On Saturday nigh, all eyes deservedly focused on Marc-Andre Fleury’s final Penguins appearance. Now that we’ve given that time to play out, I had some other takeaways from the game.
Penguins and the two-headed monster
It was ceremonial to put Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin together for the starting lineup in Fleury’s game. I’m not so sure it should be. I think putting Crosby and Malkin together is perhaps the right thing to do for on-ice reasons as well.
MIke Sullivan refused to do this. It was one of Mike Sullivan’s preferences hat got me bent out of shape over his tenure in Pittburgh. Sullivan wasn’t clever at all about putting Crosby and Malkin together after the Penguins were penalty killing. He also didn’t use TV timeouts or the ends of periods to make it happen, either. It was such a weird blind spot.
Over the past four seasons the duo has only seen 245 5v5 minutes together. During Dan Bylsma’s final four seasons the number was 344 5v5 minutes together. Now, you might say that isn’t really that big of a difference and on the surface you would be correct. But then you have to take into considering it was the 2010-14 seasons which included Evgeni Malkin missing the last half of 2010-11 with an ACL tear and famously the time period when Sidney Crosby had his concussion issues. Long winded point being, the Penguins haven’t maximized having both of these star players at 5v5 for quite some time.
I hope Dan Muse is more willing to put the duo together. First, this is an entertainment product in a time period of the franchise where the entertainment might be tough to come by. Just do something fun that any hockey fan would want to see.
Secondly, the team has been playing Rickard Rakell at center. They can have Rakell play as the second line center with Tommy Novak filling the third line center role. This frees up Malkin to play with Crosby on the first line. Stack it up, put Rust up there with the two franchise icons. You still have Ville Koivunen and Anthony Mantha as top six winger options.
Another potential option could be Ben Kindel. I’d love to see him on a nine-game tryout even if it ultimately leads to him going back to junior hockey. Let’s see it, Kindel has shown NHL level thought process and puck skills. Sure, he gets put on his rear end more often than an NHL player should, but he’ll get stronger over time. The first nine games could look like this:
Malkin-Crosby-Rust/Kindel
Koivunen-Rakell-Rust/Kindel/Mantha
To me, that is interesting and isn’t that the whole point of watching sports?
I’ve seen enough: Brunicke belongs
Harrison Brunicke, welcome to the Pittsburgh Penguins. He looks the part and we are now in back to back training camps where he has shown out and looks like he can hang with the NHL level talent. He can start on a bottom pairing with Owen Pickering while both Erik Karlsson and Kris Letang are on the team eating up minutes.
Brunicke’s skating and passing is good enough. The next step in his development is to see if he can continue to develop and get better over a longer sample of NHL action. If Kyle Dubas is serious about younger players getting into the lineup then those minutes should go to Harrison Brunicke and not Matt Dumba.
Other Penguins thoughts
Sidney Crosby closed out practice with a shootout goal
Sid, my man, please remember you are allowed to deke in the shootouts that count. You have disgustingly good hands. Change it up a bit, please and thank you.
Sergei Murashov will likely start the season in the AHL to give him a steady dose of starts. He’s had a really strong camp and things are looking good for the future to this point. A huge benefit of this training camp has been exposing him to some of the Penguins legends
Noel Acciari is working his way back from injury
On a human level it is nice to see a player working back from a long term injury. That said, I have absolutely no appetite to see him playing for the current version of the Penguins. It just isn’t a good fit for player and team anymore. My hope is that they give him some playing time to show he has overcome his injury and trade him to another organization where the fit is better.
Pittsburgh is back in action tonight against Detroit. Here are the lineups
With Rust out 2-3 weeks, maybe we keep Kindel up for the 9-game tryout just to give him some experience? Apparently he hasn’t looked out of place in preseason at all. If Koivenen and Hayes are going to be on the big club, roll them as a third line for a few games at the beginning of the season and see how it goes.