Two more losses in the bank for the Pittsburgh Penguins as they managed just two goals, one each against the Winnipeg Jets and the Utah Hockey Club on Friday and Saturday. Sidney Crosby did score his 600th career goal against Utah, but it came a day after he was issued his 8th career fighting major penalty after getting into an early third period scrap with the Jets’ Kyle Connor. The captain’s scrap didn’t exactly spur his team on, but Michael Bunting did notch a consolatory power-play goal a few minutes later to prevent the game from being Pittsburgh’s first shutout loss in a month. As for the Utah game, Crosby’s milestone marker did bring the Penguins back to within one goal in the game, but it was all Utah after that as the…Hockey Clubbers(?) would go on to score four unanswered goals en route to a 6-1 victory.
Just for giggles I went back and looked at how Pittsburgh fared in their last four-year stretch of bad seasons prior to the current and waning Crosby/Malkin/Letang era. Here’s a quick table on how the team looked in those pre-Crosby-era years, and how that period compares to this year:
| Season | Points percentage (rank) | Goal differential (rank) | Goals allowed per game (rank) | First draft pick in following draft |
| 2001-02 | t-24th | 27th | 26th | 5th |
| 2002-03 | 29th | 29th | 28th | 1st |
| 2003-04 | 30th (worst) | 30th (worst) | 30th (worst) | 2nd/1st* |
| 2005-06 | 29th | 28th | 30th (worst) | 2nd |
| 2024-25 (to date) | 30th | 32nd (worst) | 30th | ? |
So, yeah…”rank” is correct. Oh sure, there is plenty of time left on the regular season calendar (59 games!), which is only a good thing if you still harbor any sense of hope that these Pittsburgh Penguins could turn things around and make a run at the playoffs. God bless you if you are in that minority, as you will need the patience of a saint to hang onto that dream.
Meanwhile, those 2001-2006 Penguins were among the worst teams in the NHL for those relatively few seasons, and came away with several major pieces of what would become a three-time Stanley Cup-winning franchise in the following 18 seasons. Starting in 2002, Pittsburgh drafted Ryan Whitney, Marc-Andre Fleury, Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby, and Jordan Staal with their first picks in those successive drafts, also including some other players of note like Max Talbot, Alex Goligoski, Tyler Kennedy, and Kris Letang. Once again I feel like I have to reiterate for the depressives in the room that you cannot build a championship-caliber team without being very bad at some point in the recent past. That’s unfortunately the way the NHL works (as well as all the other major North American professional sports leagues, for that matter). The Penguins are on pace for the third overall pick in June’s entry draft, and that prospect will likely be a key participant in Pittsburgh’s not-too-distant future. We have to crawl through this five hundred yards of shit-smelling foulness before we can even think of the going back to Zihuatanejo.
Unfortunately for so many reasons we cannot simply fast-forward to April (or June for that matter), and so the Penguins will take to the ice tonight on Thanksgiving Eve to host the Vancouver Canucks, who are out on the road and playing the second game of a back-to-back after playing in Boston last night. These two teams are getting reacquainted after Vancouver’s 4-3 win over Pittsburgh on October 26. Since then the Canucks have played just over .500 hockey, going 6-5-1 (not including last night’s game), and they’re mostly just hanging around in the Pacific Division and Wild Card races as they sit just one point out of that second Wild Card seed in the Western Conference.
After last season’s impressive start, Vancouver hasn’t been quite as hot in the first quarter of this season. They started the season without starting goaltender Thatcher Demko (who is still out), and over the past few weeks they’ve lost Brock Boeser (upper body injury) and J.T. Miller (personal reasons). Odds are good that at least one former Penguins executive will be in attendance, either former general manager (and current Canucks president of hockey operations) Jim Rutherford and/or current Canucks GM Patrik Allvin (who was assistant GM under Rutherford in Pittsburgh). Rutherford was never shy about making a move if he felt one needed to be made, although how much influence he has on Allvin remains to be seen. In any event, current Penguins GM Kyle Dubas has likely been waiting for Vancouver’s visit to give his counterparts a good look at what’s up for sale and see if they are keen to strike up a deal before heading on their way.
Have a safe and fun Thanksgiving everyone!
