Penguins Blown Out at Home — Now a California Gauntlet Will Tell Us Who They Really Are

Thursday night at PPG Paints Arena was the low point of the Pittsburgh Penguins' season, and it was not close: Boston 6, Penguins 2. The Penguins are now 5-9-2 with 12 points, seventh in the Metropolitan Division, mired in a four-game losing streak, and fresh off a two-game homestand in which they were outscored 12-4 (a 3-2 loss to Vegas on November 3, then the Bruins blowout). There is no bye week in hockey to catch your breath with. The reset has to happen on the road, and the road is unforgiving: Saturday, November 7, at the Los Angeles Kings (9:00 p.m. ET at Crypto.com Arena), Sunday, November 8, at the Anaheim Ducks in a back-to-back, and Wednesday, November 11, at the San Jose Sharks. Three games in five nights, all in California, for a team that is 1-6-1 away from home. AUTOPSY OF A BLOWOUT The Boston game exposed every leak in the boat at once. The Bruins — 12-4 and sitting on top of the Atlantic Division — outshot Pittsburgh 24-18, won the faceoff battle 31-19, and blocked 22 shots to Pittsburgh's seven. Arturs Silovs stopped just 18 of 24 (.750) in his roughest start of the season. When a team blocks 22 of your shots, wins 62 percent of the draws, and chases your starter's stat line into the .700s, that is not bad luck. That is a team getting out-worked in all three zones. The Penguins have now scored 51 goals and allowed 58 on the season — a -7 differential — and their last-10 record of 3-6-1 is the profile of a team sliding out of the race before Thanksgiving. THE SEASON BY THE NUMBERS Here is the strange part: the offense and special teams are not the problem. Pittsburgh averages about 3.3 goals per game (12th in the NHL), the power play converts at 20.6 percent, and the penalty kill has been a genuine strength — 83.9 percent, top-six in the league, and listed at 85.7 percent (8th) in the team's own game notes this week. The problems are defensive structure and goaltending: a team save percentage of .874 (21st), and a faceoff win rate of 45.3 percent (29th) that starts shift after shift in the defensive zone. Silovs, the No. 1, is 5-4-1 with a .888 save percentage and a 2.98 goals-against average, with five of the team's wins. Backup Sergei Murashov is 0-4-1 — meaning when Silovs has an off night, there has been no safety net. Split that matters most this week: 4-2-1 at home, 1-6-1 on the road. All three games are on the road. NEXT UP: THE KINGS ARE A MIRROR — WITH A FATAL FLAW Los Angeles comes in at 5-7-2 with 12 points, seventh in the Pacific, with 43 goals for and 47 against — a near-identical record to Pittsburgh's. But the Kings are riding the opposite emotion: a 7-2 demolition of San Jose on November 4, powered by an Adrian Kempe hat trick plus an assist, four assists from Artemi Panarin, and two power-play goals from Quinton Byfield. The Kings' leaders: Panarin with 17 points (8 goals, 9 assists), Kempe with 12 points, and defenseman Brandt Clarke with 11. Their goaltending is as shaky as Pittsburgh's — Darcy Kuemper has five wins but an .885 save percentage — and they are just 2-4-0 at home. Above all, one number defines this matchup: Los Angeles owns the NHL's worst penalty kill at 62.2 percent, dead last, 32nd. Their power play, meanwhile, clicks at 22.4 percent (14th) against Pittsburgh's strong kill. Special teams will decide Saturday night. KEY PLAYERS: PENGUINS Start on the blue line, where Erik Karlsson leads the entire team in scoring with 16 points (3 goals, 13 assists) — a stat that captures both his brilliance as an outlet passer and the structural chaos in front of the net. The headline act, as ever, is Sidney Crosby. Crosby sits on 1,771 career points, and his next point moves him past Marcel Dionne into sole possession of sixth place on the NHL's all-time scoring list. Watch for the milestone on this trip. His top line — Tommy Novak (12 points, 5 goals) on the left, Rickard Rakell (a team-high 40 shots, 5 goals) on the right — has to carry the offense while the injury list is long. Nick Robertson leads the team with seven goals. Kris Letang remains the secondary engine from the back end, and rookie-ish center Ben Kindel is a home-ice producer (five of his six points have come at PPG Paints Arena) who now has to prove he can do it on the road. KEY PLAYERS: KINGS Artemi Panarin is the player Pittsburgh's defense has to circle: eight goals and 17 points, coming off a four-assist night. Adrian Kempe (45 shots, tied for the team lead) is in hat-trick form, Quinton Byfield is the power-play finisher of the moment, and Brandt Clarke (three goals, double-digit points) runs the second wave of attack from the blue line. If Kuemper gives the Kings even league-average goaltending, their skaters are the more confident group right now. INJURY REPORT AND WHAT IT MEANS The Penguins' season, right now, is an injury story. Evgeni Malkin — 11 points (6 goals, 5 assists) in 13 games — is day-to-day with a lower-body injury, and head coach Dan Muse ruled him out against Vegas. Without Malkin, the second line loses its driver and the top power-play unit loses its right-circle hammer; Pittsburgh's scoring projects noticeably thinner until he returns, and his status for Los Angeles is the single biggest question of the trip. Bryan Rust is out with a lower-body injury, stripping another top-six winger. On defense, Trevor van Riemsdyk is on injured reserve (lower body) with an estimated return of November 8 — he could rejoin the team mid-trip in Anaheim, which matters enormously with Ryan Graves (IR, knee; estimated return November 28) and Samuel Girard (undisclosed) also out. Forward Elmer Soderblom is week-to-week with an upper-body injury (estimated return November 14), and Ben Kindel has been listed out as well. The one piece of good news: Justin Brazeau made his season debut this week, fully cleared after a preseason lower-body injury and a two-game conditioning stint in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton — and his size in the bottom six is exactly what a team getting out-hit and out-blocked needs. WHAT TO EXPECT: THE ADJUSTMENTS Expect a defense-first reset on the road. After allowing six goals while blocking only seven shots, Muse's group should sit in a more conservative neutral-zone structure, simplify breakouts, and lean on the penalty kill's confidence. Expect the power play to be coached aggressively all week — you do not get many chances to attack a 62.2 percent kill, and with Malkin out, expect a bigger net-front role for Brazeau and more point shots through traffic from Karlsson. Expect faceoff assignments to tilt toward the veterans in the defensive zone to stem the 45.3 percent problem. And expect a goalie split: Silovs on Saturday in Los Angeles, and Murashov getting one of the back-to-back starts — most likely Sunday in Anaheim — still hunting his first win of the season. SPORTSNAT PROJECTIONS: PENGUINS AT KINGS, NOV. 7 Projections, modeled from the season numbers above — not guarantees. Final score projection: Penguins 4, Kings 3 in overtime — a get-right game powered by the power play. Projected shots: Pittsburgh 29, Los Angeles 28. Projected power play: Penguins 2-for-4 against the league's worst kill; Kings 1-for-3 against Pittsburgh's top-six kill. Sidney Crosby: one goal and one assist — with the assist or goal that produces it, career point No. 1,772 and sole possession of sixth place all-time. Erik Karlsson: two assists. Rickard Rakell and Nick Robertson: one goal each. Artemi Panarin: one goal, one assist. Adrian Kempe: one goal. Arturs Silovs: 27 saves, around a .900 night. For the trip as a whole, the projection is three to four points out of California (the win in Los Angeles, plus a split of points across Anaheim and San Jose). Anything less, and the hole — already eight points back of a wild-card spot earlier this week — deepens before Ottawa visits on November 14. THE BOTTOM LINE Good teams treat a week like this as a turning point; struggling teams treat it as a sentence. The Penguins have the league's sixth-best penalty kill, a top-12 offense, a captain one point from history, and the worst penalty kill in hockey waiting for them in Los Angeles. The California trip will not decide the season — but it will tell us, honestly, which direction this team is pointed. Puck drop in Los Angeles: Saturday, 9:00 p.m. ET. Sources for the stats and reports in this article are tracked in SportsNat's research notes (the Penguins' official game preview, team stats and injury feeds, the Penguins-Kings matchup preview, and Kings season data).