It's only seven games into the season, but the Pittsburgh Penguins' offense hasn't really taken off as planned following the offseason additions of Phil Kessel, Nick Bonino and Sergei Plotnikov. After their 4-1 loss to the Dallas Stars on Thursday, they have managed just 11 goals on the season while their 1.57 goals per game average is currently 29th in the league, ahead of only the Anaheim Ducks.
It was only a matter of time until they tried to shake things up in an effort to get things going.
During Friday's practice the Penguins did just that when they shuffled their lines by splitting up Sidney Crosby and Kessel.
After spending the first seven games on a line with Crosby and Kunitz, Kessel was practicing on a line with Evgeni Malkin and Plotnikov, while Crosby was with Patric Hornqvist and Pascal Dupuis.
Kunitz was bumped down to the third line with Bonino and 18-year-old rookie Daniel Sprong. David Perron, who had been playing on the second line, was rotating with a bunch of extra forwards on the fourth line.
Crosby and Hornqvist spent a lot of time together last season and it seemed to work out. During their more than 515 minutes of 5-on-5 ice-time together the Penguins outscored their opponents 31-17 with Crosby and Hornqvist on the ice and controlled more than 55 percent of the shot attempts (via Puckalytics). With the way things have been going so far this season, it can't hurt to try it again.
Given their current struggles it's easy to try and connect this to the scoring problems that go back to the second half of last season because over their past 27 games, including playoffs, have scored only 44 goals. But I still think their problems at the end of last season were very, very different from the problems they're experiencing this season. Last season's team was ripped to shreds by injuries, particularly on defense, and had been playing really strong hockey up until that point. This year's teams just looks like it's simply lost at times.
Part of that could be the result of having such a massive roster turnover in one offseason (they have eight players on the roster this season that were not on the team a year ago).
Another issue is they simply have a few players that have been in key roles that are quite simply not playing well right now. The trio of Perron, Hornqvist and Kunitz, three of their top-four wingers at the start of the season, have combined for just a single point (an assist by Hornqvist). Kunitz has been a problem for close to a year now (he only has three points over the past 28 games while playing almost exclusively with Sidney Crosby) while Perron has just 16 points in his past 47 games with the Penguins after recording six points in his first three games with the team.
The Penguins are in Nashville to play the Predators on Saturday.
