Great58 wrote:I don't see Saturday as an anomaly. I see it as a progression of increasingly focused play over the last week. One good period against the Cannucks. Not enough. Two good periods against the Bruins. Not enough. But when the play the entire game the right way, they can beat anyone. Yes, it took timely goal tending and some unusual penalty circumstance to unfold, but they earned some of those chances. The penalty kill and the short handed goal on the double minor to Guentzel was a huge swing in the game.
Schedule was heavily skewed towards Western Conference play in the first quarter, that will reverse now. Pens will have ample opportunity to reestablish themselves as a Metro power, having played only the games within their division thus far, the Rangers (once) and Capitals (twice).
True, but if you want to be fair and extrapolate out the negatives as well, other than the first 5 minutes of the first period, they still played pretty meh at even strength, and they had to rely heavily on special teams to win the game. The even strength play has been 75% of the reason for their poor play to start. So, yes they won the game, but they still had to rely heavily on PP and SHG.
They still need to improve their even strength play, even strength scoring, and penalty killing.
The schedule is improving, so that will be favorable, but the key is, at some point, your reach a threshold where you are going to get too far behind and making a big move won't be enough to get them back where they need to be in the playoff picture. We aren't there yet, but, they need to be better than slightly above .500 hockey in December. Really need to win 3 out of every 4 games to get back to where they need to be. You get two weeks into December and they are still hovering around .500, gotta pull the trigger on something or risk not being able to make up the necessary ground.