HOW THE PENGUINS DID IT

The Penguins will be in the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 2022. Here's an excerpt from my TribLive.com column explaining how they did it.

• Incredible depth scoring: 12 players with 10 goals or more. The three regular fourth-line forwards have combined for 33 goals. Fill-in fourth-liner Elmer Soderblom has four more, and in just 16 games with Pittsburgh.

• The Penguins score a lot: 280 goals in 78 games, second most in the NHL. (They need to: The Penguins have conceded 250 times, ninth worst in the league.)

• Special teams have been haphazard lately, but the power play ranks fourth in the NHL, the penalty-kill seventh. Both have often been a driving force.

• Surviving lengthy stretches without Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, sometimes both.

• Erik Karlsson’s resurrection as a Norris Trophy-level defenseman at 35.

• With the exception of trading Brett Kulak to Colorado for Sam Girard, every move made by president of hockey ops/GM Kyle Dubas has hit. Not least Anthony Mantha scoring 31 goals and pricing himself out of Pittsburgh.

• In that vein, journeymen defensemen Ryan Shea and Parker Wotherspoon have been revelations. Shea leads the Penguins at plus-25.

• Trading for Chinakhov gets special mention. Columbus being dumb enough to underutilize Chinakhov, then deal him to a Metro Division rival might be the main reason the Penguins finish ahead of the Blue Jackets. Chinakhov isn’t a Ron Francis-type get, but acquiring a star-level 25-year-old scorer is nearly impossible.

• At 18, Kindel’s hockey IQ and calm on the puck is mind-blowing. Taking Kindel 11th in the first round of the latest NHL Draft was thought a reach by many, but the Penguins had him pegged in the top four. Full credit to player personnel VP Wes Clark. Kindel’s ceiling is a legit second-line center, 70-ish points. Unless it’s higher. Kindel is serving notice that it might be.

• Dan Muse has been excellent in his first season as an NHL head coach. His defensive structure gets betrayed sometimes. That hurts given the Penguins’ mediocre goaltending. But Muse has made the whole greater than the sum of the parts. Legit rolling four lines and thus saving wear-and-tear on the aging stars is a big part of that. The team has bought in, no small feat for a rookie boss.

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The trick now is for the Penguins to win their first playoff series since 2018. Watch this space.