Penguins want to avoid getting behind early season Metro Division logjam

How’d that happen so fast?

It seems like yesterday when we were praising the Pittsburgh Penguins for winning games and scoring lots of goals without many star players available.

Now the team has lost three in a row and is grinding on offense. Over their past three games — all regulation losses — the Penguins have been outscored 13-3 by the New Jersey Devils, Calgary Flames and Tampa Bay Lightning. That’s despite the returns of Sidney Crosby and Jeff Carter on Saturday against New Jersey.

On Monday, defenseman Kris Letang was cleared to rejoin the team after sitting out because of covid-19 restrictions.

Yet, suddenly, the Penguins find themselves with only eight points, tied for last place in what forecasts to be an extremely tight Metropolitan Division.

Head coach Mike Sullivan is also seeing a dip in goal production after the club was averaging 4.6 per game over the first five contests.

“It’s our job to help these guys find their very best game,” Sullivan said of his coaching staff. “That’s the human aspect of what we do. It’s not on any one individual. We are all trying to help one another capture their very best game.”

The snapshot of the standings on Nov. 2 is hardly reason to panic. After all, the season is only eight games old for the Penguins, and only one team in the Eastern Conference (the Montreal Canadiens) has hit the 10-game mark. But it is an indication of how tight the division is going to be, and how any extended winning or losing stretch is going to quickly impact the standings.

After gathering points in their first five games, Sullivan’s team has failed to do so in each of its past three contests, and now finds itself five points out of third place, with four Metro teams between them and what will eventually become the division’s final playoff spot, and two points beneath what would become the Wild Card line.

“We’ve got to do a better job as a coaching staff in helping these guys get in the right frame of mind where they can be their best,” Sullivan said. “We’re sharing observations and insights with them after every game.”

Daily divisional shuffling of the standings is likely to be the norm in the Metro Division, with eight teams perceived to be tightly paired. So stopping any extended funk is going to be necessary for a Penguins team which may not be as prepared to play catch up in the standings as recent editions could have been.

In other words, the good vibes and the cushion provided by the Pens’ hot start is fading quickly, and it’d behoove the team to scoop up three or four points over these next two games of their extending early season homestand.

The Pens host the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday and the Minnesota Wild on Saturday before hitting the road for 12 of 16 games.

Brian Metzer of the Penguins Radio Network joins me for Tuesday’s weekly hockey podcast. We talk about why the Penguins have been scuffling of late, the state of goaltending across the NHL, Crosby’s recent return and if the Carolina Hurricanes and Florida Panthers will ever lose.

Listen: Tim Benz and Brian Metzer talk about the Penguins’ troubles as of late