Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - The Penguins tame the Kraken 6-1!

Episode Date: December 8, 2021

The Pittsburgh Penguins finish a long road trip in style! Hunter recaps the Penguins 6-1 win over the Seattle Kraken from Monday night as the game looked to be over in the opening five minutes. He goes into Jake Guentzel and how he's continuing to light it up around the league. Could he make a push for the Rocket Richard towards the end of the year? He also then touches on Sidney Crosby: Was that the game that will really get him going? He sure looks back to Hunter, that's for sure. Was this Casey DeSmith's best game of the year? How much will the team have to rely on him down the stretch? All that, plus much more on this episode of Locked On Penguins.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!BetOnline AGThere is only 1 place that has you covered and 1 place we trust. Betonline.ag! Sign up today for a free account at betonline.ag and use that promocode: LOCKEDON for your 50% welcome bonus.Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order.StatHeroStatHero is the first of its kind Daily Fantasy Sports platform where it’s YOU vs. the HOUSE in head to head fantasy matchups - winner take all. Sign up for FREE - RIGHT NOW - at StatHero.com/HOCKEY and use promo code HOCKEY for a One Hundred Percent Deposit Match.Omaha SteaksThe holidays are around the corner and finding the perfect gift is tricky. Omaha Steaks makes it easy to send friends and family an unforgettable gift guaranteed to be loved. Go to Omaha Steaks dot com and enter “NHL” into the search bar to order The Perfect Gift Package. 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.

Your Locked-on Penguins. Your daily podcast on the Pittsburgh Penguins. Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network. Your team every day. All right, let's hopefully that worked. Welcome to the YouTube debut for this show. Obviously, this audio is still going to go on Apple and Spotify. I'm the host of the Locked-on Penguins podcast, Hunter Hodes.

I'll just say, definitely nervous for this first one. Hopefully there's not too many kinks. I'm excited to keep growing the show on another platform. I know YouTube has a lot of other locked on shows. It's now expanding to the NHLs. Glad mine is now on there. And, of course, thank you all so much for making the locked on penguins podcast, your first listen of the day.

Awkward intro aside, what a win by the Pittsburgh Penguins last night. They take down the Seattle Cracken 6 to 1. The game that was basically over in the first five minutes because Pittsburgh went out there and just full-on blitzed them. That was a statement by the Penguins that, okay, they were a bit mad by how the first couple games went and how their finishing has been this year. And hopefully this was the start of things regressing back to the mean.

Obviously, I don't think they're going to be the best finishing team in the league again this season. They're 32nd. As of right now, if you go to Jay Fresh's model or a couple other analytic models. But if they can get to around league average a little bit above that, that. This team is going to win a lot of games. And you saw there was some luck that finally went their way last night in terms of getting balances that they haven't gotten all year. I think that was honestly my biggest takeaway outside of Jake Gensel. I'll get to him in a sec.

But this team finally got the bounces. You saw the opening goal, right, with Jeff Carter, was able to basically fling the puck on net. And what do you know? It goes off Philip Grubauer and in. And then they're up one nothing. And then the floodgates open. Jake Gensel scores one. And now I'm just, I'm honestly just blanking on how many, whoever scored there just because it was a six to one ball game. Dittan Hinen had one in the game as well. Just a really magnificent performance I thought from Pittsburgh. Though at times, I will say Seattle push back. And after those first five minutes, I thought Pittsburgh was a little lucky to be up three nothing going into that first period. If you look

at the underlying numbers a little bit. Seattle actually had more of the shot attempts at 5-85, 51.1 percent. Scoring chances, though, Pittsburgh led that at 5E-5 with basically 62 percent of those high danger percentage-wise. 63 percent of the high danger chances went to Pittsburgh. Now, if we're looking at expected goals for 2.59 for the Penguins, 1.78 for Seattle. Again, I don't think Pittsburgh dominated the game. It was the six to one final score. It's not indicative of how the game went. Pittsburgh, again, was just able to capitalize on the balances that they got

and all the schooling chances for once in their life this year. You knew the goal from Seattle was going to come from Jordan Everley. That's what happens. Pittsburgh can only play him two times now. He is going to score every single time against Pittsburgh. I hope if someone that listens to this show or anyone out there had a prop bet for Jordan Everly to score against the Penguins, won some money, please keep betting him to score against the penguins every single time he plays

them. It's just, that's going to happen. But obviously, the biggest takeaway, Jake Gensel, yet again. I mean, this is now a 13-game point streak, has 15 goals on the season. And now he's slowly starting to make it a race for the Rocket Richard. Only Leon Dries Seidel, Alex Ovechkin, Andrew Mangapani, Connor McDavid, and Chris Kreider have more goals than Jake this year, better. He's scored 12 goals in his last 12 games. He has seven goals during that four-game road trip. He scored a goal on seven of his last 14 shots. So 50% shooting percentage for his last 14 shots. That's pretty good. And I'm sure that's going to regress at some point. And he also has 19 points during this 13-game point streak. I read some takes on a couple places saying that this was Jake Gensel's best performance. How am I supposed to say?

I read some takes that this could be the best hockey, excuse me, that we've seen Jake Gensel play. Honestly, you can argue that. I mean, the only thing that comes to mind for me is his 40-goal year and his 2016-17 run where he was just lighting everything on fire. But, I mean, right now it honestly compares just to those two things with how he is firing the puck in the back of the net. And I talked about this on one of my episodes yesterday, then last week, you know he's a much different goal score than someone like Alex Ovechkin where you know he has his office right or he also can just fire the puck hard as heck from anywhere

Jake he doesn't have a hard shot like he just picks his corners to an elite level and it's almost like Jake is going in his mind I'm going to shoot right there and you're not going to do a damn thing about it and you saw that kind of on the one tire last night he got that feed from Evan Rodriguez is and he went top cheese for one of those goals and it was just like there no goalie is going to stop that and Jake almost has something in his mind saying yeah I'm going to go right there and you're not going to do anything about it and the other one just a wicked release that he had to go top top cheese again excuse me just a ridiculous shot I thought overall from Jake I mean this is just this is elite level hockey that we're seeing I did see some takes some old takes exposed, floated around on social media and stuff and other places saying that, you know, he should have been traded over the off season. Well, he definitely should not have, even though

he kind of did not score in the playoffs. That's what happens with all great players. They go into scoring slums. Sidney Crosby has gone into plenty of scoring slums in the playoffs. I don't see a lot of fans clamoring for him to be traded. I'm not going to compare Cindy Crosby to Jake Gensel, but Jake is an elite player in his own regard. I understand a lot of people, don't see it that way because he plays with Sidney Crosby, but look at his stats away from Sid. They're almost identical, even if you put him on, Afghani Malkins line.

And there have been people that have clamored for Jake to stay on Gino's line. Obviously, not this year because he's hurt, but when Malkin has been healthy, just because of the chemistry that they have as well, and some people wanted Sid to have Zooker. And I think of the time, I'm trying to remember which player, other player people wanted on SIDS line.

But I think you're going to start to see some people. I mean, well, if Jake's going to keep this up, you're probably not. But could you see a Zucker-Crosby-Rodriguez line at some point? Most likely not. I mean, but you honestly could see a Gensel-Crosby-Rodriguez first line if this continues the way it's going. I know Brian Russ is still a little bit of a ways away. But with how that line's going, I don't really think you can mess that up. But yeah, I mean, just like Jake fits with anyone. He's an elite player in his own regard. And I tweeted this last night as well on my Twitter account at Hunter Hodes. Honestly, the penguins are lucky that they locked Jake up at the rate that they did. And, you know, anyone that has listened to my show and now that has watched the show, thank you for watching this debut episode on YouTube. I was, I got cold on Jim Rutherford as his tenure went on. I love what he did in 2016. I love what we did in 2017.

That said, it kind of went sour from there. But one of the biggest things that he did well after the cup run was he locked Jake up to a contract that looks like a flat-out steal. It was a five-year deal, six million per, if I'm not mistaken, I'm 99.9% sure, right. Yeah, it's definitely right. If he were to be up at the end of this season with all of the goals that he has scored, and, you know, Josh, he wrote an article the other day, 0.42. goals per 60, right? He would probably command 7.5 to 8 million per. And honestly, if I were another team, I would pay that and run. He is one of the five best goal scorers in the league.

He is paid to score goals and he does it at a rate that not many other players can do. So the Penguins and Penguins fans that listen to the show and everyone out there that follows a team, you should be lucky that Jake is locked up at the rate that he is because this production that we're seeing right now is absolutely ridiculous. He is hopefully going to challenge Leon Dreisel and Alex Lovetchkin for the rocket at the end of the year. He is well on pace for over a 34 goal season. I think he's at least he's on pace for 40 right now. So just a incredible season thus far for Jake. Still a lot more to get to for this episode of Locked on Penguins, including Sidney Crosby's awesome game. We also have to.

have Chris LaTang continue to look awesome. Casey DeSmith, getting on the board with his first win of the year, Easley, his best game. We're going to get to that and a whole lot more coming up after this commercial break. But first, you listen to podcasts for the power of knowledge. You switch to Boost Mobile for the power of saving money. You can get three unlimited data lines for $30 a month per line and a free five gigabyte phone when you switch.

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Follow the show's Twitter at L.O. Four Penguins follow my, no, follow the, my Twitter right there at Hunter Hone's. I totally just screwed up that finger point, but you know what? It's the first episode, so I'm not really going to get too mad over it. Sidney Crosby, easily one of my biggest takeaways from that game. He looks to be back. What we saw last night, he had a very nice burst of speed, had a couple of really nice plays as well. I mean, I know there were a couple weeks ago people were asking what was wrong with him.

Heck, I even said on the show that I was definitely getting a little bit concerned that he was not playing well. Well, you know, it probably took less than a week for him to make me look like a complete moron because he now has 13 points and 13 games. He's on a six-game scoring streak and he's produced 11 points. He's definitely finding his groove right now. I mean, is he locked in? No. I mean, he's still not playing his best hockey. But I think last night, that's the game.

I think that's really going to turn Sid's season around. I mean, he's been playing well the last few games, but last night was the first one where I was like, okay, this is the Sydney Crosby that we've all known and come to love. So really nice performance, I thought, from Sid last night. Chris LaTang, he was marvelous yet again. I mean, I saw a retweet from Mad Chai 412 of the Mad Chat and Eddie show, touching on how great Chris LaTang has been this season.

And, you know, I talked about it on the Monday's episode. I've talked about it all season. This is probably the best hockey we've seen him play since 2016. He's always making the right read in the offensive zone. He's not getting beat in the defensive zone. Brian Dumlin's not really had to cover for him for his mistakes. I know he had a little bit of a rough start against Vancouver a couple of nights ago. But ever since that, you know, he's been totally fine.

He is, I marvel at how great of a player he is. And I will keep saying it. I don't think Chris LaTang is appreciated enough in the Penguins fan base. We always hear from people in the fan base. I don't care where it is, you know, sports talk radio, social media, even people that are not on social media, saying, oh, the Penguins need to trade Chris LaTang. They've got to get him out of here.

You know, we can't stay healthy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, this is a player that I think has gotten better as he's gotten older. So just a really strong game from him was always making the right decisions yet again. And he was not getting beat in the defensive zone. That's for sure. Casey to Smith, I thought that he was really rock solid for Pittsburgh last night. And that's something that I have not said in probably five months. I mean, he did have a pretty decent year last year before a couple of games where he kind of allowed three or four goals in those starts.

And then he got hurt. And then it carried into this year. where, you know, coming into this start in seven out of the last nine starts going into last night, he had allowed four or more goals and had a sub-900 savers and that's not going to fly at all. But last night I thought he was tracking the puck really well. There was one play that really caught my eye. And I think I saw this written on a couple of websites. When Seattle was coming down, I want to say it was Jared McCann that had the puck.

DeSmith was able to put his stick out. to make sure that the puck was not going to go to the player at the back door who was going to have a tap in. He put a stick out, deflected the puck to the corner, and then the Penguins were off to the races the other way. Just a really heads-up play, I thought, by Casey there, and something that we really haven't seen them do all season. Other than that, very sharp, was actually playing a little more aggressive, was making the saves that need to be made. I saw some takes out there in multiple places where, you know, the Penguins are going to need another one, just because DeSmith has been bad this year. Again, I get it because Seattle was also pushing a bit back.

Pistpinsper was able to get that extra goal to give to Smith a bit more of a cushion. But I thought that was definitely a step in the right direction for him. I had a couple people tweet the Locked on Penguins Twitter account as well, saying the same thing. So he's a player that the team needs to rely on a bit more. The Penguins, they can't start Tristan Jari every game. I mean, let's just be real here. The guy, I understand he's a 9.38 goalie right now. He's fifth or sixth and goals saved above expected. His goals against average is below two. He started almost every game for you this year. But the guy needs a break. I mean, he's playing his best hockey. He needs to be rested for the stretch run where this team is going to hopefully make the playoffs, you know, going into the all-star break and on all that.

DeSmith is going to have to take some starts away from him at some point. I wasn't surprised that DeSmith got that start because, frankly he needed it and Jari has been working a lot lately I know I said on Monday's episode that I expected Jari to start but when I did see the announcement that the Smith was going I wasn't surprised because this was this was a team that out of a lot of teams I think in the NHL I'm more comfortable with to Smith starting against just because Seattle has not been good this season and again I've never really understood why a lot of people thought that Seattle was going to be really good this year they don't have a lot of franchise cornerstones just yet. Their goaltending is not bad, but their defense, I don't really think. Is that good? And they don't have that game breaker just yet. But still, very nice performance overall, I thought, excuse me, from to Smith.

Dan Hinen, he gets his seventh goal of the season. Jeff, if you're watching this or listening to this, that's now three more until I get my free cocky barbecue for Ohio. Just a really nice shot that he had. He had seven goals in 43 games last year. He's already at seven goals in not even 30 games. year. That just goes show how shrewd, how much of a shrewd move that was from Hextall to bring Heinen.

And he's just, he's been a rock. So I'm not surprised at all that he's playing well. Mike Sullivan's system was, you know, the perfect fit for him. Emerald Rodriguez, he continues his awesome play. I mean, he has transformed that Crosby, Gensol line. Ever since he got up there, if you go to hockey viz and Micah, Blake McCurdy's stuff, there is a sea red over the entire offensive zone. The only place where there's not red are right along.

just the boards. That's the only place where it's where everywhere else, and the high slot, the low slot, all the high danger areas, almost all the medium, uh, the medium danger areas, excuse me,

as well, um, he has been just dominating offense left and right. So, um, it really has been just a relevant, revelation for Erod this season. Jeff Carter was also able to get,

um, his second goal. We're going to actually touch on that later on, um, in this episode and I'm going to give you all a take about how I felt about Jeff Carter this year because I've definitely seen some mixed reactions about Carter from some people in the fan base and this is this is not just a social media thing. This is a whole bunch of places where I've seen it. That's coming up in the next episode and we're also going to touch on where the team currently is and how

much of a big win that was for Penguins. But before we do that, Ben-in-Line has you covered all season. That means more props, odds and lines. it ever for as football season continues for the March to the playoffs. I can't believe that's in five weeks. So now the Steelers are somehow still alive. You can head to the new updated desktop or mobile website to send up today and receive your 50% off welcome bonus on your first deposit. Just use the promo code locked on to receive your bonus for basketball, football, NHL boxing, and UFC right to your favorite Vegas casino games. Don't wait to take advantage of all the amazing offers available for the 2021 season. That align is the fastest, easiest way to bet on

your favorite sports that has been online where the game starts. All right, welcome back to this episode of the Lockdown Penguins podcast. I'm your host, Hunter Hodes. I'm going to follow me on Twitter at Hunter Hodes. Follow the show's Twitter at L-O underscore Penguins. So getting to how good Jeff Carter was last night, and I put out a tweet here if I can actually go find it because I just tweet way too much throughout the day.

I will say this, though. I've never really understood why there has been some takes among the Penguins fan base this year that Jeff Carter has not been good. I don't know where that started. His underlying numbers are completely fine. His expected goal share is around 54%. He's on the ice for around the same amount of shot attempts, 54% for the Penguins. And last night, he got notched his sixth and his seventh goals. of the season. And he just, he continues to be really good. I mean, he has 14 points now.

Those are going to get better when Gino returns. I'm just, I'm tired of seeing the take that he's having a bad season. I don't know where it's coming from. Now, am I going to sit here and say that, oh my God, he's been the team's best player? You know, there's not three players that are playing better hockey than him. No, I mean, that's just not true. Ever Rodriguez has been really good. Sidney Crosby has really turned it on as of late. Jake Gensel's been awesome. Brian Russ when he's been healthy. I mean, he's been. starting to turn it around, excuse me, as well, Dayton Huyden's been really good. But Carter has been just fine this year.

I mean, and imagine once Gino comes back, and I think that's going to be in a couple weeks, he's continuing to skate with the team, he's practicing with them. I know Brian Burke said about a week ago that he's still a little ways away from playing. I read from Josh Yoey on the athletic today that Gino's return could be before Christmas, which, according to my calculations, that is, an 18. days so it's around two and a half weeks for gino we'll have to see right but i mean Carter's been good he had two really nice goals last night uh you know he was never going to score at the production that we saw um last season but um this production that we're getting right now that's perfectly fine

i think you know somewhere closer to how am i supposed to say this right um there there's like one extreme that's saying he's bad one extreme saying he's one of the best players on the team he kind of between if you look at like this basically right here okay well if i can like if i can just do this okay whatever he would fall closer to that than he would the other one that was probably the worst um half and half screen you've probably ever seen but you know what we're just going to roll with it um that's that again he's not playing as one of the top three best players but it's closer to that end of the extreme than it is to the other end of the extreme. If that was very cringe, I apologize.

It's the first one. But just wanted to throw that out there. But overall, I mean, this was just a really big win for Pittsburgh. You know, they get to two and one in one on the road trip. And that's exactly what they needed heading back out east to play the Capitals on Friday. They got five out of eight points. They could have gotten potentially six if one of the players decided to score. and they should have gotten seven if they didn't barfall all over themselves in the defensive

zone against Emmington. I thought the Penguins badly outplayed the Oilers in that game. But when you give Connor McDavid that many chances, that's exactly what's going to happen. I don't really think many players played bad except for Casperi Capman. I mean, he was playing on the fourth line towards the end of the game. I don't know what Mike Sullivan's going to do there. I mean, I kind of do. I guess when Malton comes back in two and a half to three weeks.

weeks. He's going to put Capon in there. And Sully is going to hope that he rediscovers his magic last year because there really was some chemistry with those players. Caputin, I mean, had great production. I know he had a high shooting percentage, but no one can deny how great he was last year. And I had high expectations for him coming into this year. And he has not met them. I don't think he's met a lot of people's expectations. Definitely not people within the Penguins organization or most of the fans. That's for sure. So, just hopefully at some way he's able to turn this around. I know I've been saying that on every episode at this point,

but, you know, as Rogue One says, rebellions are built on, hope I was that really good. Was that a bad take? Okay, that was probably a stupid thing to say. Whatever. But this was also, I think, a pretty big stretch for Pittsburgh. As Josh Yoey wrote this morning in the past 24 days, they've played Ottawa, Washington, Montreal, Toronto,

Winnipeg, New York, the Islanders that is, Calgary, Eminson, Vancouver, and Seattle. battle, and the Penguins went six and three and one overall during that stretch, and six and one in one over the final eight games. As Josh wrote in his article this morning, circle that stretch. I'll say it here again, circle this stretch. If the Penguins make the playoffs at the end of the year, they needed to start banking points, and they definitely have in seven of their last eight games, 13 out of 16 points. These last eight games, just huge for Pittsburgh. Now the team have a few days off. They did not practice today. I would assume we'll be back at practice

tomorrow in Pittsburgh before practicing on Thursday. Then I think they'll be flying to Washington either later that afternoon or early that morning before a back-to-back against the ducks on Saturday. That'll be the first time that they will be wearing their throwback, Pittsburgh diagonal black jerseys. I will be buying one once that is on sale. But overall, just a really big win for Pittsburgh is still in that playoff spot that are Within striking distance of the top three in the Metro, they can get even closer. Excuse me, with a win against Washington on Friday, that's going to be a massive game for Pittsburgh. And if you look at this schedule now, there's quite a few home games coming up.

Five out of their next six, they're at home. I thought it was six out of seven, but it's five out of six. And then towards the end of next month, they have a lot of road games coming up again, especially on that California road trip, and they'll also play to leave Dallas during that stretch as well. Those will all be 1030 starts. I know a lot of people don't like those road trips just because everyone goes to bed a lot earlier.

I'm a night owl. I mean, I love recording late a night anyway. I can't do enough. I can't have those road trips enough to be honest with you all. But thank you all so much for listening and watching this episode of the Lockdown Penguins podcast. If there are kinks, please let me know via my DMs on social media or down in the comments. I'm really excited that I'm going to be building an audience on YouTube as well. I'm just, I'm so thrilled to be able to do it.

Hopefully that the numbers skyrocket on this platform. And we'll have another both audio and video episode for you all on Wednesday. So I will talk to you all then.