Tim Benz: Penguins must make most of crucial schedule grind through Winter Classic
After his team’s 3-2 victory over the New York Rangers last week, Pittsburgh Penguins coach Mike Sullivan downplayed a question wondering if he felt the game had some playoff vibes to it.
“I don’t know that I’d go that far. I’d like to think our playoff hockey is a lot more complete game,” Sullivan said with a smirk.
As Sullivan admitted previously in his postgame Q&A session, his team was lacking emotion and “flatlined” in the first half of that contest. But in terms of the “playoff feel” angle to the question, Sullivan did speak to the importance of gaining a win within what is becoming an increasingly thick Metropolitan Division.
“We are playing in a good division. There are a lot of good teams, and everybody wins. That’s what it seems like anyway,” Sullivan said.
That’s certainly true during this current stretch of the Penguins schedule. That victory over the Rangers was sandwiched between a pair of one-goal losses (the second of which came in overtime) to the Metro-leading Carolina Hurricanes.
The Pens are currently in a six-game span that features five games against Metropolitan Division rivals. Those three games will come this week before the club departs for the Winter Classic against the Boston Bruins at Fenway Park Monday afternoon. Two of them will feature Metro competition from the New York Islanders on the road Tuesday night (Dec. 27) and the New Jersey Devils in Pittsburgh on Friday evening (Dec. 30).
The game in between is a home contest Wednesday (Dec. 28) against an Atlantic Division foe: the Detroit Red Wings. The Pens have yet to face any of those Eastern Conference teams this season.
Right now, the Metro is jam-packed, and many of the teams are red hot. Carolina is on top of the division with 50 points. The Hurricanes have won 12 of their last 13 games. They have points in a franchise-record 14 straight games. They haven’t lost in regulation since Nov. 23.
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Even though the Devils are slumping, having lost seven of eight, they are still in second place with 46 points. The Penguins and Rangers are tied for third place at 43 points. Both franchises have won eight of 10. The Washington Capitals are nipping at their heels with 42 points on a nine-of-10 heater.
All five of those teams are currently in a playoff spot, with the Islanders the last team out of the mix at 40 points.
In 2021-22, there was a clear-cut dividing line between the eight teams that made the playoffs and the rest of the Eastern Conference. There was a 16-point buffer between eighth-place Washington and the ninth-place Islanders by season’s end. That was fairly representative of a year-long trend.
By Thanksgiving of last year, the top seven teams in the Eastern Conference all made the playoffs. And the Boston Bruins (16 points), who were the 10th team at the time, only trailed the Penguins and Columbus Blue Jackets (22 points each) by six points despite playing a conference-low 16 games. They eventually qualified as the top wild-card team with 117 points.
By Feb. 1, the Bruins were nine points clear of ninth-place Detroit and nothing but playoff slotting changed for the next three months. This year, only six points separate second place in the Metro from sixth place.
“These division points are huge for us,” winger Jason Zucker said last week. “We’ve got to make sure we come out strong.”
Once the Penguins get through this pack of Metro Division/Eastern Conference action to end the calendar year, the schedule gets even harder. They begin 2023 with the outdoor game in Boston against a Bruins team who leads the NHL with 56 points. Then they fly to Las Vegas to visit the Pacific Division-leading Golden Knights (49 points).
So the Penguins’ New Year’s resolutions should be to keep playing the style of hockey that elevated them into this fray in the first place and avoid the kind of play that sunk them into a seven-game losing streak early this season.
In this week’s “Breakfast With Benz” hockey podcast, Tim Benz and Brian Metzer discuss the Penguins’ upcoming scheduling challenges, their overtime struggles and the upcoming Winter Classic.
Tim Benz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tim at tbenz@triblive.com or via X. All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless specified otherwise.
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