Penguins-Blackhawks Takeaways: Different Styles of Koivunen/McGroarty adds new wrinkle to Top-6

A Montreal Win Sunday combined with a Penguins loss vs the Chicago Blackhawks= The Pittsburgh Penguins were officially eliminated from the postseason for the third straight season.

“Obviously not where we want to be. We all understand that, we know where we’re at,” head coach Mike Sullivan said. “We know where we’ve got to go, and we’ve got to keep working that.”

When your best players are pushing 40 years old and you miss the playoffs for a third straight year by a significant margin, it doesn’t usually end at three. It normally leads to four to five straight seasons of not being postseason bound. For some even longer…….

– Takeaways

— If the Penguins had any plans next season to tank for Gavin McKenna, Rickard Rakell would have been shipped out the door at the deadline without any remorse. That didn’t happen and is also not in the plans this summer. Bryan Rust would also be thanked for everything he’s done for this franchise and be shipped out for a first-round pick, NHL ready prospect when his No Movement Clause expires this coming summer. Again, none of that is going to happen. Pittsburgh is locked in on trying to toe the line next season of embracing younger players which has started with Ville Koivunen/Rutger McGroarty, while also taking some big swings to upgrade the roster with impact veterans, two positions will be primarily targeted first: To read this insider news, subscribe to get “Inside Access”!

— The Penguins internally have been very intrigued about Ville Koivunen’s skill set meshing with Evgeni Malkin. So far, so good. Pittsburgh’s second line was very good vs the Stars and was Pittsburgh’s best unit vs the Blackhawks Sunday Night.

2nd Line vs	CF%	SF%	SCF%	HDCF%
67-71-41	65%	71%	69%	80%

2nd line vs	CF%	SF%	SCF%	HDCF%
67-71-41	71%	77%	71%	75%
	Shot Attempts For%	Shots For %	Scoring Chance For%	High Danger For%

Koivunen in particular in just his fourth NHL game and a back-to-back situation, was arguably the Penguins best player on the ice against the Blackhawks, especially in the back half of the game. The Penguins having an actual prospect who can create his own offense 1-on-1 is a new development……

“One of the reasons he’s out there is because we think he has good instincts. We think he sees it pretty well,” Mike Sullivan said of Koivunen playing the right half wall on the Top Power Play unit.

5 vs 5, though, it was Koivunen’s most impressive game thus far in creating offense. He was [hide] second among forwards in driving offense, on the ice for 17 shot attempts to just 9 against. Four games in for Koivunen/McGroarty with the callups, McGroarty was the best player on the ice vs the Blues, while Koivunen took his game to another level against Dallas and Chicago over the weekend. What’s intriguing about adding two young players like this to the top 9 next season is both bring different attributes. In Koivunen you got the more skilled player and strong hockey sense to create; McGroarty just a nice all-around combo and needed element with wall play, smarts in the tough areas and don’t discount his defensive presence at a young age. The Penguins can use any two-way forward who can actually play a 200 ft game with some intelligence. [/hide]

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