Penguins a real playoff threat

Travis Yost

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We are just about a month away from the start of the 2015-2016 NHL playoffs, and I still don’t have a concrete answer to the following question: Which team is going to seize the opportunity in the Eastern Conference and offer up the best shot at beating Barry Trotz’s Washington Capitals?

It’s not an easy question to answer. Excluding Washington, the cream of the crop in the East hasn’t really offered much to be delighted about this season. I was wildly excited by the hope that the Tampa Bay Lightning offered after last year’s fantastic campaign, but they’ve pretty much ranged from ‘average’ to ‘very good team’ on a nightly basis, with little rhyme or reason.

Others were hopeful about the New York Islanders this year. Again, pretty much the same refrain – definitely good enough to earn a playoff berth, but not impressive enough to be in the Stanley Cup discussion.

I won’t even touch the Montreal Canadiens.

I am increasingly curious about the Pittsburgh Penguins, a team that really appears to be playing their best hockey of late. One might argue that their improvement over the last couple of months isn’t by total chance – there was very real frustration with former head coach Mike Johnston, who was turfed right before the Christmas break. Add that to the fact the team is starting to ice nearly the expected full complement of talent, and you have a situation where things are starting to break right for a team in the East.

I want to talk about the improvement of Pittsburgh for a bit. I think this sort of stuff is absolutely crucial to look at when you’re forecasting future outcome, especially as it pertains to the playoffs.

If one looked at the Penguins season-to-date, they would probably conclude, “Eh, average team.” If one took the same data and looked at the season-to-date trends, they might conclude something entirely different: “A broken team early on that’s really refined its game over time.”

This seems like an obvious delineation, but it’s a perfect example of why doing something like looking straight at the standings or raw total goal differential may not be as telling as actually diving into the data. Doing that wouldn’t show you that this team has been consistently and routinely on the move since about mid-December – right around the time of their coaching turnover.

And before you ask: yes, it’s had a material impact on the win/loss front. Look at Pittsburgh’s 82-game point pace from the beginning of the season. Note where they bellied right before the coaching turnover, and note how they’ve consistently played at playoff-quality pace for a while now.

For the first half of this season-to-date, the Penguins were almost tragically average – a far cry from the fun-and-gun, beat-you-down type of team we have grown accustomed to in the Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin era.

But, since early December, this team has exploded. As a general rule, I usually note that any team that can consistently breach 52 per cent Corsi% (and ScoringChance%, for that matter) have a shot at winning a Stanley Cup, so long as all of the other items – special teams and goaltending, most specifically – don’t raise any red flags. Once you start getting above the 54 per cent window, you are talking about a truly elite class.

The Takeaway

Should we start talking about Pittsburgh as a real playoff threat? I think so. The window is as open as you’ll ever see it in the East right now, primed for a second team to jump in and compete with the favourite over in D.C. All signs indicate that this Penguins club is playing a pretty damn respectable brand of hockey right now – one that could push it over the hump in April.