Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - Chronicling the Penguins historic win over the Islanders...

Episode Date: December 28, 2023

The Pittsburgh Penguins put up one heck of a performance against the New York Islanders on Wednesday night and Patrick Damp is BACK with Hunter Hodies to break it all down on Thursday. They discuss how the Penguins blitzed the Islanders in the second period and showed no mercy for the rest of the game. They dive into how the Penguins were able to finally solve Ilya Sorokin since he's been so good against them and how the Penguins were able to play smart hockey while also getting offensive looks. After that, they dive into Kris Letang's historic night and how he continues to have one hell of a season for the Penguins before shouting out Valtteri Puustinen, Evgeni Malkin, Drew O'Connor, and Marcus Pettersson for their performances. Finally, has a turnaround finally started? All that, plus much more is on this episode of the Locked On Penguins podcast.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!AG1If a comprehensive solution is what you need from your supplement routine, then try AG1 and get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase. Go to drinkAG1.com/NHLNETWORK.SleeperDownload the Sleeper App and use promo code LOCKEDONNHL to get up to a $100 match on your first deposit. Terms and conditions apply. See Sleeper’s Terms of Use for details.GametimeToday's episode is brought to you by Gametime.Take the guesswork out of buying tickets with Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNHL for $20 off your first purchase.FanDuelScore early this NFL season with FanDuel, America’s Number One Sportsbook! Right now, NEW customers get ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS in BONUS BETS with any winning FIVE DOLLAR MONEYLINE BET! That’s A HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS – if your team wins! Visit FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON to get started.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Penguins cruise to a big and historic win on Long Island on Wednesday night. Hunter and I are going to chronicle that and more on this edition of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. Your Locked-on Penguins. Your daily podcast on the Pittsburgh Penguins. Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network. Your team every day. Welcome back, Penguins fans, to another edition of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. I have returned from my Christmas break.

I am one of your co-host, Patrick Damp. You can follow me on Twitter at Synonym 4Wet. Joined as always by the illustrious, the one and only Hunter Hodes. You can follow him on Twitter at Hunter Hodes. You can follow the show's Twitter at L.O. underscore Penguins. We are free and available wherever you get your podcast as well as YouTube. And today's episode is brought to you by Fandul. Make every moment more.

Right now, new customers get $150 in bonus. bets with any winning $5 money line bet. That's $150. If your team wins, visit fandle.com slash locked on to get started. And Hunter, I don't know. I got to check my watch here. I think the penguins just kept scoring. Speaking of getting started in the second period last night against the New York

Islanders, they cruised to a 7-0 win. And according to the preeminent Penguins historian Bob Grove that is their largest margin of victory against the New York Islanders in a road game in the history of the franchise. 7-0, a shutout on Long Island. And I don't know where to start. I mean, I'm not sure where to start on this one because I texted it to you last night. First period, it looked like a typical game out of the holiday break.

Neither team had their legs. You know, you said it to me in a text of all the first periods that have ever happened in the history of hockey, that was certainly one of them. And then in the second period, the penguins wake up and they dominate the islanders. I mean, this was not even close. It was, it was just an absolute ass kicking from the second period until the final buzzer. And I think a good place to start is because I know that I am critical of officiating in the National Hockey League quite often because it is not great. But if we are going to criticize them when they screw up, we have to give them their

flowers when they do well because Ricard Raquel's goal that kicked it all off was a goal and they went in and reviewed it and reversed it and made the correct call. It almost looked like a classic intent to blow call, right? And I'm sure if Colton Sizzins was watching that, he was probably going to get triggered by it to say the least. I would have been pretty upset had they taken that goal away because there was no chance that puck was frozen underneath Ilya Seroken. And once Raquel got things going in the second period,

the penguins just kept blitzing and blitzing and blitzing this team. The penguins have been, I would say bullied by the islanders these last four to five to six years. It was nice to give them a taste of their own medicine for once in this game. I mean, and the biggest thing for last night is, is looking back to last season against the Islanders. Right. We talked about it with the hurricanes on this show that coin flip games against the islanders seem to never, or the hurricanes never seem to go the Penguins way.

Last year, they had some weird block against the Islanders where if it was, you know, one goofy play or just like a few minute lapse in play, they couldn't find a way to beat the Islanders last year, no matter how hard they tried. And then this year, this game, was just the complete opposite. Outside of one blowout loss against the Islanders last year, all three other games were fairly close. The other game on Long Island,

the Penguins were up by two goals twice in that game before the Islanders came back to win it. And then both games in Pittsburgh, the Penguins had leads heading into the third period, and they blew both of those games. So honestly, you could have made an argument that the Penguins could have beaten that team three out of four times last year. They just couldn't hold on to a lead to save their lives

in those games against the Islanders. But in this one, they torched Ilyos Seroquen throughout the second period. The Islanders just had no answer for what the penguins were doing. This was not the Islanders that I feel like I've watched for the past four to five to six years that are usually very good defensively. This year they're not nearly as good defensively as they normally. It's funny, you usually know them as that team that plays a bunch of one-nothing games, two-one games, especially under Barry Trots, right?

Well, they're not doing that this year under Laneburn. They did it a little bit more last year under Lambert. But this year, it's their offense that's really been kicked into high gear. And their defense, it's been there. But it's also not been as good because Pelick and Pooleck are hurt right now. And Scott Mayfield, those are three of their six best defensemen on the team. So that obviously hurts. But the Islanders just could not stop the penguins at all.

They got humming. It was lights out. And I know Wayne Lambert tried to call time out in the second period. Yeah, that did you basically no good because the penguins just really. came right back and kept blitzing Ilya Sorokin. And I'll say that for as good as Sorokin is, and he has killed the Penguins numerous times ever since he came into the league, it was nice lighting him up like a Christmas street for once. It was.

And one thing we have to talk about here, because we've talked about it on this show plenty of times, is one of the most frustrating things about this Penguin squad so far this season is that when they play smart, responsible hockey, they once again look like a playoff team and a possible contender. They played smart, responsible hockey last night. They didn't suddenly turn into the 2016 Penguins again, where they just blitzed you all the time with speed, skill, and overwhelmed you with all four lines.

No, no, no, they didn't do that. They were positionally sound. They were good on the breakout. They were smart on the forecheck. They were smart with their pinches. And they took what the game gave them. And because they are a better team than the New York Islanders, I feel very confident in saying this,

that the Pittsburgh Penguins on paper are much better than the New York Islanders this year, they were able to use that to their advantage. And it came in the form of a 7-0 win because I read our good pal Joshio, he's 10 observations in the athletic this morning. And he brought up the point that sometimes wins like this for this roster, turn into them regressing back to their former form. I think a game like this is kind of the opposite of that, because this wasn't a.

a three nothing, four to one, five to two kind of win. This was a dominant seven nothing win. And that should tell them, hey, if we play this kind of hockey more often, we're going to get wins like this more often. And I believe Crosby, Malkin, Latang, and Carlson, and everybody else when they say, our biggest goal is to win, not individual awards. So I got to take them at their word.

And we've said this, I feel like a lot on the show this year. The offense will still come even when the penguins are playing stout in their own zone. And they were playing great in their own zone. They only allowed nine high danger chances at five on five throughout this game. Only two in the second period where the penguins were just blitzing the Islanders. That's rock solid stuff. If you want to go to expected goals against, the Islanders only had 1.58 expected goals for in this game.

The 1.58 expected goals against for the Penguins. That's beautiful. I mean, that's locked down textbook defensive coverage. your own zone. I said that on the preview with Gil when you weren't there. When the Penguins want to play like this, they can. And they've done this throughout the season in wins. I just want to see this more on a consistent basis because I know Mike Sullivan likes when they play like this. I know that he also probably likes when they can revert back to 2016 for him, but I also know that they don't have that type of roster right now to play like they did in 2016.

You have to dial it back a little bit. And we've seen them do that in countless games a season. Now that you can add this one to the long list of examples where, hey, you don't need to just be running gun and trying to turn games into track meets like you were against the Mapleys, for example. That's the only regulation loss in their last seven games. You don't need to play like that to find success. You can win in other ways while still generating quite a bit of offense, which is what the Penguins did in this game. And at first, and we're going to let it slide this episode, just because it was such a huge win last night. against a team that's tortured them for the last little while.

But they did all this at 5 on 5. There was the, we were ready to come on here today and roast the power play last night after the first time. Again. Again. We were very ready to start talking about it again, but the penguins decided to flip the script. So if you put together this kind of effort at 5 on 5 and then you start getting help again from your power play, we are talking about a team.

Like you said, their last regulation loss was that butt wopened by the Maple Leafs, they're starting to stack points. They're starting to put some streaks together. Now, we're going to talk about that later in the show. I've been one and one in their last seven, Pat. Like that's sometimes slow is the name of the game, as people say. This is where you start building that kind of long winning streak or just long streak of winning play, I should say.

I mean, you don't need to go on a, I don't know, 12 or 13 game winning streak. but if you can, you know, win seven out of nine, eight out of ten, stretch that to 11 out of 14 or something like that, you can have a loss in there somewhere because I don't think you're going to win 12 or 13 in a row. You're still playing overall winning hockey. And if you can win the two games this weekend, funny enough, the Penguins will go into 2024, seven and one in one in their last nine games. Now, I know they haven't made a major move in the standings as yet just because the Metro is still very tight right now and there's still quite a few teams in the division who are. Playley's playing well. But this is what I've wanted to see from this team all year. More consistency.

It's five out of seven. And those are two big points in regulation against a team you're chasing. You do that again on Sunday. Oh, it's going to get interesting heading into the new year. And we'll have previews tomorrow for this back to back weekend coming up. But before we get into any of that, we got to talk about what a historic, historic, incredible win this was last night. Letang is going to take home the headlines,

but there was so much more that happened in that game last night in that 7-0-0-0-1 over the New York Islanders. And we are going to get to that right after this. But first, we have to tell you about one of today's sponsors, and that is Sleeper. We've almost reached the halfway point of the NHL season Penguins fans. And like we just said, some highs, some lows. Penguins are who they are right now. We're going to find out who they are here in the stretch run.

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and locational availability. We have returned for the second segment of the Locked on Penguins podcast. I have returned to the show. I am one of your co-host Patrick Damp, joined as always by the illustrious Hunter Hodes and we got a chronicle, Chris LaTang's big night last night, man,

because he becomes, the first defenseman in the 100 plus year history of the National Hockey League to record six or five assists in one period. I just can't believe that hadn't happened before this, to be honest. You're telling me that because when I saw that thought, I was like, Nick Lindstrom didn't do this. Paul Coffey didn't do this. We can keep going down the list of legendary defensemen who are playing.

Yeah. Like, like, I was starting. And not just the fact that, you know, there have been, and this is no slight on Chris LaTang, there have been so many legendary offensive defensemen in this league, in so many of them played in an era where scoring was through the roof. Right. No, I agree with you. And the fact that he did it in today's age, and even though scoring is not what it was back then, it's still quite an accomplishment to do that, especially in one freaking period where the penguins were just going berserk on Ilya Seroquin. And this again shows how good of a player Chris Latang continues to be.

Coming into this game, he really hadn't, I feel like, done as much offensively compared to normal just because Eric Carlson was kind of that guy, right, doing the offense from the blue line. But Latang was still getting at least his share. But this game was his one to shine. Let's hang before this was playing excellent on the penalty kill, playing really well in his own zone at five on five. But he finally got to show everyone again, hey, yeah, I still exist and I am still one heck of an offensive threat from the blue line.

His pass to set up Evgeny Malkin's goal from in front of the net. I had shades of San Jose in 2016 where he was going for a skate in San Jose zone. That was vintage Latang. and then he had a much better pass to the Altrey Pustin for his first NHL goal. That was a mammoth of a shot. And that came in the third period. And we'll talk about it here in a sec. I'm sorry to cut you off.

There's two beautiful plays by Let's hang there on a night where he was absolutely flawless. I mean, the fact that he has so many detractors out there just makes my blood boil, to be honest. And yeah, I hope everyone chronicled this as well. I hope Penn's Chronicles from Twitter absolutely enjoyed this. That's for sure. I didn't know if we were going to name them directly, but that's funny. But the other thing I wanted to say about that is we kind of talked about this at the end of the first segment. They did all that he did all this at five on five.

There was no power play time involved. This was all even strength. And, you know, again, we can always complain about the power play. It's easy content. But regardless of how you feel about the power play, the majority of the games played at five on five. And Chris Latang. did all this at even strength. And you brought up another thing that happened last night there real quick.

Val Terry Pustin and man, unbelievable goal. That is a goal scorer's goal. Yes. And yes, I know, seven nothing, the Islander, that, you know, similar to our pals on the North Shore with the Pittsburgh Steelers, what they did to the Bengals right before Christmas, where they broke their will. The Penguins broke the Islanders will last night.

By the third period, the Islanders quit. They were done. They just wanted to get the hell out of the building. And I get that when Valteri Pustin's goal makes it 7-0. But I have been saying this about Pustin for the last couple of weeks. That is a goal-scores goal because he makes the right read. He gets to a soft area. He opens up and gets every piece of a one-timer.

And Hunter's about to take me to school because he put his glasses on. But unbelievable goal from him. And I said it to our pal Jesse Marshall. He's got a stick. the national hockey league. Even into what, I agree with what Jesse said. Give him a run. I mean, seriously, just give him at least a small run to see what he can do.

If he pans out like some of the other Wilkesbury call-ups this year, Pat, okay, so be it. He can send him back down. No harm, no foul. But with what he has shown so far this season, it's been better than anyone that's come up from Wilkesbury, including Solhorn who provided that spark early on. And then, of course, Big Z finally scored last night. The first thing he's done in quite a few weeks, it feels like at the, point. But if he can continue to provide this value, he should be on the team, at least for the next

few weeks, if not potentially the rest of the season. Because when Brian Rust is ready to come back and it looks like that's going to be maybe sooner rather than later, he had a major workout before practice on Thursday morning. That's great news for him, considering how banged up he's been lately. The Penguins are all of a sudden going to have quite a few options with him. Got Raquel, back-to-back goals for him now and with Pustin producing at this rate, top nine is all of a sudden looking pretty fun to say at least, and your right winger depth all of a sudden looking like a strength when just a few weeks ago, it looked like a major weakness to say the least.

But I could not be more thrilled for him. I just didn't know if he was ever going to, I guess, come up from Wilkesbury and show what he can do. But I'm glad that he has because he's been a very, pleasant surprise since coming up. I definitely think he's got a stick. And the funny thing is, he scored that goal. He wasn't even on Afghani Malkins wing to start that game last night. They demoted him after the Ottawa game to the third line. And he still goes out there and gets his first NHL goal goal, excuse me, on that beautiful slap shot. Yeah. He has it right now,

people. He really, those are two things that show you he might be different than a lot of the other call-ups. One, reacted very well to a demotion. As a 24-year-old kid who is a prospect that's been up and down, you get demoted in the lineup. That's tough. How you react says a lot about you. And I've been saying it for the last few weeks. He does not look out of place in the top six.

He is playing very well. He's not deferring to the big guys. He's not just happy to be there. He's very good on the forecheck. He has really good vision. And as we saw last night, he knows where to go. So I agree. This is a very positive sign for this team as we get into 2024,

and this team continues to build towards the push to the playoffs. Lastly, but certainly not leastly, Tristan Jari, back on top of the shutout leaders in the National Hockey League. I'm going to kickstart it, and then you can take the ball here real quick before we finish up this segment. But I don't know that the Tristan Jury. for Vezna candidacy is real, but I do know that he has to at the very least be in the conversation strictly because of shutouts, strictly because he is putting together a solid campaign on a team

that without him right now might be a lot worse off. I agree. And it was awesome seeing him do this on Long Island. And right after he had some Jari chance, because of course Islanders fans are going to give it to him after what happened in 2021. You saw some weird takes out there on social media. from Islanders fans saying, oh, yeah, can't wait to chant his name after he gives up five again, or, you know, see you later, Jar Jar Banks, I guess is what they're calling in. This isn't attack of the clones or the Phantom Menace here, people. This isn't 2021 Tristanjari anymore. This is 2023 Tristanjari, and he is playing like one of the best goaltenders in hockey.

His numbers right now, he has 10 goals stayed above expected. That's eighth in the NHL. He also has a 916 say percentage and a 2.49 goals against average. He is playing like one of the best goaltenders in the league. And outside of a few rough starts to start the year, he has been just fantastic this season. And now we get to see what he can do after January 1st, right? That's where I really want to see if he can stay healthy, if he can continue this pace.

The fact that he played like this, and I know the Islanders didn't even put up 25 shots, but a shout out is a shout-out people. And he also did this. he hadn't played in a week and a half. Nadelcovich was starting to take away some starts from him, right? And sometimes that can lead to a goalie, maybe feeling a little less confident,

feeling a little rusty in that. Jari didn't feel any of those two things in this game. He looked confident. He looked poised. He was aggressive, challenged Islander shooters, including Brock Nelson, who has killed him on multiple occasions. Oh, yeah.

He was fantastic in this game. And I think he showed everyone why he is the 1A goal. on this team right now. Candice, screw with anything you just said there. And while it is not, while it may be December 28th and not Groundhog Day, we are going to come back and have a discussion.

We have seemingly had once a week, every week throughout this season. Just one more thing. He had the highest game score last night of 10. That's the highest game score since Dom started tracking that in 2017. And he also, his six assists came in a span of 1933. No other player. in the league's history has had six assists in a span of less than 30 minutes in one game.

Congratulations, Chris. Just a record-setting night for, I'll say it right here. The greatest defenseman in franchise history, not even close, people. It's not close. Again, can't disagree. So we're going to have our groundhog discussion when we come back that we've seemingly had to have every other week. and that is has this team turned a corner? But first, we're going to tell you about our next sponsor, which is Fandul.

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We're back here for one more segment on this Thursday edition of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. Welcome back, Penguins fans. I am Patrick Damp, joined as always by the one and on only Hunter Hodes. And, oh boy, man, like I said, still December, but feels like February, feels like Groundhog Day because we got to have the talk again. Has this penguin's team reached a turning point after last night's big win against the Islanders? There are certainly on their way. And it feels this type of win. I mean, I know we said this a few weeks ago after Tristan Jari's goalie goal in Tampa,

right? Is this the start of something good cooking? And you saw some more middling results. So the answer was no. But after this one, after you beat a team that, has had your number for the past four to five years, this one potentially feels a little bit different. And it's also just a continuation of how they've been playing throughout the last seven games. Honestly, ever since Kyle Dubus challenged them during his press conference just a few weeks ago when he said he was really going to evaluate this team at the all-star break. Since then, five and one-in-one, your only regulation loss, as we said, it was that blowout loss in Toronto when Kyle Dubas made his return. Other than that, you have points in six of your last

seven games. I know you haven't made that big of a move in the standings, but that could come if you're able to get a couple more results at home this upcoming weekend against the Blues and the Islanders. Pat and I will preview those two games on the Friday edition of the show. But if you can go into the new year, seven and one in one in your last nine, you're definitely cooking with some gas at that point. After that, you have some more tough games coming up, especially Boston at the Godin next Thursday. That's going to be a little fun. I had to say. of course. I had to put that out there.

Playing the Bruins at the Gaden kid. At the Garten, of course. But I really, I mean, I can only hope, I feel like, that it's slow, but we're starting to see what this team can do when it plays at a high level. We still need to see it more consistently. But I'm getting hopeful still, that's for sure. I think I want to go back to what you said about how we had this. discussion after the jarring goal game against the lightning i think we in this is me fully admitting this especially on my part i think we got caught caught up in the shiny toy of the goalie goal

and think and kind of losing the forest through the trees because in the lead up to that game they were not playing very well and then they if you remember that game they took the first period off i mean they completely stunk like this wasn't like last night where where it was two teams coming off a holiday break and it was sloppy hockey because they hadn't practiced or played in a handful of days. The penguins went into Tampa and just slept walk through a period. And prior to that, they weren't playing good hockey. Last night, a little bit sloppy to start the first period, both teams were once they

find their footing, the penguins take off and just completely dominate the islanders. But other than the Senators game, the lead up to this, the penguins have been pretty darn good. If not pretty darn good, they have been competitive to better than we've seen for the last month or so. So I do think legitimately this is a chance for this team to start building because they're playing better hockey as of the last two, three weeks than they were the last time we had this conversation. Like it was fun and cool that they made a nice comeback against the lightning and Tristan Jari scores a goal. But, you know, those were empty calories. It was, Like we were so caught up in that that we just completely missed some warning signs about how much that team was struggling and how much how many problems there were under the hood.

Right now though, this looks like a team that is starting to figure it out. And even though we're almost at January 1, excuse me, where it is sometimes too late for teams with how the metropolitan division is right now, the penguins are only five points at a second. You win that game against the Islanders on Sunday, and if the Islanders lose to the Capitals and regulation on Friday, all of a sudden, you're only three points behind that team, and you still play that team two more times this season. The Penguins have plenty of opportunities left to make a move in this division. They just have to, again, keep up this strong play. The five-on-five numbers are starting to rebound at least a little bit. They're getting good goal-tending. The top two defensemen are playing very well.

You saw some depth scoring in this one against the Islanders. It would be nice if that were to keep up. And also, we saw him that eye under the game. The second line finally had a good game for the first time in a couple of weeks. I thought of Gennie Malkin was all over the ice. I thought that was his best game in honestly two to three weeks. To be honest, I thought he was puck hunting, which I think when he is on his game, he is out there just hounding for the puck.

And I also loved how he parked his butt right in the front of the net to take that feed from Chris Teng and just put that past Elias Sorokin. He was fantastic. in this one as well. But you're starting to see some things coming together here. But we'll keep saying it until it changes, folks. Let's see how the power play eventually does. It needs to still turn around.

I will only discuss it a little bit on this one, Pat, just because of everything that happened. And by the way, congratulations to Evgeny Malkin. Second most goals ever. That's right. We forgot that part in the second. By a Russian player, passed Sergei Federov on Wednesday. I congratulate him to Gino.

I know he's not going to pass Alex. I bet you can know. going to pass obie. But to be second all time, considering how many great Russian players have played in the league, that is fantastic. But again, agree with what you're saying. This is, we're in crunch time to say the least here. Well, and here's the thing. You brought up who they're going to play here in the next week or so, right? Like they got the Blues and Islanders this weekend, two middling teams that they are definitely capable of beating. But then you go into January, and the opponents coming up in January, there's not a lot of great teams there. Capitals, extremely beatable.

Bruins, okay, they're again one of the best teams in hockey. I'm so sick of saying that, but that's the fact of the matter. But then you have sabers, flyers, okay, then the Canucks, who are pretty, I think we're starting to realize they're just good. Carolina, team you've shown you can beat. Seattle, not that great. Vegas, okay, they're a wagon. Arizona, definitely beatable. Florida, okay, another great team.

And then the habs before the All-Star break. That is a serious opportunity to put together. And they have one back-to-back. You can bank some points with that schedule. There are teams on there that are people. There are some very good teams that we'll have to face. Obviously, Boston, Washington's been good this year. Vancouver.

They've already lost to Florida down in sunrise. But as you said, there's not, there's really only one back-to-back for that month of January. And we're looking pretty far ahead here, people. We totally understand this. But there are also still quite a few winnable games during that month where the penguins can really put themselves in a good position, heading into February to potentially even be in a playoff spot heading into that month where Kyle Dubas, I think, will have a much better feel of whether he wants to maybe sell off some assets at the deadline or in a better world, of course, whether he wants to buy, maybe get a forward or figure out what to do with the bottom

hearing because I think there's still some questions there as well. Agreed. Before we wrap up this edition of the Lockdown Penguins podcast, I know Hunter has two more shoutouts he'd like to give. I'm very curious to see what they are because I did not hear about this in prep. So what do you got? So just two more shoutouts for players, performances from this game. Number one, Marcus Pedersen, four assists in this one.

He is playing at an extremely high level, right? now. And I know when you think of the Pittsburgh payments, you think of all the star talent on this team. But if you're not tuning in to also watch Marcus Pedersen do his thing every night, you're not doing it right, my friends. He is playing at an elite level right now in all three zones. We know how good he is defensively, but he has taken some serious strides offensively this season. And it's been a joy to watch. I think he's turned himself into one of the most underrated defenseman in the entire NHL, another great performance from him. And then one more, shout out to end the show, to Roe Connor. That's two really strong performances in a row from

him. I thought he was forechecking like crazy in that game against the Islanders. He probably should have had a short-handed goal. It was a really nice aide by Ilius. Before the Penguins kicked things off in the second period. It was just a really strong performance overall from O'Connor. And he deserved that promotion after what he did in that game against Ottawa. I felt like before these last two games, he was kind of in a rut those last two to three weeks. But these last two games, he's been coming out of it, really starting to show why I was high on him after the really strong preseason that he had. So those are the final two shallots that I wanted to have to end the show. Yeah, Marcus Pedersen is becoming one of the better all around defensemen in the national hockey league.

I really don't know what else you can say about him. And Drew O'Connor, you know, we said Big Z scored last night. we talked about the impact of the guys coming up from Wilkes Bear, and he's starting to look like what we wanted him to be. He's starting to make the impact he needs to make. But that is going to do it for us on this edition of the Lockdown Penguins podcast. We will be back tomorrow to preview the back-to-back weekend coming up here against the Blues and again against the Islanders.

But that will be tomorrow's episode. Thank you so much for always tuning in and making us. your first listen slash watch of the day. For Hunter Hodes, I am Patrick Damp, and we will return tomorrow.