3 Takeaways From Penguins Loss To Capitals

The Pittsburgh Penguins have only begun their season-high seven-game road trip, defeating the Buffalo Sabres on Friday night and losing the second game of a weekend back-to-back to the Washington Capitals by a 4-1 score on Saturday.

As the Penguins head to the West Coast, let’s revisit the last game from the Eastern part of the trip.

Blomqvist Has a Solid Reintroduction to NHL

It is a rather difficult task to follow up a goalie performance that included 40 saves, a goal, and an assist, but Joel Blomqvist did his best in his first NHL action since November, turning away 28 saves to keep his Penguins in the game against the Metro’s top team.

Bryan Rust: “He was awesome, kept us in it there. Made some big saves at some key times. Obviously, he’s a really good goalie, so I’m sure he’s going to keep on building on that.”

Rookie Joel Blomqvist earned praise in his first NHL game back ⬇️ https://t.co/XYcFEy4py3

— Pens Inside Scoop (@PensInsideScoop) January 19, 2025

Despite finishing with a .903 SV%, he was sharp and showed no signs of rust for not playing in North America’s top league for over two months. It’s never easy to play behind a team on the second night of a back-to-back, but this game never got out of hand until the final minutes.

Blomqvist will get plenty more chances and should bounce back in his next start on the West Coast. Statistically, he still has the best SV% of all Penguins goalies this year. This one wasn’t on the goaltending.

Metro Division Woes Reemerge

The Capitals are the best team in the Metro Division, so Pittsburgh has nothing to hang their heads about in their latest defeat. Even though the Penguins won the first meeting in November, Washington came into Saturday’s contest with no goals against in two straight.

That streak ended, and the Penguins held one of the league’s most lethal offensives to just three goals, below their 3.57 goals per game pace.

Despite continuously losing points in every contest against divisional opponents this season, the Penguins were just defeated by a dominant team, taking advantage of a team playing for the second time in 24 hours.

Instead of thinking about this one as another failed attempt to win a Metro Division game, the positives far outweigh the negatives. The Penguins have plenty of games to atone for their latest loss and finish the road trip with more wins than losses.

What’s Going on With Malkin?

Evgeni Malkin had two shots on goal and finished the night minus-1, with his goalless streak reaching six games. Usually, when he plays the Capitals, they bring out the best in him since he has 80 points in 64 games, the third most against any franchise.

However, Malkin’s dip in production is concerning. He had 11 points in the first five games, but in the last 39 games, he has only six goals and 16 assists for 22 points. That’s not what fans are used to seeing from him, but the minus-27 rating is concerning.

Malkin is currently on pace for only 14 goals and 58 points, which could be his lowest goal total in a single season. Interestingly, the Penguins remain a top power-play team and rank among the league’s top half in offense, but can anyone imagine how many points the team would have if Malkin were on pace for 30 goals and 70 points?