Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - That's a big road win for the Pittsburgh Penguins...

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

The Pittsburgh Penguins got a much-needed win on Thursday night and Hunter is here to talk about it. In the first segment, he touches on how this was a great team win as everyone from all four lines contributed. He looks at how both Ryan Poehling and Brock McGinn were able to help out the top six to get the team out in front. Is it as easy as Teddy Blueger being back? Or is there more to it? Hunter also discusses how Sidney Crosby got back to being himself in this one as he opened things up with a goal. Is he going to be the one to lead the team out of this mess? After that, Hunter looks at how POJ has really grown over the course of this season and how he made a number of strong defensive plays to break up quality chances. He also praises Kris Letang for perhaps his best game of the season as he continues to have more of a shoot-first mentality. Finally, he goes into some of the ugly parts of the game, notably the goaltending of Tristan Jarry. How important is it that he gets out of this funk? Does Hunter have confidence that he will? All that, plus much more, is on this episode of Locked On Penguins.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKEDON15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order.BetOnlineBetOnline.net has you covered this season with more props, odds and lines than ever before. BetOnline – Where The Game Starts!SimpliSafeWith Fast Protect™️ Technology, exclusively from SimpliSafe, 24/7 monitoring agents capture evidence to accurately verify a threat for faster police response. There’s No Safe Like SimpliSafe. Visit SimpliSafe.com/LockedOnNHL to learn more. 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.

Hello, Penguins fans, happy late Thursday. This is coming at you guys just after the Penguins 6 to 4 win over the Minnesota Wild. And yes, we are talking about a win for the Penguins. They've won three of their last five games at this point. I got two massive points in the standings tonight. We're going to go into everything that happened in this 6 to 4 win over the wild for this episode, how the Penguins got contributions from everyone in the forward group, how the defense was cleaned up, I think, at times,

how Tristan Jari still has a ways to go, how the penalty kill continues to be a lot better, all that plus so much more coming up for today's episode 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. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. I'm your host.

Hunter Hodes. You want to follow me on Twitter at Hunter Hodes. You can also follow the shows Twitter at LORS for Penguins. And, of course, thank you all so much for making this your first listen of the day. Penguin 6, Wild for the Penguins, as I said, my intro, get their third win in their last five games, a massive win for this team. It cannot be understood just how big of a win this is for the Penguins. You go up to nothing going into the first intermission.

The Wild come back, get two goals in 12 seconds to tie it. Looks like the wheels are going to fall off. You get a goal late in the second to make it three, two. You make it four to. Minnesota comes back again. And then the pet Brock McGinn is able to really just put the game away for good when he makes it five to three. Then they get the empty netter from Jake. You know, they bent in this game, but they didn't break.

I think that's probably the best way to describe the penguins in this one. They bent. They gave up those quick goals in the second period, but they did not break. And they were able to find their game again and get this win against a wild team that's really been struggling to score. some injuries have definitely not helped them but you know that's a wild team that's fragile right now they're believe two and five and one at home this season they're not playing good hockey at all so the penguins they're able to pounce on that team that's been struggling in a lot of facets of their game and they were able to grind out in a win and i think the biggest thing that i want to touch on for

this first segment again just contributions from everyone in the lineup you know we haven't said that a lot this season but you know in their win against toronto for example, you know, that had contributions to everyone as well. Brockman again got the game winning goal. In this one, you had a couple goals from the bottom six, Ryan Paling, who, you know, I'll say it. I've been kind of down on him at times this season. I'll eat some crow on him tonight. You all know me that listen to the show. I will always eat crow when a player that I've not been that high on proves he wrong. He did so tonight. Really nice goal that he had. I have to believe that it was his third of the season. Brockman again, he continues his ridiculously great hot streak.

He now has five goals on the season. His fourth in his last five to six games. He's actually top five, top six on the team in goals right now. Outside of Cindy Crosby, Jake Gensel, Evgeny Malkin, Jason Zucker, and Rickel, Brock McGinn leads the team in goals. He's sixth on the team. He's been that good. And yeah, Philip Gustafson kind of gave him that goal.

Let's be real. I think that shot does not go in on 90%. about an HL goaltenders, just a really weird goal to allow he kind of gave that back after Trish and Jari didn't play that well. But you take it. And, you know, that's two big bottom six goals from this team tonight. You know, you need goals from your bottom six when the top six is not playing well. And they surely got that tonight. So I was really happy with that. Sidney Crosby, he gets two goals tonight. He was fantastic all game. You know, I've been kind of, I wouldn't really say I'm going at him.

I've just been commenting that he's not in his game right now. And of course, I mean, I know he's going to pull through him. He's, it's Sydney Crosby here, people. You know, the second you start to doubt him, you just look foolish. And I was never doubting him, of course. I was just saying, hey, you know, not playing the way he used to be. But, you know, he does have goals. And be like, he has three goals in his last two games, was a man on a mission tonight.

I definitely do think that, you know, putting Raquel up there with Crosby and Gensel really energized Sid and I think you could see that right from the opening drop you know the first goal happens just a few minutes um you know into the first period it's like well you know guess the line change worked folks um just a really ridiculous um shot from sid to beat gustafs in there and just the release on that was awesome and you know you you can tell in that kind of moment he wasn't overthinking it sometimes in a situation when he's just in a little bit of a rut he'll try to force the pass but in that one he's like you know what i'm going to do it my I'm going to fire at Pass Custerson. That's exactly what he did. And I want to see more of that

from him going forward. So I thought he was outstanding tonight. Jake Gensel, you know, he's basically Mr. M.D. Netter at this point whenever the Penguins need an empty net goal, you throw him on the ice. He will basically get it from anywhere. Really nice job from Jake. Just overall. He also had that great pass to Crosby, the one that made it four to two in the third period. I don't even know how Gensel got that pass across. I have watched that replay like six, seven times at this point. I still cannot

just fathom how that pass got through. He threaded that so beautifully. Sid was able to get a stick on it and get just enough on it to get the puck pass Guffs and really nice goal on that. I believe that was a power play goal. Before the unit was not looking that good. I know they had the five on three goal

with Chris Tang, which I'll get to, in the second. But, you know, even though the power play looked disorganized for a lot of the evening, you know, there were still two really nice plays on it, one of which being the Crosby to Gensel goal to make it forward to to to get them a little bit of insurance. So, you know, the top line led the way for the first time since NOM. The Hibgeny Malkin line was great again. And then bottom six was also really solid.

Defensively, Chris Lange, he gets his first of the season. Really nice to see him bomb it from the point. He needs to keep doing that if he's able to get his, if he wants to get his game, excuse me, back on track. You know, for the first 10 to 12 games of the season,

wasn't really doing much on the power play or even at 5E5 from the point. It just looked like he was always a step slow, a bit hesitant. These last few games, you're seeing him really rip the puck from that center point area. This game came down a little bit, got that goal. Really nice pass from Crosby and Malkin to get it to Lattang,

and he beat Gustafson to the left side of the net, really nice shot from Tanger. I hope everyone chronicled that one. This was probably his best game in, I would say, over a week. To be honest, I thought he was sound defensively, thought he made good decisions with the puck when it was on his stick. That's the crystal tang that I want to see more of. And, you know, the version of him that we've seen, you know,

for the last 15 plus years at this point. So I thought he played well. Brian Dumlin, you know, he's, I wouldn't say he's turning it around, but he's playing a little bit better. Jeff Petron. Honestly, I think all the defensemen played well. I'm going to talk about P.O. Joseph a little bit in the next segment. But again, just a really solid overall team win tonight for Pittsburgh. You know, you look at the metrics, the penguins. scoring chances, they were close to even. Shot attempts were close to even. Expected goals close to even as well. High danger, but the penguins did leave in high danger seven to five in that area. You go to all situations. The penguins led by a landslide and shot attempts at 55. They led in scoring chances about 51% high danger, 63% expected goals, 61.5%. So at 5B5, it was a bit of a closer game.

But if you go to all situations, special teams and everything, the Penguins blew this team off the ice. The only reason it was a 64 game was because Trish and Jari did not play well. And I will get to that a little later on in this episode. But overall, I just wanted to compliment the basically entire team for this win. They needed it badly. They got embarrassed against the Maple Leafs, I thought, on, Tuesday, that lead step away against the Canadians on Saturday again that I think they easily could have won if they were able to just hold that lead with about five, six minutes left.

I also not able to do that. But, you know, this is a team right now. You know, they've gotten points, you know, and for their last five games. I know it may seem a little weird that they've won three of their last five just because they have that seven game losing streak, but you know, they're starting to get some points again, which, you know, that's important. in their last five games, I've gotten seven out of possible 10 points. That's good.

Obviously, you still need it to be a lot better. You need to go on a big winning streak here. Be a nice of a 10 to 11 game one like the New Jersey Devils are on. Probably not going to happen, but, you know, the opportunity is there. Two big games coming up this weekend in Winnipeg and Chicago, two teams who I don't really think are that good. I know Winnipeg is higher up in the Central Division standings, but I also think that's not going to last. I think a lot of that has to do with Connor Helbuck. I'm going to talk a little bit about that as a later.

But overall, you know, the metrics were good. I thought this Penguins team blew the wild off the ice for most of that game. And if Tristan Dari played a little bit better, I think that was going to be like a 60 game or something like that. So really impressed overall the four group and the defense for a lot of good decision making with the puck. And also defending, I think, you know, I'll go into Tristan Dari again a little later on. But coming up in my second segment, we are going to get into, you know, a couple of other things regarding this game. And yes, you know, part of that will be about Tristan.

We're also going to get into P.O. Joseph and how great he's playing at this point and so much more. But before I do get to that, betonline.net is your number one source for sports betting info, stats, news and analysis. You can get the latest odds and trends for every professional and amateur league out there. From football to basketball to soccer and e-sports, we've got it all covered at betonline.net. And if you love sports podcasts, you can find those at bedonline as well. we're always the fastest, easiest way to get your betting fix. You can head to the website today or use your phone to learn more. That is bet online where the game starts.

All right, I'm back in this episode of the Lockdown Penguins podcast. I am your host, Honour Hodes. You know to follow me on Twitter at Honor Hodey. You're also to follow the shows, Twitter, at Eleanor for Penguins. And of course, thank you all so much for making this your first listen of the day. Quick thing here before I get to what I want to talk about in this segment. I know Twitter is kind of on fire right now. I don't know how long this site has.

know if this site is going to exist in a week, two weeks a month a year. I don't know if it's going to get shut down. Who knows? If it does, and you all can't follow me on Twitter anymore, I can plug my Instagram for you all right now, HH underscore 279 if you want to follow me. You know, most of my pictures are with my girlfriend and I. But, you know, I still try to post the episodes on my stories. And, you know, if Twitter does cease to exist at some point here in the near future, you know, I'm going to have to start using something else. And I think that's going to have to be something. So again, H.H. underscore 279 if you want to follow me on Instagram, just because the whole Twitter is just on fire right now with everything that's going on.

But, okay, start off this segment. Let's start with P.O. Joseph. I don't know if you all noticed this tonight, that beautiful breakup in the third period, 2-1 situation. I mean, he just made a flawless play with his stick to break up that pass. He is playing some really, really good hockey right now. This is the first, this was obviously, um, um, his first game back tonight, um, after a few games with that with, you know, with the injury and stuff. But, you know, he looked pretty solid. I mean, on the ice, you know, close to 50, 50 in terms of shot attempts, you know, goals for, goals against. He was on the ice for two actual, one against expected goals for, um, you know, not, not the best there, but, you know, it's, it's fine.

seven scoring chances against three scoring chances for. But, you know, defensively, no, he still made a lot of good plays when the puck was not on his stick to really send the play going the other way. This is a player who I think has really been blossoming as the season has gone on. Again, I didn't really think that highly of him going into the season just because it's been in the system for a while. He's kind of a state in Wilkesbury, but they gave him a shot. They didn't call up Ty Smith. I think part of that has to do with their salary cap situation. and so far, I think POJ is doing a great job in his games. And I'm excited to see more of him as the season goes on.

If he continues this level play and he continues to be a bit better, I think the Penguins will be feeling really good about themselves going into next season when Brian Dumlin, who I think will likely walk after the season, unless Ron Hextall Galaxy brains himself and decides to give him a four times four contract or something like that. I mean, I can't see him doing that. Well, maybe I can't just because he's given some weird ass, excuse me, some weird comments of not going to cuss like that.

He's been given some weird contracts ever since he's taken over, coupled with some good contracts. So I wouldn't put it past him, but, you know, my opinion, I would not bring Brian Dewman back. But, you know, if they don't, which I think, again, would be the right call. I think they should be feeling awfully good about that left side for the foreseeable future with Marcus Pedersen locked up. Ty Smith is down there.

going to be coming up at some point, P-O-J. I think that's the makings of a pretty solid left side unless you want to go out and get someone else in free agency or be a trade, but I don't really know if the team wants to do that. And if Petri turns it around and Chris Teng gets a bit better, then you have that solid right side of him, Petri and Yanutha and then those six going forward, I think that can only be good things for the Penguins.

So I thought he looked good in his return tonight, was really encouraging to see. And I'll also say the same about Teddy Blugher. This is only his second game of the season. But his numbers this season have been fabulous in only two games. This is according to Danny Shiree Heach would do this out of DK. for sports. The fourth line expected goal share in the two games since Bluger returned.

And on Tuesday, the Penguins had 94.7% of the expected goals when he was on the ice for the fourth line. tonight, 92.3% of the expected goal share. He is making a big difference since coming back. It's great to have an actual legitimate fourth-line center playing well. He should have had a goal tonight that was washed out. I don't know what the heck the NHL officiating was doing there. Josh Archibald was pushed into the net. The puck goes off, Lugar, but they somehow call it goalie interference.

I mean, that's incidental contact. That should have been a goal every day of the week. unless I just do not understand hockey anymore. But it's a really, I was just really weird, in my opinion. But, you know, Blugerson's coming back. He's been great at 5V5. The penalty kill has looked even better since his return. You know, it was, the PK was starting to rebound before he came back.

But right now, it's, it's even on a bigger heater for sure. So, you know, I really liked, you know, how he played tonight. And, you know, when he was on ice, the Penguins had about 50, of the shot attempts. One won in actual goals for, expected goals. Though expected goals for was 79.5 at 5E5 per natural static,

60% of the scoring chances. All situations, you know, it's even better. Excuse me. Yeah, it's even better. It's even better for him. So he's been outstanding in two games. This team really missed him.

You can see just how much he means to that fourth line when he is on his game. I appreciate the efforts that he has done in these last couple of games. And is he going to stay at 92% expected goals here? No, I mean, that's going to regress a little bit. But if he can stay at 55, 60%, something like that, I think this team will be, you know, in pretty good shape for that fourth line. You know, he's been playing a lot with Josh Archibald, Ryan Paling.

Brockman again's been playing with Jeff Carter and Dent Hinen. So, you know, I like how that fourth line has been going right now since Blueger returned. And, you know, they were, they were getting some good shifts tonight, say, least. You know, they had some quality scoring chances, you know, each game, each game, excuse me, each period, it felt like. So, you know, very good job from them. And, you know, even if you look at the underlying here, 71% of the shot attempts for the fourth line at 5E5, goals for goals against 1-0. Again, yeah, expected goals here, 92.3. 85% of the scoring chances when that line was on the ice,

it was their best line tonight, and it was not close. The Gensel-Crosby-Rekyll-Rekyll-Rekyll-Line also did some wonders, 57% of the shot attempts at 5E-5. Expected goals for about 50% and then scoring chances about 50 as well. And, you know, that beats the Gensel-Crosby-Line, to say the least.

But, you know, to wrap up the fourth line, you know, this is one of, you know, you're not going to see this every game, but if they can just be break-even in most of their games, I think the Penguins should be fine. Moving forward, if you ask me. Those are the main performances that I really like tonight. I thought Gino again was solid.

He continues to be steady. Jason Zucker had a good performance. He could have had a couple of goals tonight. Ricardo-Kale had that old Brooks Orpick play where it bounced off two posts. If you all recall, during the 2013 playoffs, Game 6 at the Nassau Coliseum, when the puck went in in game 6

after it went off the two posts that Raquel was not able to get that same luck went off both posts comes out red light went on i thought it was in i was like wait that that looked just like the war pick goal but sure enough he did not get the friendly bounce on that one you know he he he just looks like such a natural fit up there so yeah i mean those are again those are the main players that really stood out to me again said it was awesome as well if he continues to play like this i think he's going to leave the Penguins out of this rut, to say the least. To wrap up today's show, we're going to go into a couple of players who I thought struggled tonight and who I'm definitely a little concerned about right now heading into these weekend

games in Winnipeg and Chicago. So stick around for that coming up after this commercial break. All right, I'm back in this episode of the Lockdown Penguins podcast. I am your host, Hunter Hodes. I'm going to follow me all on Twitter at Honor Hodes. You can also follow the shows Twitter at Elmore for Penguins. And of course, thank you all so much for making this your first listening. of the day.

So let's get into two players that I have who I struggled tonight, but they've also been struggling through like the last week and a half, two weeks or so. Number one, Tristan Jari, his game is in a total free fall right now. I mean, I don't think it's as bad as the way he played against the Islanders in 2021. But it's still pretty bad right now. You know, you look at his last several starts and he's playing like crap. You know, you go back to the game against Edmund.

in a few weeks ago, six goals against 4.65 expected goals against. Vancouver, four goals against, 3.32 expected goals against versus Boston, gave up six. It was only on 3.8 expected goals again, so he gave up almost two more goals than he should have. Seattle gave up three, should have given up two. Montreal, five goals against. That was the game remember that he said that he was hurt, 3.4s expected goals against. And then tonight gave up for 2.48 expected goals against, you know, just, not playing at the level that I think a lot of people expecting to the season. You know, myself included, I am looking like a complete,

an utter buffoon for my prediction with him this season. If he wants a contract and a long-term contract from this management regime, he's going to need to be a lot better. And the Penguins, they're going to need him to be better if they want to get back into the playoff race. You cannot win with the low-average goaltending. I don't care how good your top six is. I don't care how good your defense is.

supposed to be if your goalie if you're starting goaltender is given up six goals four goals six goals three goals five goals four goals you are not going to win a lot of games in the nchel it's why you saw kacy nismith having a few straight starts and i mean i was a little surprised that they went to jarring tonight i guess that means he's starting to come off his injury a little bit but you know he gave up some howlers tonight i mean you know that first one that went in i mean that's a glove save he has to make the second one look like he was just tisler taking a nap in the net, wasn't being aggressive at all, was just way too deep in his crease, didn't bother using his stick to poke check the puck away after that weird sequence to tie it.

Heck, even the third goal, I believe that came from Joel Erickson. Don't know what he's doing there. I mean, he's playing way too deep in his crease. That goes five hole. He needs to come out and challenge the shooter in that situation. And he's just, he's not on his game right now. And it's a problem. It really is.

I mean, the penguins, I'll say this. I know they blew the wild and off the ice tonight, but they were lucky that Philip Gustafson was just as bad, if not worse. I mean, he gave up a couple howlers as well. There's a reason why he's the backup to Mark Andre Fleury and not starting over Florey, and you saw that tonight.

So it was nice to see the penguins on the opposite end on one of the bad goaltending games, but it's past time for this team to actually get good goaltending from this tandem. Because, you know, Ron Hickston, he took another big risk. This is the third. straight season that they have run this same tandem back to back to back you've got to start

getting results at the end of the day you got to and you know that it was a big problem on their seven game losing streak they were outplaying teams but not getting the saves they got a couple nice wins from casey to smith montreal game comes and jrallie doesn't look that good to smith is not the best against the Leafs tonight. Jari was really lucky that the rest of the skaters and the, excuse me, he was really lucky that the rest of his skaters bailed him out because he gave up a couple of goal, he gave up a few goals. I would say three of those four goals, he should not have given up the fourth goal. That game was over at that point, but I think he should have saved those first three shots. They were not that easy. I mean, they were not

that hard. And I think, you know, last year's version of him definitely saves those. So it's going to be something to monitor. He needs to be a lot better and a lot better fast if this team is able to claw out of the rut that they're still in right now. The other player that I want to discuss, Brian Rust, he just seems to be fighting it. Don't really know what's going on. Is he battling an injury? It doesn't seem to matter if he's playing with Hedgeny Malkin or Sidney Crosby. It just seems to be overthinking out there. One example that stood out to me tonight, two-on-one. that was in the second period comes in usually he shoots in those situations forces a pass it goes back the other way it's just like right you know you got to rip that and you know on the

power play not doing much of anything don't even don't even remember the last time he had a legitimate scoring chance on the main advantage just seems to be a complete passenger right now and that's usually not what we can say about rust he's usually one of their more consistent players someone who's always good for 20 to 25 goals a season, but right now just is not playing well. And it needs to change. You know, you can't keep relying on Crosby and Gensel and Malkin and Zucker to do everything. You know, you're going to need, you know, contributions from someone like Rust.

And, you know, he also just got a massive contract from the Penguins of the Allseason. Heck, he was the first of the big guys to come back. And right now, I will say this. He's not playing up to that deal. You know, obviously that can change. But, you know, he's definitely just seems to be fighting right now. I think he just doesn't have his confidence. Seems to be second-guessing himself a lot,

whether it's in the offensive or defensive zone. Really think he just needs to figure it out, I think. Those are the two main players that I think are really struggling right now, at least in my view. But that will do it for today's episode of the Locktime Penguins podcast. Really appreciate all you listening to this one. For a Friday's episode, I will have a full weekend preview. for you all. They'll go to Winnipeg on Saturday, head to Chicago and Sunday before coming home

next week. So again, that will do it for this episode. Hope you all enjoyed it. Hope you all enjoyed watching the Penguins get the win. Let me know what you all thought about the game down in the comments on YouTube. You can also send me a DM on any social media platform. And all that just, you know, let me know. So again, thank you all so much for listening. Hope you all have a great Thursday, and I'll talk with you all again on Friday.