PHILADELPHIA -- Mark Recchi knows a thing or two -- or 577 -- about scoring goals.
In a Hall of Fame career that spanned 22 years and 1,652 games, Recchi averaged 0.349 goals per game to rank 177th all-time among players who scored at least 200 times. His career ran the gamut of the defense-be-damned late 1980s and early 1990s, through the dead puck era of the late 1990s and finished in the post-lockout era of the late aughts.
With a resume like that, Recchi knows just how challenging it can be to score goals in this day and age. Only 23 active players have a higher goals per game average than his, including three players -- Sidney Crosby (0.482), Evgeni Malkin (0.460) and Phil Kessel (0.358) -- whom he works with on a daily basis as a Penguins assistant coach.
And as he can tell them, it’s a lot different than when he broke into the league.
“When I first started, there was probably two lines that were really good and two were … OK,” Recchi was telling me the other day. “And if you had a great team, then you had a pretty balanced team. That's the team that won the championships. But you always had a lot of teams that played four D back then, they played three lines and didn’t play a fourth line a lot. It's a different game, definitely. It's much faster. You don't have time and space, it's taken away much more than it was."
The days of Mike Gartner soaring down the wing and letting fly with a slap shot that beats a goalie along the ice are long gone. Today’s goaltenders are much bigger and much more athletic than their predecessors. They just don’t give up 50-footers without screens and deflections.
The days of Wayne Gretzky gaining the offensive zone and peeling off or skating parallel to the blue line are long gone. too. He'd have gotten clobbered by a backchecker skating at breakneck speed getting back into the play.
With the prevalence of video, the incorporation of analytics and better-conditioned players, the game has changed, but not fundamentally. The "quality of chances has definitely changed," Recchi said, but it still rewards players who pay the physical price to get into high-scoring areas.
Not enough Penguins have been doing that, at least not consistently enough.
"Teams defend hard," Recchi said. "It's hard to get opportunities. You have to take advantage of them. You have to make plays. You have to react when you get opportunities in the grade-A scoring chances. You have to shoot the puck. If you don't, then you might not get one the rest of the game."
The Penguins could use the circa 1990 Recchi right about now. They are 19-18-3 heading into Tuesday night's game in Philadelphia after dropping their second straight game Sunday night in Detroit and eight of their last 12 in regulation. After going down 3-1 early in the second period of a 4-1 loss against the Red Wings, it might as well have been 12-1.
They have scored two or fewer goals in seven of their last nine games. Their 111 goals rank ninth in the Eastern Conference. Their 2.73 goals per game ranks 20th in the NHL.
Whether the addition of Daniel Sprong can change that remains to be seen, though he did have an encouraging first game Sunday. Perhaps the Dutchman can do for the 2018 Penguins what Conor Sheary did in 2016 or Jake Guentzel in 2017.
Guentzel and Sheary, along with the injured Bryan Rust, were invaluable mid-season call-ups each of the past two seasons who sparked their teammates into a higher gear.
Sheary and Guentzel were supposed to be part of a next wave of offensive stars who could carry Pittsburgh into the future and still might be. Instead, on a team that has underperformed, they are just two more culprits this season.
Guentzel has one goal in his last 13 games (this gift from Patric Horniqvist last week vs. Columbus):
Too often it's been more of this for Guentzel:
Meanwhile, Sheary has just one goal in his last 11 (this one, also last week vs. the Blue Jackets):
"They get checked a little harder. They're not unknown anymore," Recchi said.
If the Penguins are to get back into the playoff race and avoid the ignominy of being the sixth team in the modern era to go from champion to out of the playoffs, Sheary and Guentzel will have to get to the scoring areas and capitalize.
"When you're pressing, you kind of tend to, you get overanxious and you're over-committing in certain areas instead of letting the game come to you and pucks come to you," Recchi said of the youngsters. "You're trying to chase the game a little bit."
It hasn't been for a lack of opportunity for either. Guentzel and Sheary have been regularly partnered with Crosby and Malkin, receiving top-six minutes and power play time. Crosby and Malkin routinely draw the opponent's top checking lines and defense pairs, but that should create opportunities for their linemates to find some soft spots on the ice.
"You get a chance to play with these guys, its pretty incredible," Recchi said. "They're top players in the world. You have to take advantage of it. I think they'll understand that less is sometimes more, just putting yourself in position and not over-trying, and not over-committing. You play the right way, things tend to happen for you."