The Penguins offseason additions are not giving them any production

The new additions are providing almost no offense, even when taking into account how bad the free agency options were.

Normally on Monday morning I would be taking a look at the week ahead for the Pittsburgh Penguins. The schedule ahead, what to expect, what a reasonable expectation would be. But after another dreadful defeat on Sunday where the offense was a complete non-factor and the power play helped literally give away another game, my mind is elsewhere.

Specifically on the changes to the roster the Penguins went through before the season and how little they are actually getting from the new players that were supposed to help get the team back into the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

The depth.

The scoring.

The overall makeup of the roster is almost just as flawed as it was a year ago, and in some ways even more discouraging.

The biggest problem with the Penguins this season is simple. They can not score. At all. After Sunday’s 2-1 loss to the Los Angeles Kings they are 26th(!) in the NHL in goals per game and 30th on the power play. For the second year in a row they have they have the biggest gap in the NHL between Those numbers are unheard for the Pittsburgh Penguins. Even now at this stage in their franchise history with an aging team whose core players are past their prime.

But even past their prime Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jake Guentzel and Erik Karlsson should be capable of more than this.

For the most part, they have been to a certain degree at 5-on-5. Especially Crosby, Guentzel, Letang and Karlsson. They are a mess on the power play, but their 5-on-5 production it is still at a competitive level. What is not at a competitive level is, once again, the supporting cast around them.

That is what brings me to today’s topic on on the new additions.

I know it is easy to place all of the blame — or at least most of the blame — on the Penguins’ current situation on the mess that former general manager Ron Hextall left behind. It is also completely fair to do that. But I am not so willing to completely give Kyle Dubas a free pass on where the team is. His job performance is open to as much scrutiny as anyone else, and nearly three quarters of the way through the season most of his additions are looking like a big swing and a miss. Especially when it comes to the team’s offense.

As far his moves that were successes, Alex Nedelkjovic has been a big win.

The first year of Tristan Jarry’s new contract extension has gone better than expected.

I know Karlsson has been a little disappointing, especially on the power play, but that does not mean he has been bad. The trade to acquire him remains a win simply because it got rid of literally all of the Penguins’ bad contracts. Or at least most of them.

Beyond that?

Nothing has worked, and it has left the Penguins in a nearly identical situation as a year ago.

The thing that needs to be kept in mind here is that for all of the problems Hextall left behind, the Penguins still entered the offseason with a pretty flexible salary cap situation while Dubas added eight skaters (forwards and defensemen) to the roster that have appeared in at least 20 games this season. That is a significant amount of turnover. It is literally 40 percent of the roster.

Those eight players have accounted for only 37 goals this season through Sunday.

There are six forwards included in that group. They have accounted for only 27 goals.

That is terrible given how much of the roster they represent.

The Penguins’ clearly made a bet that if they could fill out their bottom-six with defensively sound players that the top-two lines and power play could carry the offense and the third-and fourth-lines could play a shutdown role to protect the leads. For the most part, the third-and fourth-lines have done that.

But when the top-six winger addition (Reilly Smith) has struggled to fit in, and when the power play goes in the tank, or when one player leaves the lineup due to injury.

I know it was a terribly weak free agent class.

Consider, though, that there were 67 forwards that signed UFA contracts between July 1 and the start of the season. The Penguins’ free agent forward additions have the following rankings in goals scored among that group: 16th, 44th, 56th, and 58th.

In terms of total points they are 27th, 48th, 54th and 58th.

So even among a weak crop of free agents, the players the Penguins signed have ended up being wildly unproductive.

And that is only the actual free agent signings.

That does not take into account players that were traded (Smith) or claimed on waivers, or were available via trade.

I think what adds to the frustration is that the Penguins have simply sat on their hands all season and watched this unfold without any urgency to try and fix any of them. Even the self-imposed All-Star break date for them to decide what to do at the trade deadline has passed without even a whisper.

It still just comes across as a big missed opportunity this season with Crosby (and a few other players) still playing at a high level, getting great goaltending, having salary cap flexibility and not being able to take advantage of it.

I am not giving up on Dubas at this point.

But I do think it is a rather discouraging start to his tenure that is going to lead to some big questions going to the trade deadline and offseason.