About last night: How the Pens/Canes game applies to the bigger picture

More on last night’s game and how it fits to the season in-whole so far for the Penguins

Acknowledging what the popular GameScore cards are measuring isn’t always as simple or cut and dry as they’re used for influence in a couple of key sequences to skew the results, the one last night from the Penguins/Hurricanes game stood out with some useful information about not just the game but the season at large so far. Here it is.

Through six games, there’s a lot you can draw out of last night’s performance to tie into generally how a lot of the individuals on the team have been trending to start the season.

Drew O’Connor has three goals on the year, tied for the team-high with Rickard Rakell. O’Connor was one of the few Penguins last night with some jolt in his step and deservedly was the top ranked player on the board. It earned him a promotion to the second line by the second period and he is playing well enough to where his role should be increasing.

Next up was last night’s third pair of Ryan Graves and Jack St. Ivany. Pittsburgh’s third pair is a prime place to be, they don’t get asked to do a lot and are protected from the roughest of starts and competition. The best thing about Ryan Graves so far this season is that he hasn’t given anyone much to complain about. Of course, he only played 13 ES minutes last night, so it’s not like he’s full-on redeemed himself or is carrying his freight, but baby steps back to respectability, I suppose. Graves isn’t going to dramatically improve but he can at least play some kind of role on the team.

After that is the entire fourth line, who had a limited impact but acquitted themselves decently. That is a favorable outcome, Noel Acciari got lost in front of his own net trying to cover for a defender and the sequence played out with a goal against. But, largely put, the fourth line has been nice for the Pens this year.

Next you get into some of the skill players, who had a rough go last night against the quality Carolina bunch. Fittingly to draw bigger parallels to the full season sample, Anthony Beauvillier provides very, very little positive input. He’s scored two goals (both in the same game) but is without a point in the other five games this season. That’s not cutting it for a Sidney Crosby linemate.

Further down the line is Rust, who also didn’t do much last night (and with one ES point in four games, hasn’t been tremendous at the start of the season either).

Then the Erik Karlsson and Marcus Pettersson pair makes an appearance down the list. Karlsson can offset some of the bad with positive contributions. Pettersson thus far has not. Wrote extensively about Pettersson’s uneasy looking start, it’s not a huge red flag since he’s proven to be a reliable player over the years, but it’s an acknowledgement he’s struggling.

Next is Jesse Puljujarvi, whose GameScore from last night (bad) is one of the few on the team that has very little to do with the start of season he’s having (very good). So nothing much to say there.

Then comes Michael Bunting, whose scorecard on Mike Sullivan’s personal ticker was bad enough to get demoted to the fourth line and taken off the power play in-game last night. Bunting has one point (a secondary assist) in six games in 2024-25, a far cry from the 19 points in 21 games he put up after joining the Pens last season. That’s the extremes of his streaks, which many a top-six winger can go through. What’s now down will eventually come up, but it’s been harmful and unfortunate that he’s started the season slow.

Finally, bringing up the rear is the Matt Grzelcyk and Kris Letang pair. This one hasn’t been pretty. Letang’s metrics in the defensive zone have been sagging for years as age catches up to him and he’s been all over the place without the puck. Grzelcyk is a fascinating figure, at 13:03 5v5 last night he actually played less there than Graves. He’s pushing up the ice as much or more than Letang, which has led to some, uh, interesting moments and opportunities in transition the other way. It hasn’t been as bad as this one game’s results indicate but the Pens need to tighten up significantly, and the Grzelcyk-Letang pair is a great place to look for improvement (along with, of course, the other top pair of Pettersson and Karlsson). Whether or not they can may be a different question.

Overall the Penguins are what they are so far. In two games (the first and the last) they didn’t play hard enough, or maybe just the team on the other bench was too strong to stand up to.

The team’s three wins this season have all required them to make comebacks from being down on the scoreboard, they really haven’t put a full effort in yet.

In many regards, a 3-3-0 record through six is fitting for this Pittsburgh team. So far they’ve won every single game where if you just look at the teams on paper (DET, MTL, BUF) that yeah, it makes total sense the Pens would win those games. They’ve also lost all three games where it also makes complete sense that the opponent that night (NYR, TOR, CAR) would beat them.

Which brings us to the road ahead, the always-daunting Western Canadian swing. This season the Pens are going Winnipeg-Calgary-Edmonton-Vancouver. They didn’t make this exact road trip last season, but did a similar one (Vancouver-Seattle-Calgary-Edmonton) and went 1-3-0 last season. For best results and if they want to tip the arrow up, the Pens will be looking to do a little better than that this time around.