Number Crunch: Doerrie Praises The Penguins’ Second Line

Wednesday’s episode of The Daily Faceoff Show with Tyler Yaremchuk (filling in for Frank Seravalli) and Mike McKenna featured the weekly visit from Rachel Doerrie, who walked through some good, bad, and ugly performances in Number Crunch.

Let’s start off with the good, which was the Pittsburgh Penguins’ second line.

No Crosby? No Malkin? No problem. The Penguins are 2-0-2 through the first week of play despite both of their star centers watching from the Injured Reserve. According to Doerrie, the key to the Penguins’ early success has been the team’s second line of Kasperi Kapanen, Evan Rodrigues, and Jason Zucker…

“Pittsburgh’s second line had a really rough night against Dallas on Tuesday night, but, going into that game, their second line of Kasperi Kapanen, Jason Zucker, and Evan Rodrigues have been absolutely fantastic.

They played 44.5 minutes together at even-strength and they’re rocking an expected goal share of 68 percent. Scoring chances for, 64 percent, and they’re generating a ton of high-danger chances, if you look at that share, it’s 61.5 percent.

The key here is none of them are shooting at a particularly unsustainable percentage. They’re all actually shooting at a really low percentage, so if this continues I would expect some of these chances to start going in for them and for them to start producing at a much higher level.”

Next up, Doerrie went into detail about how bad the Chicago Blackhawks have been, as they’ve allowed a goal against in the first minute of play in two of their four games thus far. She also talked about the Montreal Canadiens’ miserable start and why it isn’t at all surprising despite their run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2021.

You can watch the full episode here…