Pittsburgh Penguins vs Columbus Blue Jackets

Who: Pittsburgh Penguins (6-9-3, 15 points, 7th place Metropolitan Division) @ Columbus Blue Jackets (5-8-2, 12 points, 8th place Metropolitan Division)

When: 7:00 p.m. ET

How to Watch: SportsNet Pittsburgh locally, Fan Duel Ohio over in that market, NHL Network nationally

Pens’ Path Ahead: The Pens head right back home to play the San Jose Sharks tomorrow night to start a string of five in a row from PPG Paints. There’s a bit of a lull in the schedule coming with two days off on Sunday/Monday, a home game against Tampa on Tuesday followed by two more days off before mighty Winnipeg comes to the ‘Burgh a week from today.

Opponent Track: The Jackets surprised in October with a 5-3-1 start to the season, but have fallen back to Earth going 0-for-November so far in the month (0-5-1 to be exact). They’re just getting back home after a dreadful five-game road swing that saw them lose in Washington, San Jose (OT), Los Angeles, Anaheim and Seattle. CBJ has been out-scored 14-6 in totality over their last three games.

Season Series: There are only three PIT/CBJ games this season (booo!) and this is the Pens’ only trip to Ohio all season. The Jackets visit Pittsburgh on Jan. 7th and Mar. 21st to round out the 2024-25 matchups.

Hidden Stat: Pittsburgh is 21-3-3 in its last 27 games against Columbus dating back to Feb. 3, 2017 (stick tap to Pens PR). That includes going 11-0-2 in the last 13 games. It’s been very much a hammer/nail type of rivalry between the two clubs and the Pens have been wielding the hammer against their next door foe.

Getting to know the Blue Jackets

Projected lines

Dmitri Voronkov - Sean Monahan - Kirill Marchenko

Cole Sillinger - Adam Fantilli - Yegor Chinakhov

Mikael Pyyhtia -Justin Danforth - Mathieu Olivier

Zach Aston-Reese - James van Riemsdyk - Sean Kuraly

DEFENSEMEN

Zach Werenski / Dante Fabbro

Ivan Provorov / Damon Severson

Jake Christiansen / Jordan Harris

Goalies: Elvis Merzlikins and Daniil Tarasov

Potential Scratches: Jack Johnson, David Jiricek, Kevin Labanc

IR: Boone Jenner, Kent Johnson, Erik Gudbranson

—Old friend Zach Aston-Reese is BACK! Aston-Reese only played three NHL games last year, stuck mostly in the AHL with Detroit. He signed with Vegas over the summer but was waived after camp. Columbus claimed him and has found a steady place for him in the lineup, and he’s returned the favor with some solid fourth line play. Aston-Reese scored a goal and added an assist in his last game.

—CBJ has been active on the waiver wire, they also picked up Fabbro from Nashville earlier this week as a claim. Fabbro, a 2016 first round pick, has already appeared in 316 NHL games and was playing 19 minutes per game the last couple of seasons for the Predators but could never really grow into the niche that they wanted him to be. Will a change of scenery invigorate his career? It’s a great opportunity.

Player stats

—Someone has to score the points on a bad team as they say, and so far Kirill Marchenko has stepped up as that someone. He’s up to a point/game through 15 games. His career arc is pointing up, he has improved from 25 points (in 59 games) as a rookie to 42 last season and is on track to make another jump on his point total in this campaign.

—Columbus will really get it in gear as and when young players like Kent Johnson, Adam Fantilli and Cole Sillinger grow and develop into front line players. All have shown some flashes but patience is always a requirement.

—The Blue Jackets are a surprising 8th in the NHL in 5v5 xGF% (52.7%) but have given up 38 goals, up quite a bit from the expected amount of 30.8. Getting consistent and quality goaltending, specifically from the highly-paid Merzlikins has been a challenge in recent seasons and this one isn’t looking different on that front.

And now for the Pens

Infographic courtesy of Pittsburgh Penguins PR

Projected lines

FORWARDS

Anthony Beauvillier - Sidney Crosby - Rickard Rakell

Michael Bunting - Evgeni Malkin - Bryan Rust

Jesse Puljujarvi - Drew O’Connor - Sam Poulin

Matt Nieto - Noel Acciari - Valtteri Puustinen

DEFENSEMEN

Matt Grzelcyk / Kris Letang

Marcus Pettersson / Erik Karlsson

Ryan Graves / Ryan Shea

Goalies: Tristan Jarry and Alex Nedeljkovic

Potential Scratches: Jack St. Ivany, Blake Lizotte (injured), Vasily Ponomarev

IR: Kevin Hayes (week-to-week upper body injury), Cody Glass (concussion)

—We’ll take some educated guesses on the lines since the Lizotte injury and the recalls of Nieto and Ponomarev have thrown things into the unknown. There are no context clues since Pens were off the ice yesterday in their travels to Columbus. It would keep with that tradition to have a young player with limited experience get scratched (Ponomarev) and take a practice or two before playing based on how they handled Poulin. Nieto, as of yet, has not been removed from IR, but since he played in Wilkes for two games that is a formality but could be a signal he’ll be back in the lineup tonight if/when the team announces he has been removed from IR. If that news doesn’t happen today, Ponomarev will be in the lineup based on numbers. (And, of course, there’s always the chance that even if Nieto is removed from IR than Ponomarev could play and relegate a player like Puustinen to scratch territory).

—O’Connor flipped to center mid-game on Wednesday when Lizotte went down, so we’ll tenatively keep him there. The team could obviously go in a number of different directions if they so chose, including using Ponomarev at the center spot instead.

—This has finally got to be the first NHL game for Tristan Jarry since October 16th, right? The team has seemingly been very intentional to have his first game back happen on the road, which might be a wise idea since the home crowd might (understandably) get restless and only knock Jarry further off track if there’s an early bump in the road. Which also doesn’t make a ton of sense being as thousands of people will cheer and laugh if/when Jarry gives up a goal on the road but we’ll see if the logic pays off.

An assist milestone for Sid too

Sidney Crosby is still sitting on 598 career goals and a threat to jump up to the next level on any given game, but let’s not forget he’s about to make a meaningful leap on the assist list as well. From the Pens:

One more assist will have Crosby tie former Quebec/Colorado great Joe Sakic for 13th all-time in helpers. After that, Sid’s sights will be on passing his former landlord Mario Lemieux and the Penguin franchise record of 1,033.

When Crosby passes Sakic with two more assists, the Pens’ captain will move into 5th all-time in league history for most assists with a single franchise.

Team Player Assists

BOS Ray Bourque 1,111
EDM Wayne Gretzky 1,086
DET Steve Yzerman 1,063
PIT Mario Lemieux 1,033
DET Gordie Howe 1,023
COL Joe Sakic 1,016
PIT Sidney Crosby 1,015