Hectic weekends lately chock full of games have stolen the focus and pushed aside our Sunday Standings feature for over a month. It was coming into shape, even back then six weeks ago, that the the middle of the conference was struggling/unimpressive and if the Penguins could pick up on their 13th in the East goal scoring, they might be able to make a run for a playoff spot and break out of their “one step forward, one step back” season as we called it.
Unfortunately the fates had other ideas. Jake Guentzel was only days away from suffering an injury and then being stashed away on LTIR until the trade line, as it turned out, never to play a game for the Pens again.