A frustrating December ended on a high note for the Pittsburgh Penguins which they then turned into a perfect start to January to pull themselves right back into the playoff conversation as they reach the midpoint of the 2025-26 season. Winners of five straight, the Penguins are the hottest team in the Metro division and currently sit third in the division when looking at points percentage.<\/p>\n
There is still much hockey to be played for the Penguins and the rest of the league, but for a team with low expectations back in October, you could not have drawn up a better first half for this Penguins side.<\/p>\n
A five game win streak has the Penguins undefeated since Christmas and right back in the Eastern Conference mix. At some point the playoff log jam will break so it\u2019s important for the Penguins to best position themselves now rather than wait for the home stretch. [Pensburgh<\/a>]<\/p>\n These three days off mark the longest stretch without any games for the Penguins until the end of the month. Once play resumes on Thursday, the Penguins will face another bust stretch of three games in four days to close out the week with a weekend back-to-back on tap. [Pensburgh<\/a>]<\/p>\n Hockey in Pennsylvania has been on a downturn in recent years with both the Penguins and Flyers going through rebuilds. That has changed this season with both sides posting surprising starts to place themselves in the playoff chase as the season reaches the halfway point. [Sportsnet<\/a>]<\/p>\n Much of what has been going right for the Penguins during this winning streak is what was going wrong during their struggles in December. It\u2019s no mistake their results have improved as their overall game has improved in the big areas and the minute details. [PPG<\/a>]<\/p>\n As is often the case, the player powering the Penguins recent surge is none other than the captain Sidney Crosby. In four games last week, Crosby posted eight points and was named the NHL\u2019s Second Star of the Week. [Penguins<\/a>]<\/p>\n After being acquired from the Philadelphia Flyers organization, Egor Zamula decided to not report to the Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton Penguins and was thus suspended. The entire saga came to a close on Monday when Zamula was placed on waivers for a contract termination. [TSN<\/a>]<\/p>\n There\u2019s already been plenty of debate about who will not be going with their respective nations to the upcoming Olympic Games, but what this debate does provide is a glimpse at just how good some B teams could be for different nations comprised solely of those snubbed. [NHL<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A frustrating December ended on a high note for the Pittsburgh Penguins which they then turned into a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5113],"tags":[5,40,4,118,33852,1469,100,5216],"class_list":{"0":"post-393429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-penguins","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-penguins","12":"tag-pens-points","13":"tag-pittsburgh","14":"tag-pittsburgh-penguins","15":"tag-pittsburghpenguins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393429","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=393429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}