The week ahead: Road trip that can change the season for Penguins

Yesterday at 10:24 AM

If they take care of business, they might still be in it.

The Pittsburgh Penguins had a five-game home stand in January that, given the opponents, could have put them right back in the thick of the Eastern Conference Wild Card race.

They mostly wasted it, winning just one game and pretty much rendering all of the work they did throughout the end of November and December nearly useless.

They are now on a seven-game road trip (having already played two games on it, splitting them in Buffalo and Washington) that could ultimately determine if they are still a bubble playoff team or if this is going to be a true lottery season.

On one hand, this is a seven-game road trip, with five of those games coming out west.

Those are never easy road trips and the Penguins do have a tendency to sometimes struggle on them.

On the other hand, four of the remaining five games on the road trip are against teams that are out of the playoff picture and own records of .500 or worse.

On the third hand, two of the teams in that group (Seattle and Utah) have already beaten the Penguins this season at home.

Realistically speaking, given everything just said in all of those words, the Penguins are probably not a playoff team. But, this week and road trip ahead might just simply confirm that if they continue to struggle to piece together wins.

The week starts on Monday with what should be, on paper, the toughest game of the West Coast portion of this trip at the Los Angeles Kings. The Kings are legit and do pretty much everything well as a team. Especially defensively. They do not score a ton of goals, but they have enough scoring punch if they need it. The true bread and butter of this team is in its ability to shut down opponents. They enter the week as a top-five team in expected goal share, the best team in terms of suppressing expected goals against and are second in the NHL in total goals against per game.

Offense will be a struggle.

They are structured, they are disciplined, and they have done all of this after losing Matt Roy in free agency and Drew Doughty to injury. They are also getting a strong bounce back season from Darcy Kuemper in goal after he came over from the Washington Capitals in the Pierre-Luc Dubois trade.

After playing in Los Angeles, the Penguins have two nights off before traveling to Anaheim on Thursday night.

This is where the road trip should become a little easier and hopefully give the Penguins an opportunity to start stacking some points.

While the Ducks have some intriguing young talent, they do not do anything particularly well as a team. They have been shutout in three of their past five games entering the week, have lost six of their past seven games and are the worst defensive team in hockey, allowing 3.07 expected goals per 60 minutes of 5-on-5 play. They are the only team in the league allowing more than 2.92 expected goals.

They do have long-time Penguins nemesis Jacob Trouba on the roster, so that is another factor to keep an eye on. He is playing a ton of minutes since arriving there via trade. He is not playing them particularly well, but he is playing them,

On Sunday the Penguins travel up to Seattle to play a Kraken team that is, for the second year in a row, mostly underwhelming. Like Anaheim, this is another team that does not really do anything particularly well. They do, however, have a solid goalie in Joey Daccord who continues to be one of the lone bright spots on the team. The Kraken just beat the Penguins in Pittsburgh a little more than a week ago with a third period rally.

I would anticipate that the Penguins are going to struggle on Monday night, and a win over the Kings would be a very, very pleasant and unexpected surprise.

Assuming they do not win, getting four out of a possible four points in Anaheim and Seattle would need to be an absolute must. They need a bare minimum of four points this week to set the stage for the rest of the road trip (at San Jose and Utah) and to keep any slim hopes of competing for a playoff spot in their favor.