Tim Benz: Reason to hope Penguins' manic win over Philadelphia resonates before trade deadline

As manic as the Pittsburgh Penguins’ (60 points) 7-6 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers (67 points) was Sunday, it’s precisely the kind of win the Penguins needed to have.

It was a win over a hated rival. It was two points gained on the Metropolitan Division’s third playoff team. And it was a game in which the Pens had to score a bunch to win.

In most seasons from the Mario Lemieux era onward, winning a firewagon game like that was a Pens’ specialty.

Since the calendar flipped to 2024, though, this year’s Penguins have posted a win with more than four goals on the board just one time. That was a 6-5 victory over the Boston Bruins on Jan. 4.

So it was a confidence builder that if the Penguins do find themselves in the occasional ping-pong match, they can win it.

“You’d like to believe if you continue to generate the types of chances that we have all year long that at some point that they’ll reconcile with goals — with actuals,” head coach Mike Sullivan said after Sunday’s win. “I think the fact that some of the goals going in for our group is great. I think it gives our players a boost because they put a lot of pressure on themselves to score.

“Moving forward, hopefully, it’s something that we can build on.”

It was also a day when the Penguins’ putrid power play posted a pair of goals. That has happened just one other time since Dec. 18. That said, the power play also managed to let up a shorthanded goal to the Flyers. So, let’s not get too effusive in our praise.

“We felt great out there even though we let that shorthanded goal in,” forward Rickard Rakell said of the man-up unit. “We didn’t want to let that affect us. We just wanted to keep getting better and better, and I thought we had some good looks on the power play.”

Of course, we shouldn’t overlook the goaltending and defense that allowed six goals against.

Obviously, when that happens and your team allows a multi-goal lead to get trimmed three times, there’s going to be plenty for a coach to get surly about. But with respect to Sullivan’s comments last week, maybe the “context” of this result is not one that should be analyzed too much.

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“It’s probably not the way we hoped to win,” forward Drew O’Connor said about the chaotic nature of the victory. “But that’s a team we are chasing. Two points in regulation against them is huge. We’ll take them how we can get them. Obviously, we’d like to limit some of their chances more next time. But it’s a huge win.”

Regardless, at least the victory can act as a confidence builder offensively for the Penguins as they head out of a four-game western road trip. That’s four games to help determine the future of the team between now and the March 8 trade deadline.

That’s true overall in terms of Kyle Dubas’ plans for the club as to whether or not he wants to position it as a buyer or a seller. But more specifically, regarding what he wants to do with winger Jake Guentzel.

If you heard Dubas talk Wednesday, you heard a guy who sounded like he was talking himself into trading a player who is probably the second-best skater on the team behind Sidney Crosby.

Not to mention, perhaps the best winger Crosby has ever had.

If that was the case, with two victories in two tries since then, though, you have to wonder if Dubas may be reconsidering. Getting at least five or six points in the upcoming western swing could make that decision even harder.

“We know the situation with the standings and games in hand and all that stuff,” Crosby said Sunday night. “From here on, we just need to grab points. Getting the win last game (against Montreal on Thursday) and trying to build off that going into the road trip was really important. We know it’s a challenge in front of us. Hopefully, we can build off this one.”

There’s a lot of building still to be done. Five months of self-inflicted construction delays have put the Penguins in an extremely precarious position as they hope to avoid a second straight year without a playoff bid.

Making up for some of that lost time out west this week would go a long way toward accomplishing that goal.

Listen: The Weekly Gerger Construction hockey podcast with Tim Benz and Brian Metzer focuses on Jake Guentzel trade talk, the Pens’ win over Philly, and their upcoming western road trip.