, though as all the Vegas players showed, he sure can play in a shutdown system. I do wonder how much his chemistry with Jonathan Marchessault boosts his value, and if he can recapture that with Crosby early on, and Geno throughout the season.

Noel Acciari (watched all his Toronto regular season and playoff games): Huge fan of Acciari. He plays that game, the one that as a defenseman who has to go and pick up a dumped-in puck, you hate to play against. Oftentimes with five to nine legit, let-him-know-you’re-there hits per game is not uncommon for Acciari. He engaged far more often than he’s not, which you need to even get through the regular season and into the playoffs. He’s good defensively, and to top it off, he can score goals. He scores goals in the playoff goal zone, that five-to-seven-foot area around the front of the net where you pay the price to score a tip-in or rebound goal (which will one day be renamed Joe Pavelski Way). He’s that guy, and he will definitely sell jerseys at PPG Paints Arena.

Jeff Carter: The much-maligned Carter’s offensive instincts are still there and are still world-class. He has that Brett Hull-esque way of slowly sneaking into a scoring position undetected. Over the course of two games, Carter scored three goals this way, finding openings as defensemen went down low to challenge a puck carrier, and one-timing the puck past a laterally moving goalie trying to track the puck coming from behind the icing line.

Lars Eller: This signing, I don’t get it. He’s not fast enough to be a third-line center anymore, and he’s not going to impose his physical or intellectual will on a game. While he’s better defensively than Jeff Carter, one of the games I watched saw him getting beat into position by a Penguins’ forward who immediately scored a goal. It was a perfect microcosm of his limitations. He’s an average 4C with a known name playing for a true contender and will need to be upgraded.

Defensemen

Kris Letang: One of the games I watched was the contest against the Florida Panthers after Letang’s father had passed away a few days prior. Letang is fearless, both in his plan and frankly, the fact that he could rise to the occasion in the wake of such an emotional real-life situation. He had two goals, two assists, and the game-winning goal in overtime. He has fearless offensive creativity, driving offense from defense in a way that only a few others in the game can, even in his mid-30s. Frankly, it was more than incredible, it was inspiring. Kris Letang is someone that every human being can cheer for.

The Right-Handed Mishmash: Jeff Petry played a very, very high-event game. He was on for goals for, he was the cause of multiple goals against in multiple games. It’s not what you want out of a second-pair defenseman. His foot speed had been re-wrapped and sent back to Santa’s Village; he looked like he was in molasses. He was absolutely not the player of two seasons prior. If you’re going to have a high-event defenseman, you want someone who will be on the right side (pun!) of the scoring ledger, and that’s Erik Karlsson. Karlsson’s speed and fluidity will be a welcome contrast to Petry’s lack thereof, though Karlsson will certainly still have his defensive moments, as Penguins fans have grown accustomed to with Letang himself. A deeper look at the difference between Karlsson and Petry last year can be found here, where you’ll see that despite his defensive reputation, Karlsson’s analytics are far stronger than Petry’s. Karlsson wins virtually every category, and the ones he doesn’t win are only lost by a fraction of a percent.

Marcus Petterson: In the 10 or so games, I’ve noticed him being on for one goal against. That’s it. Overall, it was a great year for him, and no surprise that San Jose was rumored to be asking for him as part of the Karlsson trade. He is ultra-low event, stout defensively, the exact kind of player who Karlsson and Letang will both greatly enjoy playing with this year.

Pierre-Olivier Joseph: Joseph is a young defenseman in the NHL with top-four upside. Joseph is more offensively inclined, however, you can see enough defensive IQ for him to be a second-pair defenseman in his prime. He’s not there yet though, so on a team that’s trying to win, he needs protected minutes. Todd Reirden, the defensive-coaching savant who normally seems to bring out the best in defensemen, didn’t always protect Joseph. This is good on one hand for development, but it cost the team on more than one occasion late in the third period. Joseph is a good pincher; however, he needs to trust his team enough to sometimes dump the puck back in the corner and let them cycle rather than try to force a great play, especially in the third period when Pittsburgh has the lead.

Ty Smith: Caught some of Smith against last season’s historically inept Anaheim team. Smith walks the blue line with the puck on the power play with the level of skill necessary to quarterback a second power-play unit. He is a good skater with good vision and quick puck movement. It will be interesting to see how the extra year in the AHL, where he should have been playing 25 minutes a game and dominating, did for his development.

Chad Ruhwedel: A true seventh defenseman who may start the season as their number six because he’s right-handed. Hockey IQ is crucial to success, and his is limited. Offensive zone blueline positioning, he stands the way we did at 10 years old, hunched over, heavy on the stick, not ready to move. Our coaches taught us out of that so that we’d be mobile and able to read and react to the play. Ruhwedel can’t. In the defensive zone, he will over-commit to one play, leaving the puck carrier open to check down to his second option and make a play. If he plays over 40 games again next year, Pittsburgh will again be in trouble to make the playoffs.  

Goalies

The departed Casey DeSmith was the goalie in virtually every game I saw, so I’ve got no real notes on Tristan Jarry. We all know the situation with Jarry – he’s athletic and talented, but can he stay healthy throughout the year and into the playoffs? By the end of the last game I watched of DeSmith, I fully believed that he could be a 1B in the NHL. If Pittsburgh could have replaced either Brian Dumoulin or Petry with a solid 3-4 defensive defenseman last season, they would have made the playoffs last year regardless, based on the back of DeSmith’s play throughout the season.

The Coaching Staff

The system that once won the Stanley Cup two years in a row didn’t work. The coaches couldn’t keep the noise from the general manager’s box out of the dressing room. The players played like the noise was weighing them down. This led to uninspired hockey, as was clear when they let a playoff spot slip out of their hands in the last month and week of the season.

Two questions spring to mind.

The first is, “Does Mike Sullivan still have the ears and hearts of this dressing room?”

The second, “Does Sullivan’s supposedly strong defensive system still work?”

Yes, he won two Stanley Cups, six years ago. Yes, he has the respect of the leadership group of the team. However, can Sullivan still drive this team to their singular goal of the Stanley Cup? There were issues with management last year, as management and the coaching staff were not on the same page. And through that, someone considered one of the best coaches in the game could not stop a team with multiple future Hall of Famers from having six wins and nine losses in the 15 games through game 81, costing Pittsburgh a playoff spot. Kyle Dubas did not hire Mike Sullivan, and while Dubas is a modern management type who can get along with people who are not his hires, he is as shrewd and ruthless as he needs to be in any situation.

There are more issues, such as:

From a “We want to win the Stanley Cup” perspective, the most important takeaway from all of this is that the NHL is not only a game of inches, of having the best analytics staff, or best pro scouting staff. It is now a game won and lost by both coaching and hockey IQ. Coaching leads to systems; coaching leads to decision-making, both on the bench by the coaching staff and by the players, which shows the players’ decision-making under pressure. If the team is playing a strong system, your players will be in better positions to make plays. Once there, the player needs to make the right decision, knowing when to make the high-percentage play and when to chance the low-percentage play.

With the acquisition of Erik Karlsson and the remaking of both Pittsburgh’s bottom-six forwards and top-four defense, this team has high expectations. Expectations that are likely too high for this current incarnation. Should this season not start well through December, do not be surprised if tough decisions are made. As the adage goes, you can’t trade the entire team, but a head coach is very easy to get rid of.

Bonus: Hockey fans, if you haven’t seen season one of Shoresy, do yourself a favor and check it out. The best fictional take on hockey since Slap Shot, Shoresy is an insane, turned-up-to-ten illustration of life as a hockey player who’s not in “the show”. It’s on Crave in Canada and Hulu in the US, and the second season drops in late September in Canada and late October in the US. This is not a paid ad, simply a recommendation from one die-hard hockey fan to another. Shoresy will never lose again, and you’ll love the NOSHO.