Goligoski, Dupuis, Letang taking on bigger roles

Friend of the blog James Mirtle gave us a rough table of how much ice-time individual Penguins play, compared to their roles last season. It didn't translate well here, and I had to update it, so I'm pretty proud of it. Let's take a look of all the players who have played in these playoff and last year for the Penguins.  Who's playing more, who's playing less, who's playing about the same? 

What to make of this?  Well obviously the triple over-time game may have skewed things, the Penguins only played about 38 minutes and change all of last playoffs, the 3 OT game is more minutes right there alone.  That aside, some real trends have emerged.

--Alex Goligoski jumps off the page, more than doubling what he played last post-season.  Recall though, Goose only played two games last playoffs when Sergei Gonchar was hurt, and the Penguins elected to dress seven defensemen in those games.

--Pascal Dupuis also pops, last season he was in healthy scratch territory, this year he's an intregal part at even-strength and short-handed situations.

--Stop reading this and go check out Gonchar's numbers again.  I'll wait.

--Gonchar playing some big time hockey.  He's producing at almost a point per game rate (like usual when healthy), he's got the best plus/minus for defensemen on the team, is top 10 in the league in time on ice per game.  If as many suspect this is his last go-round with Pittsburgh he is going out with a bang.

--A big deal has been made about free agency departees Hal Gill (19:25 last spring) and Rob Scuderi (20:29). Every defenseman's numbers are significantly up.  Again, I think the triple OT game may be factoring in, but Scuds/Gill also played 5:35 short-handed a night.  In that area of short-handed play:

--Letang played almost no time last season short-handed and has a small role, Eaton's been bumped up to a full-time role and the big guns of Orpik and Gonchar have had to take on a bigger load here as well.  It's been a team effort to replace the two big PK'ers of Gill and Scuderi.

--Kennedy fought a knee injury, but he's been ineffective and his ice-time (which he only plays exclusively at even strength) has taken a bump down.  Ditto Fedotenko who now finds himself in street clothes.