With the calendar flipping over from October to November, we’re also more or less through the first eighth of the NHL’s regular season calendar and into the meat of the schedule. For the Pittsburgh Penguins, currently in last place in the Eastern Conference, the optimistic perspective (and generously so) is that there are still seventy-something games left to put themselves back on track to the path of making the playoffs, rather than being in the top five of the draft lottery (which wouldn’t be so bad, considering that the first round pick that they sent to San Jose is top-ten protected). The bad news for the Penguins however is that November features a very challenging schedule: thirteen games, eight of which are on the road, and only two games against teams who are not considered to be serious playoff hopefuls (including tonight’s game against the Sharks).

Pittsburgh had one of its worst Octobers ever last month, and two fundamental factors were the cause: finishing and goaltending. The lack of finishing is indeed frustrating, and there’s a handful of guys “leading” the way in not producing: Jake Guentzel (4th) and Rickard Rakell (8th) are both in the bottom ten in the League in goals for above expected, missing a combined 5.5 goals for above expected. Overall the team is twentieth in the NHL in goals for above expected, which means (silver lining!) there are twelve other teams worse than they are.

If you’re the sort to believe in regression to the mean – that good teams having bad results will invariably improve – then ideally (someday) the Penguins will recover from their average shooting percentage and start outscoring the crap out of other teams, which was probably what was expected when the season began last month. Scoring more goals would definitely improve their overall situation.

Goaltending, however, is a much stickier wicket. Tristan Jarry has shown nowhere near the consistency required of him in the wake of his five-year contract extension signed this past summer. (For what it’s worth, of the ten UFA goaltenders from this past offseason, Jarry’s goals saved above expected per 60 minutes is fifth and, of those better than him, only San Jose’s Mackenzie Blackwood has a worse record. The others are Jake Allen, Adin Hill, and Jonas Johansson, all of whom are making less than Jarry. I thought you should know!)

Pittsburgh’s goaltenders have allowed 3.7 goals above expected, sixth-most in the League, which is precisely the opposite of where they probably should have been for the Penguins to be in good shape. Unlike with finishing, it’s harder to envision a regression to the mean when there’s mainly one guy responsible for that regression. What’s frustrating is that Jarry can be excellent, and has shown just that this season with two shutouts in his three wins. He just doesn’t show that excellence nearly often enough.

There’s no knowing how November will turn out for Pittsburgh. The last few years they were fine, somewhere around a 57-61% points percentage, but the couple of years before that they were as abysmal as they were this October. If the finishing and goaltending are two huge gears making the entire engine run, they have been completely out of whack since the season began. Conversely, the few times when they have been in sync have been beautiful! But the thing is, the Penguins don’t need both of those gears to be working 100% perfectly, which so far is the only way they have been able to win games. (They’ve won the two games with the “fewest” goals scored between both teams, both 4-0 games.) There is a middle ground between shutouts and goal-fests, and Pittsburgh hasn’t played one of those games yet this year. In that sense, since they’re playing so extremely, it is hard to truly analyze how the team should be doing.

So while tonight’s game will be fraught with anxiety (who wants to be the team that loses to the extraordinarily bad San Jose Sharks?), it may serve as the launching point for a better month than the previous one. As the competition gets tougher this month, hopefully the Penguins will settle down and play better overall.