The Penguins need to FIX this...

The Penguins need to fix this as so far this season there have been some big mistakes made by some key players and in this video we're going to break down how they can fix it and what it's costing this team games so you're not going to miss this episode of Penguins Digest before we dive into everything here. I just want to say we're on the road for 3,000 subscribers. You're on the channel, so if you're new here, you want to stay up to date on the latest news around the Pittsburgh Penguins. We're home for it here on YouTube. Subscribe below. Hit that subscribe button. It is completely free to do so. But yes, today we are here talking about a couple of players that have been playing good, but some sides of their game has been costing this team games. And they just need to lock in and clear this up and just play better hockey. So let's dive into it here. The first player I want to talk with today is a guy who I've talked a lot well about this season. And that's Erik Karlsson, because he has been a very big spark offensively for this team. But he has had some big defensive blunders over these last six games of this season that have been obviously costing this team games at this point. So let's dive into it. Erik Karlsson, tops assists, bottoms giveaways. As we all know, Erik Karlsson is a great passer. He's so good at it. But this season, he has been turning over the puck a lot more. But he's an assist-a-game player at this point, which is great. Great to see the offense flowing through this guy because we really need it from the blue line. And obviously, his power play points a game are solid and in the right direction for us. But his takeaways a game are at zero right now. So he's not breaking up any plays and not intercepting any passes, taking the puck off player's sticks, which is bad. And he's also giving the puck away almost twice a game, which is big. That's glaringly obvious. He needs to just make smarter passes, make smarter plays. And we know that he's a great assist in the offensive zone. He's great at passing, great at obviously finding players that are open for goal-scoring chances. We see it. He's an assist-a-game player here. But in the defensive zone, when it comes to making those exits, you know, he's just made some bad decisions early on this season. And it's caused, you know, a lot of turnovers, a lot of giveaways. And obviously, you know, he can't really make up for it because he hasn't had any, he's not averaging any takeaways a game early this season and uh Josh Shields says Carlson has a few games a year where he looks like he's never played hockey and this was one of them, you know, this is just an instance of him just having a bad game from Josh Shields, a guy really follows this team uh you know uh with The Athletic, I believe uh so yeah he's just saying no Carlson does have games where he doesn't look like he knows how to play hockey and he had one here recently and Carlson says I know I tried really hard to snap out of it and I'm usually successful at it yesterday I was not and it's just the way it is sometimes so he just needs to figure it out himself he just needs to figure out how to get out of this funk and how to, you know be a better player and you see here again from Josh Shields, you know, not even two minutes into the third and Carlson with another turnover so we just need him to stop turning over the puck and just make smart decisions, slow the game down stop making you know you know you know if you had to take an extra second to think about where to put the puck do it if you need someone to come shorter yell at him right like just need you need to be a better player in this instance because you know you're one of the big veterans on this team and right now he ranks was a eighth in uh in uh giveaways this season yeah eighth most giveaways so far in the NHL is Eric Carlson and that's not good right like he has no takeaways but he's after giving away the puck 13 times, which is the eighth most in the league. So we really need him to tighten up on that and obviously just make better decisions. That's it. His decision-making just needs to get better. Like Josh Yost says, there's a couple games where he doesn't know how to play hockey. Just figure it out. Work on it in practice. Work it on these zone exit drills so you're not turning the puck over. Just take an extra second. Get someone to come shorter for you. Make the simple direct passes. You don't need to be flinging them up the center of the ice and getting them intercepted every time right so hopefully we can see this going forward uh eric carlson can get this instilled into his mind to you know stop these you know errant passes and giving the puck over so much uh turning the puck over so much so hopefully we can see that going forward but i do also want to big up eric carlson here because he's been driving the power play so far this season i know like i said there's one side of his game that's been bad one side of his game that's been excellent and that is obviously being uh obviously uh on the power play as well just being a guy who's just ripping shots ripping shots ripping shots on the blue line which is great to see looking at the current power play unit we have carlson crosby malkin raquel kindle i do like this power play unit i know we know we haven't really seen much success from it but eric carlson works his best when on this power play unit he's just flinging shots on like one one game he almost had like 10 shot attempts on in one power play so he likes get guys getting in front for the deflections and having guys like Malkin and Crosby and have such hand a great hand eye are great players to have down low there especially Malkin and you know Crosby's a great passer he can find a guy like Kindle or Raquel across the ice and get them a goal scoring chance too so it's only a matter of time for this power play and it starts to obviously pick up and just looking at their you know his defensive pairing is Declan Carlisle this year Carlisle has had a great start to the year they have six goals four five goals against as a lot as a pairing and right now um obviously uh you know Eric Carlson has been giving the puck uh giving the puck away a lot but right now they are positive in terms of goals for goals against so you really can't rip on him too much but you'd like to see him just play a cleaner game and just get back to the Eric Carlson that won the Norris trophy right and even doesn't even need to be that good but you know just still just uh getting getting better decision making right that that's what we need to instill into him at this point and just keep it on here you know he's uh a shot from the point was deflected by Malkin and that was one game earlier he took a big shot Malkin gets a stick on it goes in so as long as you keep shooting from the point we're gonna we're gonna be successful as a team and uh right now like Josh io says you know the the uh older guys you know this was before Sidney Crosby's breakout game weren't really playing the best so we really just need this old the old core here to kind of just play better be the veteran players we know be the leaders you can on the ice and just really help this team out offensively as well so hopefully we can see Carlson play some better hockey going forward but Chinenkov is ranked elite in takeaways which is great you know we're giving the puck away it's great to have somebody who ranks elite in takeaways he's at 0.71 takeaways a game right now his shots on goal almost two a game power play points at 0.14 his assist the game are you know isn't a strong suit but you know uh Chinenkov has been a great player for this team and been a very great great surprise for me to be honest with you guys i mean just take a look at his takeaways he has five which nets him eighth in the in the league for takeaways so that's great i mean seeing that a forward like this who can just you know get a stick lift take the puck off somebody's stick or win a war battle get the puck out like this is the guy Chinenkov is and he has a great shot alongside of that as well who can score goals for this team and i'm excited to see where Chinenkov's gonna go this season like just looking at his goal scoring chances here this season he has one goal so far that came from the came from the slot uh inner slots uh you know just kind of right in front of the net but you see he's been all over it here uh from you know the the slot in is 35 percent of his shots uh have been from in there and he's been you know obviously all around it you know those goals are going to come he has a great shot like i said uh but you know he has been working uh you know assists have been working as well you see here yeah yeah nice setup uh on one of uh novak's goals as well and you see here that you know someone said he sees something else like that's Josh O so that's great to see that Obviously, Chinenkov's getting the praise here from being a great player. He had a great kind of standout year here last year, and it's great to see him get back on it here this season. Hopefully, we'll start to see him scoring some more goals very soon. But, yeah, Chinenkov, I did want to highlight him because he's been really good here. But Pittsburgh must win the loose puck battles. That's something we've been talking about here as well. You know, when they lose the puck, they can't win these board battles. They need guys to win these loose pucks, and that's what Dan Mews says here. You know, there are too many loose pucks, and we're not getting there, right? We're not getting to these pucks. We're not being able to pick the pucks on our sticks. We don't have the magnets. Like, we've got to figure out a way to win more battles, win more pucks, and that will ultimately win us more hockey games. And right now, you know, we started off high, right? Like, we were in the top of the Metro Division race, then we dropped to second, then we dropped to third, then we dropped to fourth, went back up to third, and now we're back at fourth. So, you know, it was a high, high for us, and it's been low since, right? we really haven't seen much uh movement from us in this table since so we need to get back to winning ways and the way to do that is playing the right way you know right we see here uh Crosby even admits it wasn't our best but I think we did enough uh to be in the game you don't want to play hockey that way though you want to be you know controlling the game playing better all the guys in the locker room know that they can be playing better which is great news and hopefully we can see just get these guys to keep working in practice become a better team gel together more have better chemistry and it will lead to this team playing a better hockey and as we talked about a lot here when we lead in games when we come out and score early goals we win the games right so we need to have the pressure on from the start come out score a goal and then that will put us in the right head space to go out and win the game so hopefully we can see that going forward as well and Dan Mews uh also again speaks he says disappointing you walk and you want to be stacking games together and currently we're not we're like we're winning one we're losing one we're winning one we're losing two like you know we just need to get better that way so hopefully uh we can see that uh come coming soon and hopefully we can start you know go on a little bit of a run here and start to boost us up in this Metro Division but i want to hear your guys thoughts down below what do you think needs fixing do you think it's Carlson cleaning up his giveaways do you think it's uh Chibrikov getting more minutes uh because of how well he has been playing or uh do you think neither that neither is or the Dan Girardi system is the problem now let me know what you guys are thinking down below in the comments while you're down there leave a like subscribe to the channel as always i'm your host KC give a stick on the ice