The Pittsburgh Penguins find themselves in a familiar spot compared to the last two seasons: on the outside looking in at the Eastern Conference playoffs.
Fans need no reminder that the Penguins ride a two-year skid of missing the postseason.
Now, as the club entered the 4 Nations Face-Off break with a 23-25-9 record and 55 points, missing out for a third consecutive season is a serious possibility.
But are the Penguins in that bad of shape? And how does their current standing compare to the past two season?
The Penguins’ plight
The Penguins’ situation could be seen in an optimistic and pessimistic light.
On one hand, despite a season that has seen the Penguins linger at the bottom of the Metropolitan Division and Eastern Conference standings, they remain only six points out of the second wild-card spot held by the Detroit Red Wings (28-22-5, 61 points).
That said, the Penguins would have to leapfrog five other clubs ahead of them in the wild-card hunt and then Detroit itself to occupy the Red Wings’ playoff spot.
Six might not seem like an insurmountable amount of points to make up with 25 regular-season games still to be played.
However, the Penguins have struggled immensely this season to manufacture the kind of momentum needed to stack points together over a multi-week span.
Aside from winning a season-best four straight games from Nov. 27 to Dec. 3, the Penguins have failed to put together a single winning streak of at least three games.
Consistently inconsistent
That kind of inconsistency is not new to the Penguins.
Last season, en route to a 38-32-12 finish (88 points), the Penguins had an early-season winning streak of five games.
From mid-December to mid-January, the club managed to go 9-3-1.
On Feb. 12, 2024, they were seven points out of playoff position.
But from the end of January through late March, when the Penguins made a valiant but futile push for the playoffs, they had won multiple games in a row on only two occasions.
Ultimately, an 8-2-3 finish to the regular season was insufficient and the Penguins missed the postseason by three points.
The 2022-23 season contained similar threads.
Despite winning four straight games in November and seven straight in December, too much of the remaining season was a win-loss, win-loss carousel.
That year’s Penguins (40-31-11, 91 points) were in wild-card position Feb. 12, 2023, but missed the postseason by a single point.
What’ll it take?
Looking at the last two seasons, the clubs to occupy the final Eastern Conference wild-card spot, with the least amount of points, were the Florida Panthers in ’22-23 (92 points) and the Washington Capitals (91) last season.
To get to 90-plus points this season, the Penguins would need to produce a points percentage of roughly 70% over their remaining 25 games. That equates to 35 of 50 points still up for grabs.
But even that would be no guarantee of a playoff berth.
Furthermore, the Penguins have secured points in only 48.2% of their games this season, which is second worst in the East.
The Penguins are not out of the postseason fight, but they face a steep hill down the stretch to pull it off.