With a full three days off between their last game and tonight, the Pittsburgh Penguins should be well-rested in anticipation of tonight’s visit to Las Vegas to face the Golden Knights. Coming off a handy 3-0 win over the Seattle Kraken on Monday, Pittsburgh has moved up to fifth place in the Metropolitan Division, although they are still three points behind for the second Wild Card seed in the Eastern Conference. Their 10-3-3 record since December 12 is the seventh-best in the NHL. Five of the six teams with a better record have allowed fewer goals than the Penguins, and only one of those teams has scored fewer goals than Pittsburgh. It’s interesting to know that Pittsburgh can get by with almost exactly average goal-scoring (15th in the NHL in this timeframe) so long as their defense and goaltending are stingy enough.

One consistent theme for the Penguins has been their poor power play, but recently there have been modest improvements with the man advantage. In the aforementioned span, Pittsburgh has been given the second-most power play opportunities in the NHL, and while their power play success rate ranks only 21st, there are some positives. First, they have allowed just one shorthanded goal against in these last 16 games, and their goal differential on the power play is +11, good for sixth-best in the League. Second, the power play success rate is better than some teams above them in the standings overall and since December 12, including the Winnipeg Jets and the Vancouver Canucks, so that’s nice to see as well. It’s not a lot to get excited about, but at least they’re not in the bottom five in the League any more, and they’re also not shooting themselves in the foot with shorthanded goals against as much as they had been (the 5-on-3 shorthanded goal against in practice the other day notwithstanding).

With the All-Star break less than a month away, League-wide the machinations surrounding the trade deadline on March 8 will likely start to move. The Penguins have some areas that can stand to improve – while the power play is one of them, I believe that’s something that ought to improve on its own – and perhaps the most important is forward depth. The middle six in particular could really use a boost, particularly in light of Reilly Smith’s recent injury, as the only consistent producers in that group are Evgeni Malkin and Bryan Rust (who himself just returned from an injury seven games ago).

Drew O’Connor, Valtteri Puustinen, and the recently-demoted Radim Zohorna have not been ideal solutions there, as their offense comes too streakily to be useful on the second or even the third line. As excited as everyone is to see Sam Poulin and Jesse Puljujärvi doing well recently with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, it’s hard to know if their productivity in the AHL will translate well to the NHL. (Surely, they will get an opportunity at some point, although Puljujärvi is still only on an AHL contract.)

I will say that, while there was a point when I thought trading Jake Guentzel could have been a good idea, I think that ship has sailed. Pittsburgh is definitely in the playoff race right now – in fact, all but eight teams in the NHL are in the single digits for playoff odds – so unless general manager Kyle Dubas finds a trade that would definitely improve the Penguins’ playoff chances this year, it makes zero sense at this point to trade Sidney Crosby’s primary wingman. In fact, given the circumstances, I would be very surprised if Guentzel is not given a contract extension, but that’s a topic for another day. Right now, the aim has to be to squeeze more goals out of the second and third lines, if possible; because of all the different limiting factors (no cap space, likely no first round pick this year, few valuable prospects), it’s most likely that improvement is going to have to come from within.

The only other 3-0 victory for Pittsburgh thus far this season came at the expense of the Vegas Golden Knights on November 19. Vegas had a great start to their championship-defense season, going 11-0-1 in their first 12 games, but they have played roughly .500 hockey since with a record of 15-13-4. While they are still fairly comfortably in the top three of the Pacific Division, the Golden Knights have nevertheless fallen behind the blazing-hot Vancouver Canucks and have two other strong teams, the Los Angeles Kings and Edmonton Oilers, hot on their tails. Vegas has had a rough time of it the last five weeks, going 5-9 since December 15, and boy, the attrition to their roster has been fierce. According to CapFriendly they have six players on injured reserve to go with the three on long-term injured reserve, including Jack Eichel, William Karlsson, Shea Theodore, Adin Hill and Robin Lehner. After beating the New York Rangers on Thursday and playing the Penguins tonight, Vegas heads out to the east coast for games against New Jersey, both New York teams, and Detroit before the All-Star break at the end of the month.

Meanwhile, I just realized that Pittsburgh is in the middle of a seven-games-in-35-days stretch. Awesome schedule-making, NHL!

BUTTMAN!