Inferior and Superior Opponents

In the previous post, I referred, briefly, in inferior opponents. For the first time in awhile, the Pens have played clearly inferior opponents. If the team is functioning properly and is generally healthy—the team should win these games. Perhaps "half the NHL" is overstating matters. But with the level of talent—and I don’t care how young the talent level is—the Pens have, they can win most of those games.

There’s another category of opponents—those who are clearly superior. These are the teams to which the Pens have already lost—deeper, more experienced, and at the moment, more talented teams like Carolina and Detroit. The Penguins, most often, shouldn’t embarrass themselves anymore, but in all honesty—if the other team is bringing a good game to the rink, on most nights, the Pens are going to be beat by clearly superior opponents. Fine—they’ll learn from the experience.

Yet in the NHL, there’s a whole other category, and that’s teams the Penguins are "close to"—similar enough to such that you play competitive games with these teams. Incidentally, they’re also the teams closest to you in the standings. Obviously for the Pens season to be successful, they have to beat clearly inferior opponents, and if that doesn’t happen, the season is going nowhere. But assuming the Pens can maintain their current pace of beating clearly inferior opponents, their season is going to be decided in these games with teams "close to" them in make-up and record. Sure, it would be lovely to see the young Pens sneak a game away from a team that really—on paper—looks far superior. It would be nice to get a glimpse like that of what the kids, hopefully, will be doing with regularity in the span of a few years. But the Pens’ playoff hopes, even at this early stage, appear to rest on the team getting more wins than losses against those teams "closest" to them in the standings and in talent level.

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