Tim Benz: Regardless of Penguins’ additions at trade deadline, it's high time they play their best hockey

Pittsburgh Penguins general manager Ron Hextall is insisting that he helped the team get better with the trades he executed before the deadline.

With the club clinging to the second wild card in the Eastern Conference, such evidence needs to be seen starting immediately — as in Tuesday night at home against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Newly acquired forward Mikael Granlund was part of a Penguins win in Tampa Bay during his first game in Black and Gold on Thursday. However, he and newly reacquired forward Nick Bonino were both part of a loss in Florida on Saturday. Now that defenseman Dmitry Kulikov has arrived from the Anaheim Ducks, all the “improvement parts” will be on hand.

And just in time.

There have been two things Penguins fans have been banking on to see some cushion for their team in the race for an Eastern Conference playoff slot.

The first is games in hand. The Penguins have played only 62 games. The Metro Division-leading Carolina Hurricanes are the only team to have played fewer thus far in the East. In fact, the New York Islanders (72 points), the team the Pens (71 points) are chasing for the top wild-card spot, have already played 65.

“Regardless of who we play on any given night, it’s an opportunity for us to grab points in the standings and solidify a playoff spot. That’s our No. 1 objective right now,” coach Mike Sullivan said Monday.

Those two teams will play each other Thursday night at PPG Paints Arena. It’ll be the second of four straight games against divisional foes and the second of five straight games at home.

That’s the other thing Penguins fans have been leaning on for hope. The schedule.

With that much home ice in the near future and that many divisional games, the Penguins have the opportunity to soak up a lot of points and damage the causes of some divisional rivals in the process.

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Furthermore, 11 of their 20 remaining games are coming against teams currently out of a playoff spot. Those are — theoretically — 22 very attainable points hanging out there to be claimed.

If the Pens can get 18 to 20 of them, and eight or nine of the remaining 18 points in the other nine games, that gets them into the 97- to 99-point range. It took 100 for the Washington Capitals to qualify as the last wild card in the East a season ago. The Nashville Predators got in at 97 as the last team in the West.

So that may be enough.

But don’t flirt with it. Do better than that. If this team was truly worth helping — as much as it could be helped, given the adverse cap situation Hextall created in the first place — then the Penguins need to turn it on in March and April.

No more four-game win streaks merely to correct for four-game losing streaks the week before. No more dog efforts like their 6-0 and 7-2 losses to the Los Angeles Kings and Edmonton Oilers last month.

Beat the Islanders Thursday since they beat you three times already. Enough with the excuses and pity parties over injuries and who isn’t available from the bottom six. Provided Jake Guentzel and Tristan Jarry are able to play Tuesday, the lineup is as close to intact as it has been at any point this season.

So, win. Often.

“The strategy to do that is stay in the moment and not get ahead of ourselves,” Sullivan said. “Maximize the opportunity that is right in front of us. That’s something that we talk about daily.”

Well, then, I hope Sullivan keeps talking about it until the players are sick of hearing it. Because all I kept hearing during the run up to the trade deadline was that Hextall “owed it” to this locker room to improve the depth chart at the deadline.

He did. Minimally, anyway.

If the players disagree with that assessment, then they should score a bunch, keep the puck out of their own net and prove that more should’ve been done.

If that doesn’t happen, don’t expect me to put the blame for the last 20 games on Hextall. That’s going to be on Sullivan and the players themselves.

Tim Benz and Brian Metzer recap trade deadline moves for the Penguins, forecast playoff chances, and preview their upcoming five-game homestand.

Listen: Tim Benz and Brian Metzer talk Penguins