Injuries are a part of the NHL postseason, but injuries can affect some teams more than others. Colorado not having Gabriel Landeskog at all, is one example, as is Boston looking shaky, at times, without Patrice Bergeron in the lineup.

This extends to Boston's opponent as well. Florida's Aaron Ekblad, in my view, has not been himself for months now, and he suffered another injury last game that might keep him out further. Anthony Duclair was injured in warmups for Game 4, with all that leading to this update:

Maurice said that Ekblad is improving and that the team will know more about him (and Duclair) tomorrow.

— Colby Guy (@ColbyDGuy) April 24, 2023

It's the playoffs, so we're not going to get much clarity on anyone, but it is concerning for Florida, given they're on the brink of elimination.

*

Speaking of Bergeron:

Patrice Bergeron will practice with the Bruins tomorrow and will go from there.

— Amalie Benjamin (@AmalieBenjamin) April 24, 2023

Not an official confirmation of anything, but certainly a good sign for the Bruins captain.

*

In off-ice news, defenceman Justin Braun has retired:

Justin Braun has officially announced his retirement from the @NHL after 13 seasons.

Justin first entered the league in 2010 after being drafted in the 7th round of the 2007 Entry Draft to the @SanJoseSharks.

Braun spent 9 seasons with the Sharks before being traded to the… pic.twitter.com/LHYRQxVTkQ

— NHL Alumni (@NHLAlumni) April 24, 2023

The 36-year-old seventh-round pick from 2007 finishes his career with 199 points in 842 NHL games across 13 seasons, amassing 119 playoff games as well. He had some very good defensive seasons in his heyday with San Jose, reaching the Cup Final in 2016.

*

Jonas Siegenthaler jumped into the play on a Devils rush near the midpoint of the third period, received a beautiful cross-ice pass from Nico Hischier, and fired home what ended up being the game-winning goal for New Jersey. The 3-1 victory started with Jack Hughes's third of the postseason and ended with an empty-netter from Ondrej Palat. New Jersey and New York are now tied at two games apiece with Game 5 coming on Thursday back in New Jersey.

Siegenthaler added an assist on the Hughes goal for a two-point night, adding three blocks and a pair of hits in a great multi-cat effort. Hughes finished with five shots in 23:51 of ice time.

Vincent Trocheck scored the lone goal in the loss while Igor Shesterkin stopped 20 of 22 shots faced in defeat.

Akira Schmid had another good game, stopping 22 of 23 shots faced as he backstopped the Devils to their triumph. That was his 20^th game of this season, including regular and playoffs, and he's played very well. Perhaps this is a big piece falling into place at the right time?

*

In what felt like an important step to the playoff exorcism of the Toronto Maple Leafs, they stormed back from a 4-1 third-period deficit in Game 4 against Tampa Bay to tie it up 4-4 and go head to overtime. Auston Matthews scored twice within three minutes while a blue-line wrister from Morgan Rielly sent it to the extra frame.

It didn't take long for Toronto to pull out the win as Alex Kerfoot deflected a Mark Giordano point shot late on a power play. The 5-4 victory gives Toronto the 3-1 series advantage with Game 4 taking place Thursday night back in Canada.

Of course, the real exorcism comes with a series win, but the nature of this win, given the very obvious playoff history it refers to, felt like a big step for the team. The jubilation after the puck crossed the line was enough.

Matthews' two goals gives him three in four games, and seven points in total, to go with 17 shots. Through this first segment of the first round, he's done more than his part.

Ryan O'Reilly, William Nylander, Mitch Marner, and Giordano each had two assists in the game.

Alex Killorn scored twice on seven shots with a block and four hits in what was a good offensive game from him. Steven Stamkos also scored while Mikhail Sergachev tallied and added a helper with six blocked shots and three hits.

*

With Josh Morrissey out of the lineup, Winnipeg was pushed to the brink of elimination by falling at home by a 4-2 score to Vegas. The Jets are now one game away from an early offseason, and what could be a turbulent offseason.

Goals from Brett Howden (x2), William Karlsson, and Ivan Barbashev pushed Vegas to the win, with those goals being Howden's first two of the postseason. Not that he'll be fantasy relevant anytime soon, but to see him go from being nearly out of the NHL to on the ice with Mark Stone protecting a one-goal lead late in the third period is quite the turnaround.

Blake Wheeler and Pierre-Luc Dubois tallied the Winnipeg markers, both coming with the man advantage. Connor Hellebuyck allowed three goals on 29 shots in the loss.

The potential series-clinching Game 5 is Thursday back in Vegas.

*

With Josh Morrissey out of the lineup, Winnipeg was pushed to the brink of elimination by falling at home by a 4-2 score to Vegas. The Jets are now one game away from an early offseason, and what could be a turbulent offseason.

Goals from Brett Howden (x2), William Karlsson, and Ivan Barbashev pushed Vegas to the win, with those goals being Howden's first two of the postseason. Not that he'll be fantasy relevant anytime soon, but to see him go from being nearly out of the NHL to on the ice with Mark Stone protecting a one-goal lead late in the third period is quite the turnaround.

Blake Wheeler and Pierre-Luc Dubois tallied the Winnipeg markers, both coming with the man advantage. Connor Hellebuyck allowed three goals on 29 shots in the loss.

The potential series-clinching Game 5 is Thursday back in Vegas.

*

Two first-period goals from Seattle, and two reply goals in the second period from Colorado, gave us the first overtime of this series. The game itself was probably the chippiest of this matchup, too, and really felt like the first stereotypical playoff game they've played.

An early overtime power-play goal from Jordan Eberle lifted the Kraken to the 3-2 win, their first home playoff victory in franchise history. It evens the series at two games each, with Game 5 back in Colorado on Wednesday night.

Daniel Sprong assisted on Eberle's goal, after having scored his own power-play goal in the first period. Following his breakout 21-goal regular season, it was his first two points of the playoffs, but what an important two points it was.

Alexandar Georgiev was the losing goalie but was under attack all night, facing 43 shots to just the 20 faced by Philipp Grubauer. With Valeri Nichushkin gone from the team, Colorado is just missing too many key bodies at this point. They really need their blue line to step up in a big way if they want to end up winning the series.

*

Today's Ramblings will continue my (fantasy) offseason series of reviewing the regular seasons of each non-playoff team. So far, we have covered the Calgary Flames and the Buffalo Sabres. This Ramblings will go back to the Eastern Conference and perhaps one of the biggest disappointments, from a real-life perspective, in the Pittsburgh Penguins.

As usual, data will be taken from our Frozen Tools or Natural Stat Trick.

This review will cover the successes/failures, improvements/declines, and where the team goes from here. Let's get right to it.

Successes

The team might have fizzled at the end, but both Sidney Crosby (93 in 82) and Evgeni Malkin (83 in 82) surpassed the point-per-game mark on the campaign. Jake Guentzel scored 36 goals, which was a step back for him but still a good total, while the entire Penguins top-6 scored at least 20 goals each. Crosby, Malkin, Guentzel, Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell, and Jason Zucker combined to miss a grand total of nine (9) games between them with the two centres not missing any time. If you had told me before the season that the top-6 would largely be healthy the entire season, I would have said Pittsburgh was not only playoff-bound but could challenge for a division title. Alas.

We will get to the power play, but this was a good season from the team's top guys overall. Per Yahoo! Fantasy's final season rankings, Crosby finished inside the top-20 skaters while both Malkin and Guentzel finished inside the top-50 skaters. Rakell had his best offensive season in five years and was across-the-board valuable: 28 goals, 32 assists, 21 PPPs, 243 shots, 141 hits, 53 blocks. More points would have been nice, but the peripherals made it likely the second-best fantasy season of Rakell's career.

On a team level, it was another very good year for offence by some measures. The team finished the campaign fourth in shots per minute – behind Florida, Calgary, and Carolina – while they finished third in expected goals, behind Florida and New Jersey. The problem was they finished 25^th in shooting percentage so the goals were closer towards the middle of the league. This was largely related to the bottom-6 as five of the six forwards in the top-6 shot at least 11.25% (Rust was the low-man at 9.5%). That depth is also something else we'll discuss later.  

Unfortunately, much like the real-life result, the good news ends with the Pittsburgh top-6 forward mix.

Failures

It does have to start with the bottom-6 forwards. With Pittsburgh trading so many futures in the last decade, combined with not having a top-20 pick in the first round since 2012 because of constantly reaching the postseason, their third and fourth lines were looking sparse. They tried to fill it out with names like Jeff Carter (who was legitimately good in the Bubble 2021 season but has fallen off hard since), Ryan Poehling, Brock McGinn, Danton Heinen, and others. The result was that over the team's first 60 games leading to the Trade Deadline, they were getting outscored by a 59%-41% margin with the top-6 off the ice. To bolster that depth, they added Mikael Granlund from Nashville at the deadline. Over the next 22 games, that margin fell to 60-40%. That lack of depth focuses the scoring all in one area (the top two lines) and delineates fantasy values clearly. At least that failure is helpful for us, in a way.

On a team level, the defence fell apart. It wasn't awful, but they were 20^th by expected goals against per minute this season, which was worse than teams like Ottawa, Philadelphia, and Vancouver. That will happen when a full-decline Brian Dumoulin and a young Pierre-Olivier Joseph are the only defencemen to play at least 70 games.

That below-average defence with a hampered blue line did not help Tristan Jarry, who didn't have a good year, but it's fair to wonder if health wasn't the culprit. It isn't to say that this is the reason, but it is notable that he managed 0.35 Goals Saved Above Expected per 60 minutes in 27 games leading to his injury in late-January, but -0.46 GSAx/60 in the 20 games after the injury (per Evolving Hockey). That difference of 0.81 GSAx/60 leads to roughly an extra 14 goals allowed in those final 20 games than if he had just maintained the same performance. That is more than enough to have pushed the Penguins in the playoffs. It may just be random goalie performance – that happens often every season – but it is fair to wonder if Jarry was healthy at all over the final eight weeks.

Improvements

I want to be kind here and list some improvements the team made that would lead to good news for the 2023-24 season, but I'm not sure what to say, really. The top guys were healthy, and that's good, but it's hard to say that'll be a year-over-year improvement. Most of them had good-to-great fantasy seasons, but if we were to assume their health, not sure why we would have expected anything else.

Not only that, but because of the failure of the bottom-6, they weren't even able to make good on the shot improvements. The 2022-23 season saw the Penguins easily post their highest 5-on-5 expected goals season (3.18) in recent memory (next-closest was 2.78 in 2016-17), but their actual goals/60 was a five-year-low. Thanks again, shooting percentage!

Declines

Alright, we talked about the depth enough, let's get to the power play.

If someone told me before the season that Crosby would set a four-year high in points/60 at even strength, and play all 82 games, I would have said 100 points would be his floor. Of course, he finished with 93, and the reason is the power play: Crosby set a career-low in points/60 at 5-on-4 while Malkin had his lowest production rate in over a decade.

In 2022-23, Crosby was on the ice for 7.7 goals/60 minutes at 5-on-4. To provide some context, each of his last two seasons saw 5-on-4 on-ice goal rates over 10.0, and he hasn't been below 8.1 since the 2015-16 season. Now, 7.7 goals/60 isn't awful – the median teams were around 7.0/60 minutes – but it's clearly a huge drop for this super-talented group. Not only that, but the league saw a seven-year high in power plays per game and a 37-year high in power play efficiency. Being considerably worse on the power play, in relation to recent seasons, despite the league not only getting more efficient, but getting more chances on the power play, was a real bad mix for the Penguins.

Whether Pittsburgh can regain their prior PP glory remains to be seen. As good as the core is, they're now all on the wrong side of 35 and the game keeps evolving. If next year's team can figure out the power play, there should still be lots of fantasy goodness here. That is a big 'if' however.

Where to go from here

It could be an interesting offseason for the Penguins. CapFriendly has them with some bad money – Carter and Granlund, namely – but their RFAs like Alex Nylander, Ryan Poehling, and Drew O'Connor won't be expensive to extend. They have a few key UFAs in Jarry, Zucker, and Dumoulin, but with the way Dumoulin has fallen off the last couple years, Pittsburgh is probably better off without him (as much as that hurts for Penguins fans). Assuming cheap extensions for the RFAs, Pittsburgh could have $15M in cap space to play with and they can easily fill the Zucker/Dumoulin roles with that money, and then get to a goalie. We'll see what they want to do with Jarry, but the way the injuries have piled up are not a good sign.

This team could fill the Jarry/Zucker/Dumoulin roles and still have several million left over to help fill out the depth. If they can do that competently, and get another season from their top forwards like they just got, this could be a team heading back to the playoffs with fantasy value up and down the roster. It isn't hard to see Pittsburgh rebounding in a big way with improved depth, a key piece added on the blue line, and even average goaltending all year long. It sounds like a lot, but it really isn't.

A lot will be determined by what the new general manager, whomever it is, decides to do when they're brought in. More kicks at the can or start rolling the roster over? We'll find out in the coming months.