Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - Penguins let a golden opportunity slip away with consecutive losses

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

The Penguins let a golden opportunity slip through their hands with back-to-back losses against Ottawa and then Tampa Bay. Patrick and Hunter first talk about how an unacceptable effort against the Senators damaged a lot of the goodwill the Penguins have built up over the past month and a half. They dive into how the Penguins got sucked into all the after-whistle scrums and physical play, rather than focusing on what made them successful. Then, some old, bad habits cropped up just one day later against the Lightning. They talk about how some subpar goaltending and a defensive miscue led to a loss that should've been a win. However, with games against Seattle and Buffalo looming, they discuss how the Penguins can get back on track this week. Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNHL for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime.FanDuelYou can start the season with a big return on FanDuel. New customers can place a FIVE DOLLAR bet and you’ll get started with TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS in BONUS BETS - if you win or lose your first FIVE DOLLAR BET ! Visit FANDUEL.COM 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) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you're a Pittsburgh sports fan, this weekend was the sum of all fears, and it included back-to-back losses by the Pittsburgh Penguins. Hunter and I are going to break down both of those losses as well as look at the week ahead for this team, and we're going to do that on an all-new Locked-on Penguins right after this. You're Locked-on Penguins, your daily podcast on the Pittsburgh Penguins, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Hello and welcome back to another edition of the Locked On Penguins podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Patrick Damp.

You can follow me across all social media platforms at Synonym 4Wet. Joined as always by my partner in crime, the one and only Hunter Hodes. You can follow him on Twitter at Hunter Hodes. You can give our show's Twitter account a follow at L0 underscore Penguins. And of course, we appreciate you making us part of your daily routine. don't forget that we are free and available wherever you get your podcast as well as YouTube. And if you're following us on YouTube, don't forget to hit the notification button. So you'll be among the first to know when we drop our daily Monday through Friday episodes.

Before we dive into it today, today's episode is brought to you by Fandul. You can start the season with a big return on Fandul. New customers can place a $5 bet and get started with $200 in bonus bets, win or lose. with your first $5 bet. Just visit fanduel.com to get started. Well, this was a disastrous weekend for the Pittsburgh Penguins, and I don't think I say that too lightly. It started off getting absolutely boat raced by the Ottawa Senators

in a no-show effort by them a five-to-nothing lost. And then just one day later, some very old bad habits crept up once again against the Tampa Bay Lightning in a five to two loss, more of a three to two loss with two empty net goals for the Tampa Bay Lightning. But I digress. We'll start Hunter where the weekend started, which was Saturday afternoon against the Ottawa Senators. And this was just an absolutely unacceptable effort top to bottom. Nobody can run away from this one. You are on the heels of a massive victory over the Edmonton Oilers, where you took one of the best teams in the league,

shoved their game right back at them, and were able to get two points that I don't think a lot of people had confidence that the Penguins were going to be able to get. And then you come into this weekend where you've got a home back to back against two teams that for the most part, you are dead heat even in this playoff race. and you started off with just a no-show effort against Ottawa. Now, the thing I will say is I can give them, I don't want to say a pass on the first period, but it was such a sloppy game because of officiating,

because of after the whistle stuff, because of how chaotic it got. So you can almost look at that and go, all right, listen, it's a sloppy 20 minutes. Both teams were in the middle of scrums, post-wistle stuff. Keep shots, physicality. If you can come out and play well in the ensuing 20 minutes and even 40 minutes, then you can say, all right, listen, you put the sloppy period behind you.

Both teams were behind the eight ball on that one, but they don't do that. It's more of the same for 40 minutes. They essentially just roll over and accept the loss. There's a lot to unpack from the Ottawa loss. So Hunter, I pass it over to you. Your thoughts on that. game. I don't mind they came out pretty feisty in that game. That's totally good with me, but you need to actually have that carry over to, I don't know, generating offense,

getting good gold tending, the power play being good. And you saw none of that on display. I should also add a penalty kill on there. That was a complete team loss, Pat. Special teams were awful in that game, including the power play. The power play was way too sloppy. The zone entries were atrocious. That has usually not been a problem this year. This is a top five power play in the league. It was awful against Ottawa. The penalty kill, though, once again, way too passive in the own zone, allowing easy zone entries, and you're allowing easy scoring chances. And right after Alex Nadelcovich had his best start of the season, and it was the right call to go back to him because of the way he just played, because I know the penguins in both you and I and everyone that

roots for this team. Everyone is waiting for one of these two guys to be more consistent and to take the reins of this thing and kind of run with it for, you know, maybe a four to five, six plus game stretch. So that's why I was totally good with Ned getting the start and then he plays like crap in this game and kind of reverts to the level that we've seen him play at for a good chunk of the season outside of that game against Edmonton, outside of maybe a couple other games. The goaltending once again was bad. and they could not generate any offense against the Senators team that is, A, not good defensively, and B was starting a third string goal tender. That's not good enough. It was a piss poor effort, considering how big that game was, you just got the two points against the Oilers,

the Senators are three points behind you and the standings, you have a chance to go up five points on them. Yes, I know Ottawa has a few games in hand, but you have a chance to go up five points on. This was an Ottawa team that had been playing like utter. crap for the last week plus. They had lost four in a row, two of those last three games, they had been shut out, and they had lost six of their last seven games.

And they're coming in here with their third string goaltender, and the Penguins, again, didn't do anything to test them. They were not playing well in the offensive zone, and they were barfing all over themselves in the defensive zone. That is not good enough,

especially when you have done a decent job, crawling back into the race event, even though I feel like most of the Eastern Conference is still in the playoff race at this, at this rate, but you want to be feisty, you want to play like clowns or rats or whatever word you want to call it. Again, that's fine, Pat. You just need to, you know, do the other things on the ice that actually contribute to winning. Yeah, that's the biggest thing is I'm, I'm in agreement with you is if you're going to come out and be feisty and you're going to come out and try to

play a physical game and get in the opponent's heads, I'm totally cool with that. It just has to translate to other things. But also, we know that Ottawa has a handful of players who their entire game is to make you retaliate, is to make you get involved in post whistle scrums and focus more on getting some sort of retribution on them rather than playing the game. And the penguins got sucked into that top to bottom. It wasn't just like the fourth line was doing it or one player was doing it or even Michael Bunting was doing it. It was the entire. higher roster. They got sucked into playing Ottawa's game where they were just going to frustrate you with

post whistle scrums, with little jabs, with 30 hits. I mean, I was ready to come on and complain about Nick Cousins, but we can't. And yeah, there were moments he should have probably been booted. He's a clown. Let's put it this way. Nick Cousins is a clown. Probably shouldn't be in the NHL. But I'm not going to sit here and spend five minutes complaining about him after the

penguins totally no show in that game. Exactly. And that was where I was ending with that was along with the penguins completely. no-showing, they weren't exactly an innocent team themselves. They were taking their fair share of shots. They were taking their fair share of cheap shots. And at that point, you can't sit here and complain about it when your team is doing it as well. As for one other thing, the goaltending, and we're going to get more into it in the second segment with the Tampa Bay recap, but you can't have wild swings like this. You are, you,

If you have an off night, I get it. It's 82 games. It's a long season. And you are not going to go 82 and 0. Or if you're a starting goaltender, you're not going to go 35 and 0 or 40 and and have a 950 save percentage throughout. That's just not how the league works. But when you go from having a phenomenal performance against a top tier team like

Edmonton and then you go play a team in Ottawa, who is very similar to you in the sense that they're sniffing around the playoffs, they don't have nearly the amount of elite talent that a team like Edmonton has, and you give up the kind of goals he was giving up, that's just completely unacceptable. And it gets back to the point that this team has its flaws. They're not in any world a contender. They're not a team that's going to suddenly go on a surprise run,

but they're being handcuffed by the. fact that they have two goalies who are just not giving them reliable goaltending. They're getting crushed at that position. It's basically every game this year outside of the few, Pat. And there's been also a few times where you've gotten some timely saves from both netminders. Again, you know, Nadelcovich, especially against Eminton, he was very good in that game. There's been times where even Tristan Jari has been giving them timely saves, where he's been a reason why they've gotten, you know, a point in some of these games they've lost in overtime or a shootout. Obviously, you know, the penguins are terrible

in shootouts, but he has made some timely saves in some of those games. Combined, Pat, these two goalies have allowed 15 goals more than expected, but before people come in our DMs or comments asking about, does that account for defense? It does. Yes, the penguins are not good defensively, but these two goalies, once again, have allowed a combined 15 goals more than expected. They're actually back to back in goals, state above expected. 80th for the Delkevich, 81st for Tristanjari. These two guys are making a combined

$8 million. That is not even close to good enough. And if you have, if you're management and you have any hope of trying to sneak in to those final two power spots while selling kind of like how the capitals did last year, which

you know, looking at the capitals this year, great plan, by the way. But have you any hope of doing that it is beyond time to call up one of those two guys from Wilkesbury, either Larson or Blumquist with the way they're playing, and give them a run of games. Because so far, these two goalies are both killing you this year. And we'll get to the game against Tampa Bay in just a second

because it got worse for Jari. But the theme is, once again, the goaltending this year has been bad, and it's not been close to good enough. Not at all. And put another way, if you don't even have to look at the analytics of it for expected goals, they also have a combined 890 save percentage as a duo.

And we know that this season in the last couple, shooters have begun to get an advantage again, and goaltending is on a little bit of a slide. But 890, even in this era, is nowhere near good enough for a goaltending tandem, especially for a team that wants to be at least moderately competitive. This was a team that was in a tank and a rebuild. you don't care about it. But where they are and where they say they want to go,

this is not at all acceptable. But that'll do it for this first segment. When we come back, we got another loss that we got to recap, a 5-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Sunday afternoon at PPG Paints Arena. And we will do that when we return. But first, we've got to tell you about our first sponsor. And that is Fandul. The NFL playoffs are here.

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and be a big winner when we whittled down the NFL playoffs. Just visit fandul.com to join today and get started with $200 in bonus bets. That's fandul.com. Make this playoff season unforgettable with Fandul an official sportsbook partner of the NFL. Welcome back to the Monday edition of Locked on Penguins. I'm Patrick Damp, joined as always by my co-host Hunter Hodes. And like we said off the top, this was a disastrous and a nightmare of a weekend for the penguins who have put up so much goodwill

and force themselves back into a playoff race only to give it all back this weekend, getting zero of a possible four points. That concluded with a 5-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning. And if Saturday was a complete no-show where this team just did not do its job in that game, Sunday was a day where some of the problems that have haunted this team for the past couple seasons came to fruition once again.

They, for the most part, dominated Tampa Bay for 60 minutes. Outshot them by a nearly two to one margin. They were able to get a goal from Kevin Hayes on the power play once again. But the same things that have plagued this team came up once again. Tristan Jari, two of the goals I think you can put directly on him. The game winning goal by Nikita Kucharov, you give him that breakaway in that moment nine times out of 10. He's scoring, but it's born of an awful, careless turnover by Noelle Achari. This was a game where if this team misses the playoffs by two to three points, it's a game you can pinpoint and say this is when it happened.

The fact that you couldn't even get a point from that game was awful. You had everything under control heading into those final few minutes. All you had to do was play mistake-free hockey pat, and you were guaranteed to get at least one point to try and get that extra one in overtime where you've been better this year compared to the last couple of years. But for some reason, Mike Sullivan decided to ice the fourth line late in the third period. Noolichari probably should have changed 20 or 30 seconds earlier. He still has the puck at the blue line.

He then turns it over, Kuchrob, as you said. He is going to make any goalie pay there. I'm not going to put that one on Tristan Charit. But it continues to go back to the question that I asked on Twitter last night, why are you even icing the fourth line in that situation in a tied game, three minutes to go when you need to bank points? That's what I don't understand. And I'm going to be critical of Mike Sullivan for that because he deserves it.

You do not need to ice the fourth line there. You can shorten the bench a little. bit. Run three lines. By all accounts of purposes, you're not going to play someone like Matt Nietto or probably Blake Lazot in overtime. Well, for Lazot, unless you maybe need to win or draw. But that fourth line in a perfect world should not be touching the ice in overtime or at least to end regulation here where you need the points. You need to ice the three lines that are giving you production this year. I feel awful for Blake Lazot because he has been giving them production, but he's getting shafted,

getting the two line mates that don't drive any offense put right next to him. I feel bad for him. Yeah. And this kind of, this reaches into something I wanted to say about that. One, I don't want this to come off as a defense of Mike Sullivan because it is not. I agree with you.

That's not a guy you want to have out in a tie game with less than three minutes to go. But I look at it this way. I feel bad for guys like Noelle Achari and Blake Lazot, because in their time as penguins for the brief time it's been for Blake Lazot, for Noel Achari when he's been around, he has been getting, they both have been getting shackled with players who don't do anything. Now, this isn't to say I think that there's some secret to be unlocked for Noel Achari. I think he is who he is.

But you look at the drag of players that he has been stuck with, Matt Nietto, Jansen Harkins, Jeff Carter last year. These are players who have been, by all accounts, drags on offense. You couple that with the fact that Sullivan loves to give his fourth line damn near exclusively defensive zone starts. And it's just a recipe that doesn't work. So at some point, you either have to call someone up from Wilkes-Bair and put a couple of these guys in the press box,

or you have to wave a couple guys and see what happens if they go down to Wilkes-Barre. Because I think that there is a world where Noel O'Chari can be a productive and at least serviceable bottom six forward. We know Blake Lazot can give you bottom six production because he's done it, but they keep getting shackled with players who don't do anything. I think Lazot has. I agree with you on that. I don't agree with Achari.

I really don't think he's done that much this season. And people like to say, like, oh, he's this great penalty killer. He's this great penalty killer. And I will say, I give him props. I know he took responsibility for the loss last night to the media. He even said, that plays on me. I can't do that. I have to be so much better.

Again, I will give him props for that. I'm very glad that he said that. However, he has not been very good this season, Pat. Let's be real. He's not doing anything on five on five. He's their worst penalty killer, whether you watch the games or you just look at the analytics. He's not good on the PK, same with Matt Nietto. So at this point, he's kind of just filling the, what, the Janssen Harkins, Craig Adams role,

just kind of being a cardio merchant in your bottom six. And I said this last night on social media as well. I'm going to say it here. If Yassie Poo-Yarvey or another younger player like Cody Glass, Philip Tomasino, it don't matter who. Any younger player on this team pack, if they had made that mistake, they'd be gone for a month and a half. Saladin will put him in the dockhouse.

You've seen that already with someone like Poo-R-V this season. If you want to be consistent as a head coach, you need to set Achari down and be like, nope, that's a backbreaking mistake. You're going up to the press box on Tuesday against Seattle. That's what I want to see from my head coach here. I want to see accountability because I don't care that he's a veteran. I don't care. If that were a younger player, you would put him in the press box for the next six weeks.

I want to see some consistency here because that was a awful play in a season where, again, let's face it, Achari has not been good this year. We can say the same for Matt Nietto. This team, they have too many passengers, man. They have two goalies who can't make saves, two thirds of their fourth line aren't very good, and the penalty kill at least the last couple weeks has been well below league average. It's usually been a good unit this year. It hasn't been good enough.

And these problems, it's all correlated to them losing six of the last seven games. They had a lot of goodwill heading into this year. You even said that we're back button. I wasn't ready to do it yet. And you've seen why, especially heading into the new year now, where they've lost six of seven games. But at the end of the day, you know, the problems, they're still the same.

Bad goaltending, too many passengers. Defensively, they're still not very good. They've made improvements along the margins, but they're still not very good, especially in their own zone. But again, man, that play is not good enough. And three goals on 15 shots. I know. the third goal, I'm not going to pin on Tristanjari.

Anyone that's pinning that one on him, they're missing the forest for the trees. But the prior two goals, I'd like a timely save there. And it's been very few and far between the amount of timely saves the Penguins have gotten this year from both of these net minors. I think it's time to see what one of these two guys in Wilkesbury can do, particularly Y'Al Blumquist, because he played really well during the Penguins' worst month of the season back in October. I think it's time to bring up one of those.

you guys. And that's the biggest thing is you look at the two of the three that Tristan Jari gives up. The two that you can pin on them are the first two. And I don't even think that you can say they were particularly bad or soft goals. It was just you need a timely state. Yes. The first one, I was not happy with it because unscreened far side top shelf. You probably shouldn't give that up. But again, it's the national hockey league. These guys are the 1% of the 1% and sometimes talent takes over. But again, unscreened and it goes top shelf, far side.

That shouldn't be a goal you give up. The second one, it's the definition of it. The penguins were running around in their own end. They were absolutely in disarray defensively, and you need a moment. And it happened two games ago against Edmonton, where you had some moments where Edmonton was pushing. Ned comes up with a save, either covers it, goes down and covers it or catches it in his glove and stops play.

Eventually, you have to be able as a starting goaltender to make a save that blunts some momentum from the opposition. And that didn't happen against Tampa Bay, because Tampa Bay didn't have a lot of of momentum. They didn't have a lot of moments where they carried play, but a handful of times that they did, it turned into a goal and that is an absolute problem with goaltending. As for who to bring up, at this point, I wouldn't mind saying, you know what, let's give Philip Larson a shot, because he has been out dueling quote unquote, YOL Blumquist, but it's just because Blumquist started the year up here in Pittsburgh and then had to get reacclimated to the HL and has appeared to

stabilize and find his game. But eventually, and it comes back to what you were saying about Noelle Achari, maybe not getting scratched, even though he should. If you're going to also have accountability, let's have some reward. Larsen's playing really well. You know what? The two goalies in Pittsburgh haven't. So bring him up, see what he can do.

If he works, then what's the harm at this point with where you're going in maybe burying Ned or Jari in the HAL? because they're not playing well. And at this point, what exactly do you have left to lose? But that is going to do it unless Hunter, you got something you need to get off your chest here. Did you see all the booing in PBG last?

Oh, that's great. We should talk about this briefly. And I was like, what is going on? They're not booing any Tampa player. Why are they booing? And so I go on Twitter. I'm like trying to figure this out.

And I see a old boomer guy, apparently stole a puck from a, kid who was trying to get the puck down from the netting just absolutely stole it from him and all the crowd all over the arena it just wasn't in that same section it was all over the arena was apparently booing this guy the video comes out apparently he's walking up just basically getting kicked out he's like giving people the bird and stuff and i'm like what in the heck is going on pat you listen guys i i hate playing fan police but if a kid gets a puck or you you get a puck and there's a little kid next to you, give them the puck.

Yes. Okay. You are an adult. You can go buy a puck from the pro shop. You don't need to take the puck from the little kid, be a good person and give the kid the friggin puck. But that'll do it for this second segment. When will you return, they're still going to play hockey games this week. So we got to make sure that you are ready for those games coming up this week.

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the first day of our brand new schedule, as we have told you last week, all of our episodes save for our bonus content when there's breaking news. We will be dropping these episodes between 11 a.m. and noon Monday through Friday. You're listening to this one. This one dropped at noon. We appreciate you being part of your daily routine and listening to us on Monday through Friday.

So Hunter, they still do have to play hockey games. Disappointing is this weekend was, unlike the Pittsburgh Steelers RIP, the season does continue. And this week, they finish up the homestand on Tuesday against the Seattle Cracken. And then the big one starts. The big road trip begins on Friday. They will head to Buffalo to take on the Buffalo Sabres. And then Saturday night, Hunter, again, I'm going to be a nerd and make my wrestling reference.

It will be Saturday night's main event from the United States Capitol when they take on Alexander Ovechkin. and the Washington Capitals. Here's the thing. If this weekend was disastrous, this next week is an opportunity because you've got two games against two teams that are struggling mightily

in the Seattle Crackin and obviously the Buffalo Sabres. So you've got six points up for grabs this week. You can get four of six. You're not in a bad spot. Right. Seattle, there are definitely, worse than I expected. I'm taking the L on saddle this year with my standing's predictions. I think they're going to be selling at the deadline and rightfully so. They have some forwards that would be pretty solid on some contenders, but that is a very winnable game on Tuesday to

end this five game homestine. You got to win that one. We play a Buffalo team to start the road trip on Friday. This Buffalo team, not very good. You know, they had that month-long losing street pat where they were just, again, really, really poor. I don't think they're going to make the playoffs this year. And once that happens, you're probably going to see major. changes of in Buffalo. The Penguins have already beaten them once this year, but that's still another game where you want to win. And then Saturday, you play a Capitals team that is slumping a little bit as of late, but they're still getting points slash winning games. They're playing fine, not nearly as good as they were to start this season, but they're still

top three in the Metro. They're going to stay in that spot through the end of the season. This is one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference. The Penguins have already beaten the Capitals once this year in DC. And if you remember after that game, some of the Capitol's players even said, like, eh, we kind of weren't ready for what the Penguins were going to do. It's like, man, how are you saying that for a Penn's Caps game? Like, it was just really strange. But I don't think the Caps are going to make that same mistake on Saturday.

They're going to be pretty ready for that game, considering how that first one went. But yes, pretty big opportunity this week, two struggling teams plus a Capitals team that, again, they're not nearly as hot as they were to start the year, but they're still playing at least decent hockey right now. So I think getting two out of three wins this week, it should be the goal. If you can sweep all three, obviously that would be huge,

considering you've lost a couple in a row now. You've lost six years your last seven games. If you want to get your way back into this even more, you know, you got to be banking points. You can't have a weekend like you just had this past weekend where you no-showed one game and then you outplay a team in the other game and you just don't get good goaltending and see my dogs agree with that downstairs as well.

But what a disastrous weekend for Pittsburgh sports, by the way. You get them appetizer on Saturday for the Penguins. Stewards, the main course. They get blown out. And then the Penguins lose again on Sunday. Just a brutal weekend for the sports teams in this town, my friend. Yeah. So this is a very Monday, Monday, if there ever was one.

But back to the Penguins. Yeah, you're right. I mean, for the Capitals, they've kind of been trading wins and losses. They're kind of just going a win, then a loss and a win than a loss. But they're still playing fairly well. they've given themselves quite a cushion in the metro so they can absolutely afford to have what for them this season qualifies as a slump. But for the penguins, you look at this and yeah, it's a long road trip, but it's a softening

of the schedule, so to speak, because you got Seattle tomorrow, that's your last of the homestand, then you have Buffalo, then you go into next week after you play the Capitals. Kings, that's going to be a tough game. they're a very solid hockey team. But then you kind of finish the month with a little bit of a softer schedule out west. You've got the Anaheim Ducks, who while they have played a little bit better, they're still down below and they're still definitely a struggling team. Then you've got the cracking again in Seattle. We've talked about them.

Then you finish up the month with San Jose and Utah. Utah's doing all right. They're kind of hanging around, but they're very mid-tier. And obviously the San Jose show. Yeah, they're having fun with Celebrini and they're in the middle of a rebuild, but it's still not a very good team. So for the Penguins, it has to start on Tuesday night. You have a chance to crawl back once again after you really fell behind the eight ball this past weekend. Right. That's the biggest thing. You're not playing a lot of top tier contenders these next seven

to ten days outside of Washington, who you've already beaten on the road. You'll play them again on the road this weekend. And then the Los Angeles Kings, you've beaten them once this year, you'll go for the season sweep against them during the California Road trip. Actually, I felt like one of the Penguins' best efforts, but those are by far they're two toughest games. Yeah, I know they've gotten their butts kicked by Utah once this year, but I think the Penguins will play a bit better against them in this next game against Utah.

Then you have the sharks. You have the ducks. You've already beaten the ducks this year, by the way. You've also already beaten the sharks. You have Buffalo, who's not very good. You know, you have Seattle twice. So you're playing a lot of teams that are either below you in the standings or kind of right with.

you in the standings. It's not the toughest schedule in the world. It just stinks that, you know, it's a seven-game road trip to the Penguins, Pat. Let's face it, they have not been a good road team this year. So they really need to have some positive results coming up after this homestand ends on Tuesday. For sure, huge opportunity for them to climb back as well as stabilize their road record. But that is going to do it for the Monday edition of Locked on Penguins. Hunter and I will be back tomorrow to do a deeper dive into the Seattle game, which is tomorrow. night. And again, that will drop between 11 a.m. and noon Eastern time since we are officially on our new recording schedule. But for now, for Hunter Hodes, I am Patrick Damp. Thank you,

as always, for tuning in. And we will be back on Tuesday.