Crosby and Malkin have been turning back time in Pittsburgh
The Pittsburgh Penguins have been surprising a lot of the hockey world with their 6-2-0 start to the season. With a 5-3 victory over the Florida Panthers giving them four wins in a row, they are keeping pace with the rest of the playoff teams in the Metropolitan Division.
Driving that success has been the Penguins’ two long-time franchise icons in Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. Crosby has a team-leading six goals to go along with five assists, while Malkin is leading in points with 12. It looks like they’re playing how they were 15 years ago right now, and it’s made a big difference for the Penguins.
Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton talked about the Penguins and how impactful Crosby and Malkin have been for them this season on Daily Faceoff Live.
Tyler Yaremchuk: The Penguins have won four in a row. They’re 6-2-0 on the year. There’s a couple of really fascinating angles here. One is that Sid and Gino seem to be turning back the clock. They’ve combined for 23 points on the season here.
Will this last? I don’t know. But once you get to 10-15 games, the sample size grows. You never know with the loser point. With how tight the NHL is, you never know how long a good start can just allow you to linger in that playoff conversation.
Carter Hutton: Yeah, you stay in the hunt. Then it relieves a lot of pressure. You don’t make the playoffs in the first month, but you can fall out of it. And I’ve been in that situation many times on teams where later in the year when you’re eight points out, all of a sudden you’ll have a run where you go 4-1 and you look at the standings and you didn’t even move anywhere, because everybody’s collecting points and it’s so hard to play from behind and catch up.
You look at Malkin, he looks rejuvenated. I don’t know if this is a player who’s going to stay in Pittsburgh as it starts to stretch out down the run, but he’s been very good. Even you look at a guy like Justin Brazeau who’s gone there, and he has five goals and eight points. He’s been a product of Malkin playing so well, a big body who knows how to get the space and has been bounced around from other teams.
And then again, Crosby is just the fountain of youth. He’s got six [goals] and five [assists] right now. There’s no slowing down for this hockey team.
They’ve taken a lot of criticism by the way that they’ve been built through Dubas. Him coming in. Are they rebuilding? Should they start selling assets? But right now, it looks status quo for the Pens, and they’re in the mix, in probably the weakest division in the NHL, you could say. So they have a legit chance to maybe be in the hunt for one of those wild card spots as the season rolls on.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Yeah. And listen, you can only beat the teams that are in front of you. So I always think it’s a little bit unfair to be pointing at a team’s schedule.
And some people are doing that with Pittsburgh. It’s like, they beat the Rangers, no one really knows what the Rangers are. They beat the Islanders. They got a win against the Kings, who are really sputtering to start the year as well. One against the Sharks. One against the Canucks. Both of those teams, again, not off to great starts either.
But last night you go and beat the Florida Panthers, and again, not the Florida Panthers that won the Stanley Cup, with no Barkov and no Tkachuk, but still a really damn good hockey team. And at some point, again, you can only beat the teams who are in front of you.
You can watch the full episode here…