Penguins Update: Where Have All the Goals Gone? And Who’s Not Scoring Them.
It’s no secret. Our Penguins are having difficulty scoring. Grave(s) difficulty. Incredibly, we’re tied with Arizona for 25th (out of 32 teams) in goals per game with 2.87. We rank a lowly 28th in goal production with 149 non-shootout goals.
Positively pop-gun output.
Fifty-three of those goals, or a whopping 36 percent, have come via the stick blades of our new Two-Headed Monster, Sidney Crosby (31) and Jake Guentzel (22). Alone, Crosby has accounted for nearly 21 percent of our output, or roughly one out of every five black-and-gold goals.
Extraordinary work on Sid’s part, but hardly ideal from a team standpoint.
So where have the goals gone? More to the point, who’s scoring ‘em and who’s not.
I decided to perform a simple side-by-side comparison of individual goal production from last season compared to projected totals this season at the NHL level.
There was nothing fancy or scientific in my method. I simply multiplied each player’s current goal total by 1.58 (82 games divided by the 52 we’ve played thus far). A straight-line projection that doesn’t take into account injuries or a player’s usage or status (ex: Radim Zohorna assigned to the Baby Pens).