Molinari: Penguins’ Playoff Hole Might Not Be Deep as it Seems

The Pittsburgh Penguins have won three games in a row.

And while that isn’t going to crack the list of the 500 most impressive feats in franchise history, it’s their longest such stretch of this season, and something they were able to match or surpass just four times in 2023-24.

Suddenly, the idea of seriously challenging for a spot in the Stanley Cup playoffs — a notion that looked to fall somewhere between laughable and unthinkable less than a week ago — is drifting toward the realm of reality.

Sort of.

All the Penguins have to do is go 56-0 the rest of the way and they’re in. (And probably assured of winning the franchise’s second Presidents’ Trophy, for that matter.)

However, failing that — and this club is not to be confused with the 1992-93 edition that set the NHL record by winning 17 consecutive games during a late-season surge that secured the aforementioned Presidents’ Trophy — a paint-by-numbers look at the Penguins’ postseason prospects remains at least somewhat daunting.

Even after picking up those six points in the past four games, they are two games below .500 (10-12-4) and on a 76-point pace. Maintain that clip for the balance of the season, and the only thing they’ll get to show for it is a nice draft choice.

Consider that Washington claimed the second wild-card berth in the Eastern Conference last season with 91 points, the fewest for the East’s final playoff qualifiers in the post-Covid (82-game) era. Florida got in with 92 in 2022-23, while the Capitals needed 100 a year earlier.

Still, it merits mention that Philadelphia currently holds the conference’s second-wild card slot with a 12-10-3 mark, which projects to 89 points.

Such a modest total is an indictment of the conference’s overall quality — Vancouver holds the second wild-card spot in the West with a 12-7-3 record that projects to 101 — but gives the Pittsburgh Penguins a legitimate opportunity to salvage something from a season that, just days ago, appeared to have been stripped of any veneer of promise.

Losses were piling up, turnout at PPG Paints Arena was going down. Questions were endless, satisfactory answers rare.

Of course, winning three times in the past four days — and outscoring Vancouver, Boston and Calgary, 13-7, in the process — might prove to be a mirage, because the 23 games that preceded those games are a much larger sample size for this group.

Regardless, there’s nothing fluky about the formula the Penguins followed to earn those six points.

They’ve had efficient special teams. Tristan Jarry and Alex Nedeljkovic have made timely saves. The Penguins have worked in their own zone like they actually mean it. Their offense has come from all over the lineup.

(Philip Tomasino likely was unknown to a significant segment of the Penguins’ fan base a week ago, but if he continues to accumulate game-winning goals — he has two in three games, and is just one behind Sidney Crosby for the team lead — there might be a movement to commission a statue of him.)

Sure, there have been noteworthy hiccups. Allowing the Canucks to morph a 5-1 deficit into a 5-4 final was troubling —  especially because it reflected the Pittsburgh Penguins’ penchant for holding onto comfortable leads as if they’d been liberally greased — and neither should giving up a couple of late goals to the Flames Saturday be ignored.

All of which means that Tuesday’s visit from Florida, which is coming off a pair of resounding victories over Carolina, should provide a good 60-minute reality check. Competing on fairly even terms with the defending Stanley Cup champions would enhance the credibility of the Penguins as a playoff-caliber group.

Mind you, this is not a roster that, no matter how hard one squints while studying it, looks like a serious title contender.

But neither does it resemble one that, less than two months into the season, should be having to calculate how hot it must be the rest of the way to have a chance to slither into the bottom of the Eastern Conference playoff field.