Pittsburgh is the NHL’s oldest workforce. They’re out of a playoff spot and, not like the Canadiens, have few draft picks to assist them rebuild.
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Montreal and Pittsburgh are each in rebuild mode, however the Canadiens are in a a lot better area. They’re the second-youngest workforce within the NHL and the workforce’s mind belief of Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes have a strong plan in place. They’ve a younger core up entrance with Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky and Kirby Dach. Mike Matheson provides ability and stability to a gaggle of younger defencemen.
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The Penguins defeated the Canadiens 4-1 in a must-win recreation Thursday in Pittsburgh however they nonetheless face an uphill battle as they try to keep away from lacking the playoffs for a second consecutive season. The victory left them with 58 factors, seven factors behind Tampa Bay for the ultimate wild-card spot within the Jap Convention. In addition they have to maneuver previous the Devils, the Islanders and the Capitals, who’re deadlocked at 60 factors.
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There are prospects like Lane Hutson and first-round draft choose David Reinbacher and extra to come back. The Canadiens have a stockpile of 29 draft picks over the following three years, together with two first-round picks in every of the following two years and a complete of 11 picks within the first three rounds over that span.
By comparability, the Pittsburgh cabinet is naked.
The Penguins are the oldest workforce within the NHL and so they can’t stay up for rebuilding by the draft. Kyle Dubas, who employed himself as common supervisor after leaving the Toronto Maple Leafs in a wage cap mess, has no first-round choose in June. He has solely 5 picks and two of them are within the seventh spherical. He has a first-round choose in 2025, however no choose within the second or third spherical.
Highway to the Cup
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The Penguins are on this scenario as a result of they had been hoping to maintain the getting old core of Sidney Crosby (36), Evgeni Malkin (37) and Kris Letang (36) collectively for yet one more Stanley Cup run and so they traded away their first-round choose to San Jose as a part of a convoluted three-team commerce that introduced 33-year-old defenceman Erik Karlsson to Pittsburgh.
Karlsson was coming off a 101-point season that earned him his third Norris Trophy because the NHL’s high defenceman. It ought to be famous that Karlsson is the worst defenceman to win the Norris Trophy thrice. For all of his offensive heroics, he was minus-26 final season and has been a double-digit minus for many of his profession.
He’s on the plus facet of the ledger this season, however hasn’t helped increase a dismal offence. With three can’t miss Corridor of Famers on the roster, the Penguins rank twenty fifth in offence and thirtieth on the facility play.
The Penguins missed the playoffs final season after a 16-year run that produced Stanley Cups in 2009, 2016 and 2017. That success meant Pittsburgh didn’t get any excessive draft selections and their solely top-end prospect is centre Brayden Yager, who’s one other yr of junior hockey in Moose Jaw.
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Dubas, the longtime boy genius and poster boy for superior analytics, does have a approach to regain a first-round draft choose this yr, however it will require buying and selling potential UFA Jake Guentzel, who’s the workforce’s second-leading scorer and Crosby’s linemate. He’s presently sidelined with an upper-body harm, however he’s actually gone if the Penguins don’t transfer up within the standings.
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Toronto involves life: I’ve been watching video games in Toronto for greater than half a century however final week’s Skilled Girls’s Hockey League tilt between Montreal and Toronto featured the loudest and most enthusiastic crowd I’ve witnessed in Hogtown since Recreation 2 of the 1972 Canada-Soviet Union collection.
The sport at Scotiabank Area attracted a sellout crowd of 19,285, and that quantity didn’t embrace just a few infants in arms and two help canine. It was a document crowd for an expert ladies’s recreation, eclipsing the mark of 13,316 followers on the Xcel Vitality Heart in St. Paul for the Montreal-Minnesota recreation on Jan. 6. It additionally broke the all-time document for a ladies’s recreation, topping the 18,013 followers who noticed Canada beat Finland in a preliminary-round recreation on the 2013 world championships in Ottawa.
Whereas Montreal coach Kori Cheverie was disenchanted after dropping 3-0, she seen the gang as a problem and hoped her workforce may break the document on the Bell Centre. It received’t occur this season, nevertheless it’s a purpose for the long run.
Montreal did set a franchise document Sunday with a sellout crowd of 10,172 at Place Bell for a 2-1 win over first-place Minnesota. Ottawa made it a weekend sellout sweep for the Canadian groups with 8,451 followers for Saturday’s recreation towards Minnesota at TD Place. The Ottawa ladies are averaging almost twice as many followers because the constructing’s predominant tenant, the OHL Ottawa 67s.
Montreal has a extra modest sellout arising Saturday. A standing-room solely crowd of greater than 4,000 will watch Montreal play Ottawa at Verdun Auditorium (2:30 p.m., SN1, Ici Radio-Canada Télé).
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