Pittsburgh Penguins' Problems Are Deeper Than Just Coaching

After a slow and poor start to the season, the Pittsburgh Penguins have fired head coach Mike Johnston. Now the problem may seem to have been fixed, but Pittsburgh’s problems go deeper than just the coach.

Overall the team is underachieving with the team sitting one point back out of the last wild card playoff spot, which is unusual for a team that generally tops the Metropolitan Division.

Pittsburgh’s power play is 27th in the NHL, which is strange when the team has three great scorers in Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Phil Kessel. This really shows the lack of forward depth Pittsburgh has and that they need more than those three players to have an effective power play.

It also doesn’t help that both Crosby and Kessel are underperforming this season. Crosby has 19 points in 28 games and 17 points in 28 games for Kessel. They are both normally point-per-game players so it’s still unclear if the issue is that they don’t have great chemistry together or if there are other unknown issues. Kessel was brought in during the offseason to help alleviate the scoring pressures from Crosby and Malkin, but has yet to live up to that expectation.

Luckily for Pittsburgh, Malkin is still great as always with 26 points in 28 games. The play of Malkin and goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury is probably the only reason why the Penguins are even within reach of a wild card spot.

The last issue, and one that has troubled Pittsburgh for years is defense. The team does have some good young defensemen in the organization with players like Olli Maatta and Derrick Pouliot, but they rely solely on Kris Letang and don’t have any other defensemen that can handle as much ice-time as he does.

New head coach Mike Sullivan has a lot of work ahead of him to get Pittsburgh back to the dominating NHL team they once were.