2.17 in goals\/60<\/a>. Sidney Crosby (11 5v5 points) and Evgeni Malkin (10) have factored into 58% of the even strength offense. In Crosby\u2019s case, it\u2019s easy to see that continuing indefinitely since point generation is what Crosby has done for 20 years. For Malkin, what happens when Anthony Mantha (who only has two goals in the seven games this month and one at even strength) slows down and lesser players like Tommy Novak and Kevin Hayes can\u2019t score on Malkin\u2019s setups? Beyond casting an eye at goalie performance continuing, how long the Pens can count on some of the oldest players in the league propping up an imperfect team is something to track. And, hey, so far so good.<\/p>\nNY Islanders: \u201cUm\u2026Sorokin isn\u2019t going to win the Vezina\u201d. Out of all the teams in the division right now, it might be the hardest to rain on the Islanders\u2019 parade. They\u2019re doing better than expected, Matthew Schaefer is leading all NHL defensemen with seven goals, the team\u2019s offense is up, Emil Heineman already has nine goals, and within the last 8-10 days NYI has defeated the Rangers, Devils, Vegas and Utah, all in road games. Not too much to snipe at, besides the fact the Islanders are fairly lax defensively and Ilya Sorokin has a sub .900 save percentage to start the season. They\u2019re probably not too worried given the talent level there, but we gotta reach for something.<\/p>\n
NY Rangers: \u201cYou don\u2019t like your fans, and the feeling is mutual\u201d. The Rangers are 1-7-1 at home, getting shutout in five of the first nine home games. It\u2019s only mid-November and already more members of the division have a shutout win at MSG against the Rangers (WSH, PIT, CAR, NYI) than don\u2019t have a shutout win at MSG against the Rangers (NJ, CBJ, PHI). That might only because the latter three games haven\u2019t gotten the opportunity to PLAY a game in New York yet this season. That\u2019s almost inconceivably bad! It took four games for the Rangers to score even a single goal in front of the home crowd. Naturally, the Rangers are fabulous (9-1-1 ) on the road this year to make up for it, but the turmoil for NYR is still going strong. Certainly one of the more strange ongoing situations in hockey this year.<\/p>\n
Philadelphia: \u201cYou\u2019re shootout merchants and frauds\u201d. No one in the NHL has less regulation wins than the Flyers (4). For now a 4-0 shootout record is keeping Philadelphia afloat, and there is something to be said about excelling in the task of the shootout. It counts and helps the record. It could be said that simply surviving the 60 minutes and getting the game to overtime is a talent in and of itself (which the Flyers have done in nearly 50% of their games this season, playing 8\/18 past 60 minutes). It\u2019s not a very admirable talent, however and perhaps one that can\u2019t be counted on for the long haul. The Flyers haven\u2019t built a very strong base in the first quarter of the season to think they\u2019ll be going very far.<\/p>\n
Columbus: \u201cYou\u2019re the definition of mid\u201d. Columbus has 56 goals for to 57 goals against. They\u2019re winners in half of their 18 total games. Even splits of 4-3-1 at home, 5-4-1 away. The Blue Jackets are just kinda there so far this season. They have three wins and five total OT games so far this season to help out in the standings, which has enabled them to hang around and track for a decent amount of points, but CBJ needs to pick things up a bit considering that some of the other teams in the division like Pittsburgh and NYI are performing better.<\/p>\n
Washington: \u201cYour special teams are offensively bad\u201d. The Caps have the 30th ranked power play (14.6%) and the 27th ranked penalty kill (72.9%). It\u2019s been a real problem and one that could cost them<\/a>, considering Washington is actually one of the best 5v5 teams in the league. Maybe the issues around assistant coach Mitch Love (suspended and then dismissed) weren\u2019t helping but whatever it is, the Caps need a turnaround big time. Last year\u2019s power play wasn\u2019t that good (14th) but was at least serviceable. Their PK in 2024-25 was 5th in the NHL and it\u2019s been a huge drop off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Due to the schedule and now off time for the Penguins, we\u2019re bumping back the normal Sunday Standings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3625,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-307612","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-general","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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