DK: Still not buying on the Penguins? That's OK, but ...
art: ROB ULLMAN / DKPS PHOTO: DEJAN KOVACEVIC / DKPS
Forever and ever, when I embark on a road trip of any significant length, I clean up.
Like, really, really clean up. The place. My office. All my most recent comics get bagged and boarded. All of my gift-card accounts get maxed up so I don't have to spend non-Pittsburgh money anywhere. And when Canada's part of it, naturally, I'll dig up all the documentation.
And then, upon boarding, oh, say, a two-hour flight to right here in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, with a second stop to follow in my second-favorite North American city, I'll clean up in a different way: I'll try to begin immersing myself in whatever sport I'm about to cover.
To that end, I'll share:
• I'd stated all summer, pretty much in isolation, that I'd seen the Penguins as being competitive in the 2025-26 NHL season and within this, that most of the forecasts that had them ranging from bad to brutal ... had been based mainly on the myth that they'd be selling off Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell, if not Sidney Crosby and/or Evgeni Malkin and/or the remains of poor Pete The Penguin on top of all that.
Well, obviously, none of that happened, and here we are:
NHL
Those are the overall standings. Top five in the league. And that's current.
Go ahead and laugh it off. I won't judge.
Go ahead and cite the sample size and how 11 games represent 13.4% of the regular season. Pick apart a detail here or there about a team shortcoming, possibly the penalty-kill. Point to Rakell being lost for two months. And from there ... wait for it all to collapse. Circle a date, even, when that collapse could start, maybe tonight here against the Wild -- 8:08 p.m. Eastern faceoff -- at Grand Casino Arena. Maybe a couple days from now up in Winnipeg. Maybe when the older guys get low on gas. Maybe by Thanksgiving or Christmas or all the way out to the Olympic break.
But know, at least for the moment, that the present isn't cooperating.
And the future might not be, either.
Take a ride with me on this:
• In this decade, of the 29 teams that started out 7-2-2, all but two of them qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs. The exceptions were the 2021 Flyers and last season's Rangers. That's a 93.1% hit rate, though. Take that record to 8-2-2, as the Penguins could here tonight, and all 24 teams made it. That's 100%.
Thanks, by the way, to our Eric Bowser back home for the research on that.
• Another one: If the Penguins win here tonight, it'd mark just the 12th time in the franchise's 58-year history that they'll have eight-plus wins within their first dozen games. It'd also mark the first time since the 2016-17 team started out 8-2-2. Don't make me remind how that one ended.
• They're scoring with the best:
PENGUINS
• They're also fifth defensively in allowing 2.55 goals per game, mostly because Tristan Jarry and Arturs Silovs have combined for a .918 save percentage that's fourth-best and just a few ticks behind the likes of the Jets' Connor Hellebuyck and the Rangers' Igor Shesterkin.
• The special teams are in on this, too, the power play ranking sixth at 28.6% and the penalty-kill at a bit above average in ranking 15th at 79.4%.
• Staying strictly within the ongoing seven-game points streak -- 5-0-2 with two shootout losses -- that's the longest in the league. Some additional specifics:
PENGUINS
• This has all been sparked, as ever, by Sid (15 points, eighth in the NHL) and Geno(16, fourth), for only a 20th consecutive season. The only two sets of teammates with more combined points than their 31 are the Avalanche's Nate MacKinnon and Cale Makar, and the Golden Knights' Jack Eichel and Mark Stone, each pair with 32.
One can view this through the prism of declining returns, given that Sid and Geno are both approaching 40, or one can just deal with the reality to date looking a lot like this:
Sid has seven goals in seven games. Geno just spent a couple days atop the NHL scoring list.
No, they're not gonna keep it up. But in the same breath, I'm comfortable sharing that I've never looked dumber as a sports writer than on those rare occasions that I've doubted either.
• It can't be just them, though. The rest of the veterans, legitimately moved since the start of training camp to end this string of playoff misses at three, as Rakell told me back then, have been pumping just as hard. Even those who weren't necessarily pumping hard at all a year ago:
PENGUINS
I don't care what Erik Karlsson's motivation might be this winter, though it doesn't take much to see he's eager to prove anew his worth to the Swedish national team for the upcoming Olympics. What I do know is that he's been both prolific and, per his style, passionate.
Kris Letang, Rust and Rakell (before his injury) have been no different. It's been neat to see.
• But it can't be just them, either. That wouldn't be logical, considering they've all been in Pittsburgh through the misses.
That's where the free-agent revivals come in:
NHL
Justin Brazeau and Anthony Mantha have been huge, both in frame and in the way they've fit with Malkin. No one like them was on the previous roster.
There are real youngsters, too, with Ben Kindel and Harrison Brunicke impressively sticking in the NHL where they belong, and Filip Hallander, a rookie at 25, achieving the same in his own way. All three have added much-needed speed and freshness to a supporting cast that'd stagnate for eternal stretches a year ago.
Stick taps for all of the above to Kyle Dubas, Jason Spezza and staff for the acquisitions, and all of that and more to Dan Muse for assimilating everyone -- all ages, all origins, all roles -- into a seamless system that stresses steadiness across all three zones.
Again, it's only 11 games, but they could've been 11 awful games.
But see, this is where it gets fun. Since none of this is set in stone. And this is where even my most skeptical self can see past what's staring right back at me.
Listen, Dubas won't be sacrificing pieces of the future to push this team into the playoffs, and I'm with him all the way on that. There's already been too much invested in that direction, too much gained -- Kindel and Brunicke among them -- and too many assets still to utilize. Reversing stride would be ... wow, no.
But Dubas has been on the record as stating he'll help any other way, and the easiest of those ways would be spending some or all of the $13 million-plus in cap space on reinforcements, should those become available via trade. That's no small thing.
Better yet, if the kids in Wilkes-Barre -- who finally lost a game Wednesday night after a 7-0 start -- can push their way up to Pittsburgh, they'd probably be doing so at the expense of a non-producing veteran, and everyone wins. Ville Koivunen and Owen Pickering just came back up. Rutger McGroarty should resume playing in November. Tristan Broz, Avery Hayes and, of course, Sergei Murashov are there, too.
So maybe it can move forward rather than inevitably backward. That's what I'm saying.
See everyone at the morning skate. Follow along all day, all night.
THE ASYLUM
DK: Still not buying on the Penguins? That's OK, but ...
art: ROB ULLMAN / DKPS PHOTO: DEJAN KOVACEVIC / DKPS
Forever and ever, when I embark on a road trip of any significant length, I clean up.
Like, really, really clean up. The place. My office. All my most recent comics get bagged and boarded. All of my gift-card accounts get maxed up so I don't have to spend non-Pittsburgh money anywhere. And when Canada's part of it, naturally, I'll dig up all the documentation.
And then, upon boarding, oh, say, a two-hour flight to right here in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, with a second stop to follow in my second-favorite North American city, I'll clean up in a different way: I'll try to begin immersing myself in whatever sport I'm about to cover.
To that end, I'll share:
• I'd stated all summer, pretty much in isolation, that I'd seen the Penguins as being competitive in the 2025-26 NHL season and within this, that most of the forecasts that had them ranging from bad to brutal ... had been based mainly on the myth that they'd be selling off Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell, if not Sidney Crosby and/or Evgeni Malkin and/or the remains of poor Pete The Penguin on top of all that.
Well, obviously, none of that happened, and here we are:
NHL
Those are the overall standings. Top five in the league. And that's current.
Go ahead and laugh it off. I won't judge.
Go ahead and cite the sample size and how 11 games represent 13.4% of the regular season. Pick apart a detail here or there about a team shortcoming, possibly the penalty-kill. Point to Rakell being lost for two months. And from there ... wait for it all to collapse. Circle a date, even, when that collapse could start, maybe tonight here against the Wild -- 8:08 p.m. Eastern faceoff -- at Grand Casino Arena. Maybe a couple days from now up in Winnipeg. Maybe when the older guys get low on gas. Maybe by Thanksgiving or Christmas or all the way out to the Olympic break.
But know, at least for the moment, that the present isn't cooperating.
And the future might not be, either.
Take a ride with me on this:
• In this decade, of the 29 teams that started out 7-2-2, all but two of them qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs. The exceptions were the 2021 Flyers and last season's Rangers. That's a 93.1% hit rate, though. Take that record to 8-2-2, as the Penguins could here tonight, and all 24 teams made it. That's 100%.
Thanks, by the way, to our Eric Bowser back home for the research on that.
• Another one: If the Penguins win here tonight, it'd mark just the 12th time in the franchise's 58-year history that they'll have eight-plus wins within their first dozen games. It'd also mark the first time since the 2016-17 team started out 8-2-2. Don't make me remind how that one ended.
• They're scoring with the best:
PENGUINS
• They're also fifth defensively in allowing 2.55 goals per game, mostly because Tristan Jarry and Arturs Silovs have combined for a .918 save percentage that's fourth-best and just a few ticks behind the likes of the Jets' Connor Hellebuyck and the Rangers' Igor Shesterkin.
• The special teams are in on this, too, the power play ranking sixth at 28.6% and the penalty-kill at a bit above average in ranking 15th at 79.4%.
• Staying strictly within the ongoing seven-game points streak -- 5-0-2 with two shootout losses -- that's the longest in the league. Some additional specifics:
PENGUINS
• This has all been sparked, as ever, by Sid (15 points, eighth in the NHL) and Geno (16, fourth), for only a 20th consecutive season. The only two sets of teammates with more combined points than their 31 are the Avalanche's Nate MacKinnon and Cale Makar, and the Golden Knights' Jack Eichel and Mark Stone, each pair with 32.
One can view this through the prism of declining returns, given that Sid and Geno are both approaching 40, or one can just deal with the reality to date looking a lot like this:
Sid has seven goals in seven games. Geno just spent a couple days atop the NHL scoring list.
No, they're not gonna keep it up. But in the same breath, I'm comfortable sharing that I've never looked dumber as a sports writer than on those rare occasions that I've doubted either.
• It can't be just them, though. The rest of the veterans, legitimately moved since the start of training camp to end this string of playoff misses at three, as Rakell told me back then, have been pumping just as hard. Even those who weren't necessarily pumping hard at all a year ago:
PENGUINS
I don't care what Erik Karlsson's motivation might be this winter, though it doesn't take much to see he's eager to prove anew his worth to the Swedish national team for the upcoming Olympics. What I do know is that he's been both prolific and, per his style, passionate.
Kris Letang, Rust and Rakell (before his injury) have been no different. It's been neat to see.
• But it can't be just them, either. That wouldn't be logical, considering they've all been in Pittsburgh through the misses.
That's where the free-agent revivals come in:
NHL
Justin Brazeau and Anthony Mantha have been huge, both in frame and in the way they've fit with Malkin. No one like them was on the previous roster.
There are real youngsters, too, with Ben Kindel and Harrison Brunicke impressively sticking in the NHL where they belong, and Filip Hallander, a rookie at 25, achieving the same in his own way. All three have added much-needed speed and freshness to a supporting cast that'd stagnate for eternal stretches a year ago.
Stick taps for all of the above to Kyle Dubas, Jason Spezza and staff for the acquisitions, and all of that and more to Dan Muse for assimilating everyone -- all ages, all origins, all roles -- into a seamless system that stresses steadiness across all three zones.
Again, it's only 11 games, but they could've been 11 awful games.
But see, this is where it gets fun. Since none of this is set in stone. And this is where even my most skeptical self can see past what's staring right back at me.
Listen, Dubas won't be sacrificing pieces of the future to push this team into the playoffs, and I'm with him all the way on that. There's already been too much invested in that direction, too much gained -- Kindel and Brunicke among them -- and too many assets still to utilize. Reversing stride would be ... wow, no.
But Dubas has been on the record as stating he'll help any other way, and the easiest of those ways would be spending some or all of the $13 million-plus in cap space on reinforcements, should those become available via trade. That's no small thing.
Better yet, if the kids in Wilkes-Barre -- who finally lost a game Wednesday night after a 7-0 start -- can push their way up to Pittsburgh, they'd probably be doing so at the expense of a non-producing veteran, and everyone wins. Ville Koivunen and Owen Pickering just came back up. Rutger McGroarty should resume playing in November. Tristan Broz, Avery Hayes and, of course, Sergei Murashov are there, too.
So maybe it can move forward rather than inevitably backward. That's what I'm saying.
See everyone at the morning skate. Follow along all day, all night.
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