Team: 2022-23 Pittsburgh Penguins

Initial Creation Date: Feb. 20, 2023

Published: Feb. 20, 2023

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

It’s honestly really funny to me when people say this team is slow, because whenever I watch games where they play tougher and younger opponents they actually tend to hold their ground well. Playing nail biting games against those teams and not only holding their ground but also keeping up the pace. The problem is how our bottom 6 has been utilized and how it’s made them super ineffective to the game. Jeff Carter for big instance is supposed to be a scoring threat but that hasn’t been the case at all this year. Sully seems to only want the bottom 6 to play defence and makes them play those defensive battles when it just isn’t some of their style of plays. Jeff Carter isn’t supposed to be playing a role of a defensive forward. He’s not the guy I’d look at in the first place to rely on to play a defensive role which is what I hate when Pens fans say “he’s bad defensively”. So what? So is Geno but that’s barely brought up because he’s actually used right. For Kappy he’s a guy that I think can carry the puck but he’s the only guy that can on a line with Carter and McGinn cause those guys are more used of shooting the puck. But they all see little offensive zone time because of how they are used. And to me that isn’t their faults in the slightest. McGinn has been fine to me as well cause he’s the only real defensive forward on that line. Poehling is a player in the works and he’s been fine so far. He brings that young energy that we really need. But we also don’t get to see much from him as well due to the amount of defensive zone time our bottom 6 has to play. So ya, our bottom 6 does suck but it really isn’t their fault at all. And it’s so wild to look back at the back to back Cup days, our bottom 6 was never used this heavily for defence even though we had Nick Bonino that was our best defensive forward and actually played defence really well.
Our defencemen have been fine honestly. Dumo has shown better results I think after having a really rough go for a bit. Letang has just had a rough year overall and I really hope he’s doing okay altogether(I don’t mean anything wrong with his game it’s just off the ice it had to have been rough). Pettersson has been a treat after all the trade talk surrounding him. Petry is good when he’s healthy. POJ has played a fine game and shows a lot of potential for what he can bring when his game really matures. Rutta has been decent.
Goaltending is where it gets weird. Jarry has been quite good this year actually but it’s the injuries. If he hasn’t been injured much this season we’d probably be enjoying hockey a lot more. DeSmith has been an emotional rollercoaster. When he has good games they are really good but when it’s bad it gets really really bad and I don’t want to blame him for anything cause he’s been having to take on a heavy work load but he’s had some bad games where he couldn’t stop a beach ball.

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