Game Preview: Pittsburgh Penguins @ Nashville Predators 12/19/2024

Get ready for a LOT of yellow tonight

Who: Pittsburgh Penguins (14-14-5, 33 points, 4th place Metropolitan Division) @ Nashville Predators (9-17-6, 24 points, 8th place Central Division)

When: 8:00 p.m. ET

How to Watch: Broadcast on SportsNet Pittsburgh, FDSNSO for the local markets, streaming on ESPN+

Pens’ Path Ahead: The Pens stay on the road and head to New Jersey for a game on Saturday night. Then they play Philadelphia for the first time this season at home on Monday Dec 23rd before enjoying a few days off from the rink for Christmas time.

Opponent Track: The Preds have been one of the most disappointing teams this season relative to expectation. They are 2-5-0 in the month of December, though viewed through a different lens they’ve won two of the last three games. Tonight is the second game of four in a row at home for Nashville, they should be desperate to turn their season around as soon as possible.

Season Series: This is the first meeting between these two teams this season. The Preds come to Pittsburgh on February 1st.

Hidden Stat: Per Pens PR, the Penguins own an overall record of 395-90-48 when both Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin record a point in a game. Another win went into the books with a point for No. 87 and 71 last game against LA.

Getting to know the Predators

Projected lines

FORWARDS

Filip Forsberg - Steven Stamkos - Jonathan Marchessault

Zachary L’Heureux - Ryan O’Rielly - Gustav Nyquist

Mark Jankowski - Tommy Novak - Luke Evangelista

Cole Smith - Michael McCarron - Colton Sissons

DEFENSEMEN

Brady Skjei / Nick Blankenburg

Marc Del Gaizo / Luke Schenn

Kevin Gravel / Adam Wilsby

Goalies: Juuse Saros an Justus Annunen

Potential Scratches: Juuso Parssinen, Roman Josi (day-to-day lower body injury)

IR: Alexandre Carrier, Jeremy Lauzon

—Josi has been out since December 10th with an undisclosed injury and could be nearing a return tonight. Getting their captain back would be a huge boost.

—Hey, Jankowski is still in the league!

—Looking at the first line, you think ‘how could this team be in last place’? Looking at the bottom two lines and pairs, it starts to make a little more sense. Nashville has been haunted by some injuries on the blueline but they were not a particularly deep team on paper to begin with.

That said, you’ll be forgiven to not have much of a file on Adam Wilsby, but he scored a pretty goal against the Rangers. The 24-year old former fourth round pick has been working in the AHL since 2022 and the injuries have opened up a spot for him to get a look in the NHL.

Player stats

(via hockeydb)

—The bitter irony to add a couple of 40-goal scorers to help turnaround a franchise always known for modest scoring and lacking individual stars only to find that now the team’s high-goal scorer is on a pace for 23. It was said that Nikita Kucherov was helping to prop up Steven Stamkos’ numbers and boy that might just have been the case. It looked like Stamkos might have been settling in and getting on track after a slow start but he only has scored one goal in his last 11 games (though at least he’s recorded six assists in that span).

—The other major move was adding Brady Skjei and sending out Ryan McDonagh via a trade. McDonagh asked to go, but losing him has been a blow to the Preds. There’s also the matter Skjei scored 40 total goals over the last three seasons with Carolina and only has two so far this season in Nashville.

Team comparisons

What happens when Nashville’s 32nd ranked goal production per game meets up against Pittsburgh’s 32nd ranked goal prevention?

Holy cow, that’s an offensive amount of red in this matchup. As mentioned above, the NSH offense vs the PIT defense is a weakness-on-weakness matchup. At the other end there will be strength-on-strength when the Penguins’ pretty darn good offensive generation machine goes up against the one person in Nashville you can’t put too much blame on, goalie Juuse Saros.

Styles make fights as they say, and this one could be “bowling shoe ugly” to carry over WWE night with a Jim Ross-ism.

Speaking of atrocious style, there is going to be WAY too much yellow on the ice tonight. The Nashville yellow home jerseys contrasted with the Pens’ road jersey is stick-in-the-eye type of bad, probably my least favorite color scheme of the whole year when the Pens play in Nashville. At least it brings memories of the 2017 Cup Final but short of that, not a pretty sight.

Pittsburgh has so many beautiful jersey matchups, when they play teams like Toronto or Montreal or even LA or Edmonton the visual appeal is among the best for any you can think of. But this tonight is a huge clash of yellow. Prepare your eyes accordingly. (It would be nice if Nashville re-branded with more focus on their blue/silver scheme with minimal yellow, but that’s a topic for a different day).

And now for the Pens

Projected lines

FORWARDS

Rickard Rakell - Sidney Crosby - Bryan Rust

Michael Bunting - Evgeni Malkin - Philip Tomasino

Drew O’Connor - Cody Glass - Anthony Beauvillier

Matt Nieto - Blake Lizotte - Noel Acciari

DEFENSEMEN

Owen Pickering / Kris Letang

Matt Grzelcyk / Erik Karlsson

Ryan Graves / Ryan Shea

Goalies: Tristan Jarry and Alex Nedeljkovic

Potential Scratches: Jesse Puljujarvi, Kevin Hayes, P.O. Joseph

IR: Marcus Pettersson

—Practice yesterday was as listed as above.

—Earlier in the week the team moved Pettersson to IR (which, no surprise, means he’s out for at least week) and recalled Clurman from the AHL. Nice for a player in the ECHL as recently as two seasons ago to get on an NHL roster but that didn’t last very long. The Pens returned Clurman to the AHL shortly after the P.O. Joseph trade was announced in order to remain under the 23-player limit. No reason to think Pittsburgh will need to push Joseph instantly back into the lineup for tonight, but they are a little deeper today than they were yesterday at least.

Pucks in net, and a little more on the Crosby goal drought

Gotta like when that stubborn puck goes into the net. The Pens are seeing an uptick in finishing, and it’s leading to a lot of wins lately. Nice formula. From the team:

The Penguins have been filling the net during their 7-2-1 stretch. Since November 27, the Penguins are tied for first in the NHL in goals:

Goals For, Nov. 27 - Dec. 17

Team GP GF

Pittsburgh 10 41
Tampa Bay 9 41
Edmonton 9 38
Florida 10 38
Boston 10 35

A crazy thing about this stretch is that Malkin, Crosby and Karlsson have only scored two of the goals (and Malkin has scored both of them). Two is the same number that Acciari+Nieto have over this time period, at one a piece. Luckily the depth players are coming through (and high-level supporting players like Rakell, Rust and Letang have been absolutely amazing with 19 total goals in their last 10 games) to minimize the sting of not having the stars produce like stars typically do.

Crosby’s drought is drawing some attention now that it’s reached 10 games since he last lit the lamp.

“I think when the chances are there, and especially, I’d say, the last three games, [I] had some really good looks that haven’t gone in, hit some posts, things like that,” Crosby said. “So, I wouldn’t say it’s easy, but like I said, when you’re winning games, it makes it a little better. ... I don’t think you can start to force it or start cheating. I think you’ve got to play the right way and trust the pucks will go in the net.”

As usual, an astute and accurate observation from Crosby. In the last three games he has 13 total shots on goal (and 24 total shot attempts, including one official post hit according to nhl.com). Several of those have been from quality areas on the ice where opposing goals have flat out made some nice stops on him or his own personal puck luck for finishing hasn’t been there.

Obviously the drought is going to end sooner than later if Crosby can continue firing eight shot attempts per game like he has been lately. So we’ll see if tonight is the night.

This is only the sixth time in Crosby’s career where he’s reached double-digit games played without a goal.

It stands out that two of the streaks have been in calendar 2024. Is that a signal that Father Time is catching up to Crosby? That would still be a leap to get there, he does have the 10 assists in this run, and overall in calendar 2024 Crosby has scored 30 goals in 80 games (along with 89 total points). Short of Alex Ovechkin, that’s pretty darn good for a 36/37 year old player in the league to put up those kind of goal totals and the assist marks remain strong.

Crosby might be more prone to longer droughts these days without a superb playmaking winger like Jake Guentzel to play off of, but Sid’s overall numbers remain impressive for where he is at in his career.