Pens Need More from Malkin

The Penguins have recovered from their ho-hum 1-3 start to win their last three games. Those three wins were highlighted by the goaltending of backup Brent Johnson, who now owns all four of the Penguins victories on the season while Marc-Andre Fleury is winless at 0-3. That, to me, is no big deal. Goaltenders will go through slumps through the course of a long season. Fleury just so happens to be going through one at the beginning of the season. He will snap out of it and return to form in what I am guessing is the very near future. Fleury has proven his worth as a Stanley Cup caliber goaltender. The Penguins can also feel comforted in the fact that Johnson has proven a reliable backup. Johnson’s play has probably allowed Dan Bylsma and his staff a chance to get some sleep at night.

Another guy not on the ice for the last three wins, or for any of the seven games so far, has been Jordan Staal. Staal, who is recovering from an infection in his foot resulting from offseason surgery, has returned to the ice and begun skating once again. Staal actually practiced with the Penguins for the first time yesterday. The timetable for his return is not known but it is now safe to assume that Staal will make it all the way back. Sometimes these infections can be trickier and more dangerous than they sound, as this one proved with the continual reoccurrence. It is good news to hear that Staal should be back in the not too distant future.

No, the Penguins early season worries are not the poor play of Fleury or the absence of Staal, it is the play of Evgeni Malkin. Malkin’s play, while good, has not reached the super-duper star level that so many of us thought he was headed for during his dominant streak back in 2007-2008. Malkin carried the Penguins during the ’07-’08 regular season when Sidney Crosby went down to an injury, earning a second place finish in the Hart Trophy voting for the NHL MVP. Malkin followed that season up with a fabulous 2008-‘09 by winning the Art Ross Trophy as the league’s leading scorer. He continued that dominant streak in the playoffs where he won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoffs MVP, helping the Pens hoist the Stanly Cup for the first time since 1992. It had pretty much become fact that the Penguins’ owned two of the league’s top three players in Crosby and Malkin and that the Penguins would have a leg up on the competition for the foreseeable future with such a talented 1-2 combination at center.

While Crosby has maintained his position in the argument for the league’s top player with Alex Ovechkin, rarely do you hear Evgeni Malkin’s name mentioned in that conversation anymore. Malkin suffered through an injury-filled 2009, one that saw him miss seven games in early November to a shoulder injury and 15 games in all. Malkin’s points per game average dropped to 1.15, down from 1.38 and 1.29 in ’07-’08 and ’08-’09, respectively. Malkin also saw his plus/minus number dip from +16 and +17 the previous two years to a pedestrian -6. Those are not the figures that a player of Malkin’s stature and ability should be very proud of. After a strong first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, Malkin was nearly invisible in the second round loss to the Canadiens, posting 3 points and a -2 in the seven games. It is very possible that Malkin was just never right last year from the assortment of injuries, or that his shoulder injury hindered him more than he let on, but whatever the reason was Malkin did not look like the same player we had become accustomed to the previous two seasons.

Malkin is off to a slow start again this year, posting just six points in the team’s first seven games and recording a plus/minus of +1. Granted, the season is just getting underway and the sample size is extremely small but I am seeing some of the same sluggish play that Malkin exhibited last year. Malkin is still a good player, a very good player, and is one of the primary reasons the Penguins are a Stanley Cup contender. He has the ability to be a truly great player, however, and the Penguins need “Geno” to get back to that level. The difference between the '08-’09 Malkin and the ’09-’10 Malkin is the difference between the Penguins being a Cup contender and a Cup favorite.