Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - Penguins STEAL a point in a WILD Battle of PA!

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

The Penguins were able to snatch a point from the Philadelphia Flyers in what was one of the crazier Penguins-Flyers games in quite some time! Hunter and Patrick begin the show recapping a crazy Battle of Pennsylvania matchup in Philadelphia, with the Penguins falling 3-2 in the shootout. They discuss the play of goaltender Arturs Silovs, the crazy scrum that ended overtime, and so much more. They also dive into ESPN’s lackluster hockey coverage and how, on a night with a captivating first game, the network chose to split the games up. Finally, it’s Wednesday, which means it’s time to give out their MVP of the week in another Warrior Helmet Wednesday!Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNHLfor $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime.MonarchTake control of your finances with Monarch. Use code LOCKEDONNHL at https://monarch.com/lockedonnhl for 50% off your first year.FanDuelDownload the FanDuel app now by visiting FanDuel.com and win $300 in bonus bets if your first $5 bet wins.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.

The Battle of Pennsylvania was on full display on Tuesday night, and Pat and I are going to recap that wild Penguins Flyers game 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 episode of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. I am one of your host, Hunter Hodes. You can follow me on Twitter at Hunter Hodes, joined by my co-host, Patrick Dave, we can follow him on all social media platforms at

Send him for Wet. You can also follow the show's Twitter at L.O. underscore Penguins. And you can follow the show's Instagram account at Lockdown, underscore Penguins. Of course, thank you all so much for making this your first listen slash watch of the day. We are free and available on all platforms. And finally, today's episode is brought to you by Game Time, down the GameTime app, create an account and use code locked on NHL for $20. your first purchase. Pat, we're recording this at right around 9.30 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday. We want to get this episode out to you guys by midnight, Wednesday morning. And what a wild, chaotic, weird game between the Penguins and the Flyers. As I said in the intro, Battle of

Pennsylvania really returned tonight after the last few years where it's just been very non-existent. This wasn't 2012 or anything like that, but compared to what we've seen in the few years. It was nice seeing the Battle of Pennsylvania come back. And the Penguins, they deserve full credit to getting that point tonight. It did not look like it was going to be in the cards, Pat. And I'll start with this. First 12 to 15 minutes, effort was fine. It was okay. I can see you're starting to get into the game. Final five minutes of the first period. Matt Dumbo takes that really bad penalty. Penguins are getting brutally outskated. The entire second period, they were just caved in the whole time. They were basically skated

out of the rank. They were very lucky that this was not four or five to one going into the third period. Shout out Archer Shilovs for making a lot of 10 bell saves. But in the third period, when push came to shove, this team pushed back. And you know who led the charge, Pat? Ben Kendall. He was awesome in that period. It was his line with Ville Coyvenant and Tommy Novak that really were pushing back, pushing the pace of play early in the third. They hem the flyers in. Then the fourth line comes on, they hemmed the flyers in, and it just snowballed from there. But that third line really kicked it off in the third. Crosby's able to get the tying goal off of a very weird bounce.

Only that stuff I feel like happens in Philadelphia, at least against the flyers. But you've seen other weird bounces with Cid, but of course this one happens against the flyers. And then that very weird overtime. But for as bad as they were for most of this game, I will give them props for squeaking out a point that, you know, outside of the third. third period that they probably did not deserve. This was another game this season where it would have been wholly understandable for this team to lie down and just understand that it wasn't their night

because like you said, from about the last five minutes of the first period and then all of the second, they got brutally outplayed. If it wasn't for the efforts of Artur Sheelovs, they probably lose that game even worse. And I said it during the game. Connect. his goal to make it two to one in the second period was weak. But I can excuse it now with the full view of the game because the rest of that period and the rest of the game, when Shilov needed to make a big save, he made a big save. And that is nothing but a credit to him. I can't say enough at the resolve that this Penguins team has early in this season

because there have been multiple occasions where you look at a game that they play and think they don't have it tonight. It's not their night. They're probably not getting out of here with anything. And they just keep pushing. They just keep battling. They figure it out. And it sucks to lose this one because I hate losing to the flyers.

But you push them to overtime. You push them to a shootout. And you get a really hard-earned point. And you get three of a four possible on a back-to-back. back. You really can't be too mad at that. And to get back to the original point of what you said at the beginning, Hunter, do I look younger? Like, do I, have I, like, aged down? Because I feel like it's the early 2010s again. And I'm at I UP. And there's a Penguins Flyers rivalry where they just feel like it could blow up at any time. And God, it was so nice to have that back again. Oh, especially

at the end of overtime. And you know what, Pat? Let's just get into that right now. That was some baby stuff from Trevor Zegris going after Nola Chari like that. And I think Zegris got pretty lucky that the ref held him back because Achari was going to charge after him. And I think beat the hell out of him. That's what it looked like. Achari was not happy.

He basically had his entire helmet pulled off. That's baby stuff from Trevor Zegris. I don't like that. I don't know who that linesman or referee was that got involved. But whoever it is, Trevor Zegris, send him a gift basket. send him an Amazon gift card, write him a very nice thank you note because we on this show may be pretty big critics of Nol Achari, but if there's one thing that he still has going for him,

it's the crazy eyes. And if that ref did not get in the way, I don't know if Zegris would have made it out of that building because Achari was red inferno volcano hot in that moment. And Zegris was in his line of sight and that could have gotten. really, really ugly. He was going to pummel him if he was not restrained or if the linesman did not pull Zegris back. It was going to get really ugly. Did not realize Pat until they announced it that Sidney Crosby could not participate

in the shootout because he came off the bench. Same with Trevor Zegris. Very interesting there. You also knew that the goal was offside pretty quickly. You and I were texting about that, by the way. You even immediately texted me. That looked way offside. And then when the first replay came up, I was like, yeah, that looked offside by a mile.

So no problem with that type of offside review because that's why the offside review was put into place for plays like that pat where it's very easy to tell when a player is that offside. We're not looking at, you know, a millimeter or even a centimeter. We're talking about, you know, he was well over a foot offside by my vantage point. Oh, but like as soon as they, I was kind of surprised that there wasn't a whistle. And I'm not saying this with hindsight. I watched that play develop and I saw that they. they at least had one foot over the line, if not both. And as soon as the goal went in, I think I picked my phone up immediately and texted you

went. If I'm mused, I challenge that for off sides. But then we come to find out it's overtime potential game winning goal. So the league automatically reviews it. And they got this one right. But I do want to take a step back and I want to talk about special teams tonight because it was not very good. especially for the penguins.

The PK goes three for four, which that's not too bad. The power play goes 0 for four. And the thing that I have noticed the last couple games out of the Penguins power play, and I will at least grant them this because to start the season, they have been overall pretty solid. They're solidly in the top five of the national hockey league right now. but they're getting too much into a passing, finding the perfect play mentality, and it's really starting to catch up to them.

We were both kind of stunned when this game started that Erson was in net for the Flyers. We fully expected it to be Vladar. So Tocke's decision to start Erson was a puzzling one. And when you're playing a goalie who is both this season and historically struggled, you have to have a shot first mentality. It is a night where the people in the 200s will be very happy because them yelling shoot is the right answer. And we saw it to open the game with Justin Brzo's first goal.

It was a nice move. It was a good little power move and a fake by Brzoe, but that goal shouldn't go in. That should have been the penguin's calling card for the rest of the night is this guy does not have his angles. every time you get a chance, shoot the puck, and then they kind of picked that up in the third period and started shooting more. But 26 shots on a guy like Erson through four periods, that's not going to be enough to win. Honestly, Pat, Erson could have taken a nap in the second period because the Penguins hardly had the puck the entire time.

And when they did, they were handling it like a grenade. But obviously that changed in the third period. Going back to the power play, though, just way too stagnant, overpassing, playing Patty Cake, the power play is doing all three of those things. It's just not working. And I tweeted this during the game. The Flyers have kind of run the same penalty kill for the last decade or so. It's not a power kill in the sense that you're watching Carolina or New Jersey,

but it's damn close. And it's ultra aggressive. They push up at the point. And it forces you into very quick decisions. And the Penguins weren't making those quick decisions at all. And it was leading to a very easy clear for the Flyers. And B, which is worse, very good short-handed opportunities for the Flyers. I thought Eric Carlson, and we have praised him a lot on the show this year, man.

He was dreadful in this game. He was out to lunch the entire time. Evgeny Malkin, I thought he was out to lunch this game. This was by far his worst game of the year. And you know how much we have praised him on the show and stay tuned for Warrior Helmet Wednesday, by the way. But he was not good in this one. One of the power plays in the second period, Pat, it was one of the most lazy, casual

power plays I've ever seen. You can say the same thing in overtime. I know some of the players were gassed even after the timeout, but you were gifted a powerplay there. You have two minutes to try and win it. Simplify things and they weren't able to do it. Just not a good night for that unit. It was just there was no real cohesion on the power play tonight, which was a big problem.

Because I will say this in their favor, but it also turns into a negative. When they had the overtime power play, they started to. do what you want to do with a four on three is they started to back the flyers into the house. They started to really open up those lanes. But they were just waiting to set up that perfect play. And it led to the flyers being able to take a little bit more of a risk to step up a little bit more. If they would have combined that with some quicker puck movement and a willingness to shoot, you probably end up taking the extra.

point in overtime, but unfortunately, they were just a little too passive and it led to a lack of success on the man advantage. So if I'm, I don't want to say I'm nitpicking because this has been the start of a trend a little bit, if you ask me, but we have seen they've been able to figure this power play out. They just got to get back to what they were doing about a week ago when they had the man advantage. Right. I mean, they came into this game with the second ring power play in the league about 33%. So, they've been doing a lot of things right. Just nothing worked tonight. So getting back to basics will be a big thing on Thursday against the Minnesota while when they go up to Minnesota.

But that will do it for this first segment. Coming up in the second segment, we're going to talk about a few more things from this game. Plus how ESPN's hockey coverage was disgustingly bad, especially late in this game. Pat and I are going to discuss all of that right after this. But before we get to that, we have to tell you all about our first sponsor. and that is game time. Hockey season is officially here and nothing beats being in the arena for those opening games. But let's be real, getting tickets can be a total headache between waiting in queues, surprise

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$25. Take the guesswork out of buying NHL tickets with game time, down the games time map, create an account, and use code locked on NHL for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply, that's code locked on NHL for $20 off. Swipe, tap, ticket, go. All right, we're back here on this episode of the Lockdown Penguins podcast. I am one of your host, Hunter Hodes, joined by my co-s, Pat, Stam, and Pat. We'd be remissed if we didn't talk about Justin Briseau, man, staying hot,

he gets his sixth goal of the season, a softie by Sam Ursa, not sure why he isn't covering his post there. But I thought one of the bright spots tonight was Brzoe, once again. He was humming on that second line. The second line was also getting some really good shifts in the third period after Ben Kindle and Company on the third line, really got them going early on, loved Brzo's effort, and he was rewarded with a nice goal. He had another really good chance later on in that third period as well. But Erson made a really nice save on him. But I thought he played a really good game tonight.

He did. And this is going to kind of sound a little bit contradictory because we are going to talk about and did mention that Gino had a pretty rough game tonight. But on the whole, that second line was pretty effective. They obviously get the goal from Brazil. They had some really, like you said, solid shifts in the third period when the penguins really really started to wake up. I like that line a lot.

they are just doing, it seems, everything right. And not to kind of take a left turn and go somewhere else with the show real quick. But this popped up because when we record, I try to keep all the stats in front of me. And they finally populated the game page on NHL. Let's run down real quick, that scrum at the end of overtime. Here's everybody who got a 10-minute misconduct at the end of the end of the the game. Sydney Crosby, Ryan Shea, Parker Wetherspoon, Nolichari, Trevor Zegress, Tyson Forrester, Owen Tippett, and Jamie Drysdale. The Battle of Pennsylvania is back, folks.

At least for Tuesday night, it was. I guess the most fired up. I've seen the fan base on Twitter about the Flyers in years. It was good to see just because this rivalry has not been as heated as it used to be, especially during some of my teenage years in middle school and high school. But it was nice seeing some of that fire return, especially on social media tonight. It's better for the league when this rivalry is doing well. And you saw that tonight. Also, Pat, this was Ben Kendall's ninth game tonight. I know he had that rough eighth game on Monday.

He more than made up for it tonight on Tuesday. He was exquisite. I put a tweet out early in the first period. there was a couple of shifts he strung together. I'm like, well, eight minutes in and he's already done more than what he did in all of Monday's game against the blues. And then he and his line were kind of the starting catalysts for the comeback in the third period to at least secure the point in this game. They strung together some really nice shifts. Ben Kendall himself had a couple of chances.

Now they're at nine games. The ELC will kick in if he plays a 10th. At this point, again, now that we're nine fully in, I am comfortable with him staying up. I think he deserves it. Once again, the biggest thing that stood out to me tonight with Ben Kindle was his 200-foot game. He was, yeah, he had some great offensive zone time, whether it was some passes or some looks at the net or even work in the corners. But underrated part of Ben Kindle's game so far as he's continued to improve has been his defensive zone work. He is rarely ever out of position.

He makes the simple smart play in the defensive zone and just makes it look simple. And there's a lot to be said for that. When you're an 18 year old player, especially in a franchise that has the likes of Crosby, Malkin, Lattang, Carlson, there's an added pressure to be good. And that a lot of times for young players can lead to them trying to do too much. because they really want to make their mark. And for Kindle, he has just been doing the things that got him to be a first round pick by the Penguins. He's not doing too much.

He's making the right plays. And he's been effective. I remember there was a really good play in the defensive zone tonight where the flyers were getting a little bit of pressure. Kindle was back. He picks the puck up near the boards. And it would have been really easy. for him to just flip the puck off the glass, clear it out, let the Flyers reset, let the Penguins

reset. Instead, he takes a beat, he stops with the puck, he picks his head up, and he fires a breakout pass that leads the Penguins into the Flyers zone. That is veteran stuff. He's still got a lot to work on. He's still not a fully completed product, but you look at a lot of the things he has done over these nine games, and there's really nothing there to tell me he's, he's not ready to be an NHL player. I agree. And the reads that he was making when he was cycling, especially in the third period, it was also veteran stuff. He knew exactly where his linemates were going to be. He knew exactly where the defensemen were going to pinch in those situations. And he was able to read plays before they even happened. It was such a great game from him.

And I think he deserves to stay up based on the total nine game sample. Pat, we still have two more games for Harrison Brunick, he was taken out of the lineup tonight. Matt Dumba stays in. Owen Pickering comes in. I thought Pickering was pretty steady, by the way, totally fine on the third pair. I did not like that Dumba stayed in, though, and I did not think he had a good performance. It felt like every time he was on the ice tonight, he was being hemmed in his own zone. Yeah, I know. He got a point on one of the penguin goals, but whatever. He's not really doing too much to help the team win when he plays. I appreciate the physicality, like I do with Connor Clifton. But he's being hemmed in his own zone.

Each time he's out there, excuse me, took a couple of really bad penalties tonight. I just don't really see it, man. I think you got to at least see. I understand that Brunick had a bad game on Monday. I get it. I still felt like I would have put him back in for this game on Tuesday to try and get him to redeem himself. He has two games left. I'd like to think he is going to play more like a version we saw in the first, you know, five games, five to six games compared to what we saw in game seven for him.

But I just, I think I've seen enough of Matt Dumba for a little bit right now. I'm fully recanting my take that I wanted to see him get a couple games under his belt and find his footing. And you know what? I'm not going to 100% recant. can't it. I'm going to pull back a little bit from it because this game was, as we have said multiple times over, a weird game. This was an extremely weird game. There were momentum swings. You had all the circus stuff at the end. You had multiple disallowed goals. You had all kinds of crazy shenanagannery. But I don't want to immediately throw him to the wolves yet because it is

still early and it's a new team, a new system, all that stuff. But at the same time, any chance he's gotten this season has not been good. So maybe I want to see the least shortened a little more, whether it's less ice time, whether it's another healthy. Either way, it's just tonight was a really, really poor performance for Dumba. I agree. And I want to see more of Picker, in Roonick, I think, considering the chemistry they had a camp, the chemistry they had in the preseason,

I still want to see if that can carry over into the regular season. I just, I've seen enough of Matt Dunba. I know it's been a limited sample, Pat, just have not liked his game at all during the regular season. His decision making is not good. He doesn't bring the offense. He brings the physicality, but that's really it. He can't really defend it all in his own zone either. I thought Pickering, though, was pretty soft.

One more thing, though, before we get to our final segment and give out our warrior helmet for this week. Shame on ESPN for the end of this game. You have the A package for the NHL TV rights in the United States of America. And that was Bush League stuff. You did the split screen stuff. I understand you have the frozen frenzy. I get it.

It's really cool, even though there's no reason to do this on a random Tuesday night at the end of October. when you were going up against the World Series. How about you do this in January or February, or maybe on a Friday night when you're not going up against the World Series, for example? But how are you going to go to a split screen

at the end of overtime after a disallowed goal and for an entire shootouts? Oh, and there was a pretty big scrum after the overtime. I don't care about that Capital Stars game until after this first game is over. It was pathetic. And then they also, I don't know if you noticed this, they got the graphic wrong with Archer Shilovs.

They said that, oh, his shootout career was 1 and 0. He saved all three attempts against the Blue Jackets. No, he didn't. He gave up all three goals against the Blue Jackets. They got that graphic wrong. So just a comedy of errors from ESPN. It continues to get worse. I used to really,

think some of the hate was overblown. But lately it's like, you know, I can't defend really any of this. Even during the intermissions, Pat, Mark Messy has the charisma of an Amazon package. T.J. O'Shee looks uncomfortable. Doesn't even know what he's saying. The entire thing is terrible. And I feel bad because I've wanted this to work and I've pushed back on some of the hate that ESPN has gotten. But tonight especially, awful, awful stuff.

When the NHL got back to ESPN, I said off the jump, there are going to be things you're not going to like. There are going to be personalities. There's going to be broadcast decisions. There's going to be camera angles, graphics packages, stuff like that that you're not going to like. And that's because they were starting from scratch with the NHL. They hadn't had the NHL in a couple of decades and it was going to be a reset. And in order to grow and in order to get better, you're going to try things. They're not going to work. You're going to scrap them. That hasn't been the case. This has just been a very bare minimum effort and product by ESPN, furthering my theory

that the only reason ESPN took the NHL back is because all those years ago, they wanted to launch ESPN Plus. and they were like, we can use NHL fans to get more people on ESPN Plus, and sure enough, that's what happened. And the split screen thing at the, I won't give them too much grief because you can't predict, at least not to the day when the World Series is going to be. You know that it's going to be this amount of time, but you're not going to know when the games are.

So you already had the NHL schedule out. You already had this date circled. That's just bad luck. There's nothing you can really do about it. But what you could also do is give the NHL a day to own. I know the Olympics are this year, so this would have been a little bit more difficult, but just stay with me in theory on this.

A Sunday after the NFL is over, after the Super Bowl has been awarded. And instead of starting it at 6 p.m., started at noon. and you have a game or two at noon, you have a game or two at two o'clock, you have a game or two at four, you have a bunch of games at seven,

and then a couple games at 10. And it is an entire 12-hour day of the NHL. And you can market the hell out of it. You can do your little frozen frenzy thing on the ESPN app. You can do it on Disney Plus, and you can say we got this marquee game at noon, this marquee game at four, this marquee game at seven,

and then this marquee game at 10. And especially once you get into January, February, those games are going to mean a whole hell of a lot more with the Stanley Cup playoffs looming. So it would have been a much better idea to do it then. But at the end of the day, the product on ESPN is just really, really stale at this point. You can also do this on a random Saturday once the college football

playoff is done. And that's usually, you know, early to mid-January is when the college football season is over. So, Pat, at the end of the end of, January or even February, March sometime, do it on a random Saturday, start at 12, and just go through the rest of the day and stagger these starts. I think that would also work really well. Hell, if you want to do this on a Friday night when you're not competing against college football also, you can do that too. I just, I don't think they thought it out with this random Tuesday, especially when you're competing against the World Series. That's going to take all of your ratings.

I just don't understand. And the thing is also, Pat, ESPN, I feel like does have some really legitimate talent to people for the hockey side. Mike Monaco tonight I actually really like as a play-by-play announcer. Ray is usually decent. Bob Wucheson is fantastic as a play-by-play announcer. I've also liked how Sean McDonough continues to improve his play-by-play. He was really rough at the start. But he has a lot of experience doing college football,

doing the NFL, and you're seeing that now come over to the hockey side. So they have some good people. but you know some of the other other analysts don't really know what they're talking about and the production that's the big thing a lot of the production is just really bad and it reared its ugly head tonight just do not do something like that again with split screens especially in such a big moment but unless you have anything else to add I think that's going to do it for our second segment I just give just I was just going to joke you know what if we want to go full ESPN crazy play-by-play announcer.

Talk to your friends at WWE. Get us Joe Tess. Get us Joe Tess for an NHL game. Have him losing his mind at every little thing. It'd be fantastic. Hearing him call those SEC games on Saturday, whether it's on ABC or ESPN, he is so funny.

He goes a little bit over the top when he calls the SEC games, but it's still a riot to watch. I'd love to see Gus Johnson. You watch the Big Ten, right? Gus Johnson, man, is, I know some people hate him. I love Gus Johnson so much.

Maserati Marv and all this. It's so good. I can talk. I can gush about Gus Johnson all day, but we're not going to do that on this podcast. That will do it for the second segment of today's episode. Coming up to end the show, it's Wednesday.

Yins know what that means. It's time for Warrior Helmet Wednesday. Pat and I are going to give out our MVP's for the week coming up right after. this back here on the Wednesday edition of the locked on penguins podcast for yet another week i patrick damp have wrestled the host chair away from hunter hoodies for what has become one of our favorite segments here on locked on penguins and that is warrior helmet wednesday as hunter said before we went to break if you are new here this is us paying homage to the 2016 stanley Cup winning penguins. When they would win a game in the locker room, the player of the game was

given a warrior helmet by one of their teammates for their efforts. And here on the show, we pick our MVP for the week. And Hunter, this week, it was about as close to no contest as it could possibly get for us. We both have the same warrior helmet to hand out this week. If you're watching us on YouTube, you're seeing the graphic right now. And it is number 71, Evgeny Malkin, a big week for him. Four games played, six points, five assists and a goal to go along with it. Huge week for Vgeny Malkin. Yes, wasn't very good against the Flyers, but wasn't such a bad performance that it takes away from everything he did in the prior three games. Big week for Gino. And he has started off this season red hot 100%.

And I know he was not good against the Flyers on Wednesday. Those games are going to happen. Third game in four nights. Second half of the back to back with travel. He didn't have it. Some of the top guys aren't going to have it for some games. He's been phenomenal otherwise. You said at six points in his other three games.

He's turned back the clock looking like he's 28 or 29 and not 30. this year. He's been outstanding with Justin Brazo and Anthony Mantha driving offense. It feels like at will when they're on the ice. We could have gone Sidney Crosby as well, Pat, for the week that he had. We could have gone both goaltenders for the week that they have had.

Both Sheelves and Jari have been outstanding. But it felt only right to go with Malkin for how hot he's been, how great his playmaking has been. he gets the empty net goal to boot. This was an easy decision for me. He very much deserves the warrior helmet for this past week. He's arguably the biggest reason why they have started out this hot so far. Without a doubt.

And the one thing that does kind of stink about him not having the greatest performance against the flyers is if he would have been able to get an assist or a goal, it would have extended his streak to eight games with at least a point. And for what have Genie Malkin has been able to do to start this season, is a, like you said, a huge reason for why the penguins are in the position that they're in right now. And I can't give him enough credit. Now, as we have talked about with him, though, the challenge is going to be keeping this somewhat consistent. Because we have seen this from Evgeny Malkin for the past couple of seasons. He starts off pretty hot, does really well out of the gate, kind of starts to trail off.

So I do think, though, this is like, of a risk this year because he has good consistent linemates should all three of them remain together and remain healthy. Is he going to score at this torrid pace for the rest of the season? Very skeptical of that. But having those good consistent line mates is going to elevate him for most of the year. And we talked about that going into this season, how these last couple of years he hasn't been able to have consistent linemates that can, you know, A, get him the puck and B, finish off the chances that he gives them. So far this season through 11 games, Anthony Manta, he's finishing off his chances.

Justin Brzo, he is finishing off his chances. Pat, they have a combined 11 goals, his wingers, to start the season. There you go, man. They're getting him the puck. And in turn, those two are finishing off the chances that he himself is giving them. That was a big key going into the season. And so far, so good, because these last couple of years, his wingers were really not finishing their chances.

No, not at all. So let's take a look at our tracker for the season so far, because at the end of the year, we will give out our season long warrior helmet. If you're watching us on YouTube, you can see the graphic up on your screen. Justin Brzo still leads the clubhouse with two warrior helmets on the season. We do just count it if both of us give out the same player as just one rather than if we split, which we are known to do from time to time. But, The rest of the way, the other players who have just won so far this season. Captain Sidney Crosby, President of Hockey Operations, Kyle Dubus, Benjamin Kindle, Evgeny Malkin, Sergey Murshov, head coach Dan Mews, and goaltender Arters, Sheelov. So we will obviously be keeping this tracker up all season long, and we will hand out our season long MVP for Warrior Helmet Wednesday when we get to that point in quite a few months.

But unless Hunter, you've got anything. else to add about number 71. I think that is going to do it for this Wednesday edition. Boy, it was a fun one. And it feels so nice to have the Battle of Pennsylvania back for one night. But we will be back on Thursday to get you ready for the rest of the week when the Penguins will be back in action taking on the Minnesota Wild, a team that's been struggling a little bit. But we'll save all that for our Thursday edition when we preview that game. for Hunter Hodes. I am Patrick Damp. Thank you, as always, for tuning in. And we will be back on Thursday.