The offseason has come and gone. Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang are staying put right next to Sidney Crosby, keeping the Core intact for what will be their 17th NHL season together when the puck officially drops for opening night against the Coyotes here at PPG Paints Arena on Thursday.
It's been said for at least several seasons now, but this really, truly feels like the final chance for this group, this Core to return to glory one final time.
Words never will adequately describe how remarkable it is that Crosby, 35, Letang, 35, and Malkin, 36, have remained at such an elite level this late into their careers. Signs haven't shown that they aren't still among the best of the best, but that can't be expected forever.
The Penguins aren't currently among the Stanley Cup favorites, but it remains a difficult bet going against the motivation and competitiveness of these leaders, even after three Cup victories and four trips to the Final.
"When you have the experience of winning together and going through tougher times and being at the top, also, makes you appreciate everything that you go through," Letang said following practice here Wednesday. "It’s something special, it’s something we have together our entire life. To have a chance to make it even stronger and try to win, I think that would be even more special. That’s what we want to do. The main goal of having us all together is because we know we can win, we have the recipe, and that’s what we want to do again. That’s all that matters. It’s not breaking records, it’s about winning."
All three of Crosby, Malkin and Letang are past the point of winning individual awards, and they genuinely don't seem to care about that.
As Letang perfectly put it, winning is all that matters to them. As if that wasn't abundantly clear from Letang staying on the ice to work with P.O Joseph a half an hour after the conclusion of practice a day before the season begins.
The Core isn't going to be able to carry the Penguins at even-strength to the same degree Connor McDavid and Cale Makar might carry the Oilers and Avalanche, but one way they can assuredly boost the team is with their performance on the power play.
The Penguins don't need to just slightly improve from their 19th ranked power-play from last season. They need to be great. And this group is capable of being just that with the man-advantage despite what their poor ranking last season might suggest.
Last week, Todd Reirden was asked if the Penguins are making any changes in their power-play approach this season. Reirden noted that there will be some very minor tweaks to hopefully convert on a greater chunk of their chances, but also that significant changes weren't needed because the power play had very strong chance-generation last season despite finishing struggles, evidenced by their strong expected goals-for rate relative to the rest of the NHL.
I questioned Reirden on how much the coaching staff utilizes expected goals and how they play into their evaluation process.
"It's one of our tools," Reirden told me. "I alluded to that in the power-play discussion, but that's just one of the many metrics that we look at to continue to balance outside knowledge from internal bias, occasionally with players, and it gives you a really broad overview of what areas you can continue to grow in. That's one of the metrics we use, obviously scoring chances for, quality of competition. I could talk for quite a while about how the evaluation process goes with our coaching staff and how we use it to motivate and also teach and push our players forward so that they understand some things.
"I think that players nowadays really gravitate toward numbers, and it's important to be able to clarify what those numbers are for them because they're oftentimes reading them. It's part of the process and something that we continue to get better at as a staff, as well."
Last season, the Penguins generated 8.69 expected goals per hour on the power play, good for fourth in the NHL, per Evolving Hockey. But as for pucks that actually tickled the twine, the power-play ranked 18th at 7.26 goals per hour. Over 390 minutes, the power play scored nearly 10 fewer goals than expected based on the quality of the chances ... and that's assuming every opportunity came from a shooter with league-average finishing ability.
The likes of Crosby, Malkin, Letang, Jake Guentzel and Bryan Rust aren't league-average finishers. They're better than that. So what gives?
On Thursday, I mentioned Reirden's remarks to Mike Sullivan and asked him a poorly phrased question about the public expected goals models showing the Penguins going from one of the best finishing teams in the league to one of the worst last season, and whether or not that could be chalked up to pure luck considering the individual finishing talent across the team.
"It’s more about the process of developing or generating scoring chances, if you’re on the power play for example, or defending against them if you’re talking about the defensive side of the puck," Sullivan told me. "We spend a lot of time – we have a lot of time for expected goals. We have our own internal models, and we talk with our analytics department with respect to that, and the types of values we place on certain things that influence that.
"But I think what Todd was alluding to, was that the process of generating scoring opportunities on the power play was pretty effective. The numbers were similar in the last two seasons, and yet, two seasons ago we were top-five in the league and last year we were bottom-half of the league. And so, at the end of the day as a coach or a coaching staff, what we’re trying to look at is, is the process. We can’t always control whether the puck goes in the net or it doesn’t go in the net."
Pretty effective might be underselling it. Just look how frequently the Penguins fired unblocked shot attempts from prime scoring areas while on the power play last season, thanks to this chart from HockeyViz (The darker the brown, the more attempts the Penguins took from that area relative to league-average, and the darker the purple, the fewer attempts the Penguins took from that area relative to league-average):
HockeyViz.com
So, basically anywhere and everywhere in-between and below the faceoff dots -- the absolute most dangerous area of the ice -- the Penguins created chances at a much greater rate than an average team.
In fact, their ability to generate quality looks on the power play last season was even greater than the season before in 2020-21:
HockeyViz.com
"And so, our feeling is that these guys, from a process standpoint, did a really good job in generating the looks and the opportunities that are necessary to have an effective power-play," Sullivan continued. "If that wasn’t the case, then there might’ve been a more drastic course of action from our standpoint, from a coaching staff standpoint. I think that was part of the discussion that Todd was, without being there, without putting words into his mouth, I think that was – because we’ve had that conversation as a coaching staff in the offseason."
You mean to say there won't be unfounded change for the sake of it? That you really can do everything right and still wind up on the wrong side of things?
Sullivan's message, while obvious to some, is an immensely valuable lesson in evaluation and analysis.
"When we were looking at our power-play, we were discussing our power-play and how we could help improve it or even assessing it," Sullivan carried on. "And I think that’s an important aspect of what we do as a coaching staff. We’ve got to assess the different aspects of our game the right way, and you can get fooled if you’re not diligent in how you assess the different aspects of your game, whether it be the power play, the penalty kill and things of that nature. And there’s a lot of noise that you guys create, quite honestly, around all of these things. So we try to assess them as objectively as we can, and then we try to make the best decisions around that."
Here is the finishing impact of each member of the Penguins' top power-play unit, ranked in percentile by a weighted-average over the past three seasons, per JFreshHockey:
Crosby: 86th percentile
Malkin: 96th percentile
Guentzel: 88th percentile
Rust: 83rd percentile
Letang: 95th percentile
So all five members of the top unit are in, or close to, rare company in the finishing department, but it gets better. Here's each of their isolated impacts toward generating quality chances on the power play over the past three seasons, per JFreshHockey:
Crosby: 96th percentile
Malkin: 90th percentile
Guentzel: 75th percentile
Rust: 90th percentile
Letang: 98th percentile
Four out of five in the 90th percentile or higher? Yeah, this unit is going to rebound in a big way from last season. And the Penguins are going to need every bit of it.
Theoretically, an improved performance on the power play will lighten the burden during even-strength play. In turn, that should help the overall well-being of the team.
The Penguins' power-play needs to be among the league's best this season at generating quality chances and finishing them. There's no reason to believe their strong chance-generation from last season will pull back much, if at all, and there's every reason to believe their finishing will turn a corner.
On top of everything else they bring to the table, the Core can still have its greatest impact via the power play and propel this team closer to contention.
