The Pittsburgh Penguins continued with their defensive struggles on Sunday afternoon as they fell 6-3 to the Winnipeg Jets in their first of four games on the road in Western Canada. As of this writing the Penguins now hold the League lead in two not-necessarily-connected-but-otherwise-troubling stats: goals allowed, and shots-on-goal allowed. They are also in the top three in the NHL in shot attempts against, unblocked shot attempts against, and number one in expected goals against. They’re also tops in the NHL in allowing scoring chances against of all three grades of danger by a large margin. Consider the New Jersey Devils, who too are near the top of the NHL in those shooting, chance, and expected goal against metrics, but they have prevented eleven more goals than Pittsburgh and sit atop the Metropolitan Division standings as well as those League-wide.

So while it is fortunate for the Penguins to only be 3-4 and not in much worse shape, the fact is that they are not winning the game of high-event hockey chicken. They cannot continue allowing their opponents to have so many opportunities and think they’ll win hockey games every night. The puck is not going in their opponents’ nets often enough to justify this belligerent brand of hockey. None of their three goaltenders are that good that they’re going to steal games for them on a regular basis. I could understand sticking with this formula if Pittsburgh was shooting the lights out or if their goaltenders were constantly able to stand on their heads, but until one of those two things happens there isn’t much hope for the Penguins to play like this and win more games than they lose.

This past summer general manager Kyle Dubas let Todd Reirden walk and sought out former San Jose Sharks head coach David Quinn to replace Reirden as assistant coach with the responsibilities of the defense and the power play. While the power play is off to a better start (how could it not be better than it was last year, 30th out of 32 teams), the defense is considerably worse. Last season the Penguins were middle of the pack in terms of the shot and expected goal metrics, and over the past three years as well they have been in the middle of the NHL in that regard. So Pittsburgh has traded “passable defense/awful power play” for “awful defense/passable power play” and the results so far are more or less as you would expect. The question is if the defense will get better on its own, or if we’re going to continue seeing the Penguins getting shelled every night. If Marcus Pettersson, the team’s best defensive-defenseman and a pending UFA, is struggling in this new system then I do not have a lot of optimism for things to improve.

Tonight the Penguins are in Alberta to face the Pacific Division-leading Calgary Flames. Calgary comes into tonight’s game without a loss in regulation in its first five games, the only blemish to their record being a 2-1 overtime loss to the Seattle Kraken on Saturday. The Pacific Division figures to be a tough one this year and the standings bear that out. Whereas the Flames and Kraken which were not in the playoff picture last season are currently in the top four, the Vancouver Canucks and the Edmonton Oilers, last season’s division winner and Western Conference winner, respectively, are not. Again, we’re talking about the early days of the season and the Oilers did start out slow last year as well so Calgary, arguably a playoff bubble team much as they have been for the past decade, should not take it for granted that those two teams will continue to lag behind.

Despite being outchanced and outshot by their opponents, Calgary is doing a very good job limiting their opponents to more of the medium and low-danger shots and chances against. Subsequently their goaltending tandem of Dustin Wolf and Dan Vladar have been holding down the fort as well and the Flames have the sixth-best save percentage in the NHL as a result. Offensively Calgary is not a high-volume team as they sit in the bottom third in shots-on-goal per 60 minutes, but they are tied with the Winnipeg Jets for the second-best shooting percentage in the League. They’re off to a good start which they will need to keep up with once the likes of the Canucks and Oilers eventually come around. If there’s any hope for the Penguins tonight, it will be in generating a lot of shot volume on offense and seeing if they can get second and third chances down low; Calgary does not allow a lot of those, and when they have, they’ve been burned. Pittsburgh leads the NHL in rebound shots for and rebound goals for, so this is one area they can hope to build upon.

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