Why the Pittsburgh Penguins Will Stay Hot as They Hit the Road

One step at a time. The Stanley Cup is still a long way away.

The Pittsburgh Penguins enjoyed excellent results through a relatively easy first month of the 2014-15 NHL season. The team looks prepared to face its next round of challenges as its five-game road trip kicks off this week.

After an uncertain preseason, which saw superstars Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin largely absent from the ice as new coach Mike Johnston took the reins, the Penguins are thriving.

Playing seven of their first 10 games at home, they built a record of 7-2-1 and shut out opponents in three of four games before opening their first major road swing with a 4-1 win over a very good Minnesota Wild team Tuesday night.

The Wild should be Pittsburgh's toughest opponent on this trip, which also sees them visiting Winnipeg, Buffalo, the New York Rangers and Toronto. Heading into Tuesday's matchup, Minnesota boasted a 7-3 record and was ranked No. 3 in goals per game and No. 1 in goals-against per game.

The other four teams on Pittsburgh's schedule rank lower in the standings, and the Penguins got the better of them all last year—at least during the regular season. Pittsburgh was 2-0-0 against the Jets and the Sabres, 2-1-0 against the Maple Leafs and 2-1-1 against the Rangers, though New York got the upper hand in the playoffs after rebounding from a 3-1 series deficit.

Perhaps because starter Marc-Andre Fleury is 0-5-0 in his career against the Wild, Mike Johnston called an audible and gave backup Thomas Greiss the nod to start Tuesday—and it worked. Greiss made 33 saves and shut the door until midway through the third period.

With the Penguins already up 3-0 and pressing on their third power play of the game, Nino Niederreiter was able to break away and post his team's only tally of the night.

Though the team gave up its second short-handed goal of the season Tuesday, Pittsburgh's power play has been a wonder this year.

Pittsburgh went 1-for-3 with the man advantage Tuesday thanks to a goal by Chris Kunitz, and new acquisition Patric Hornqvist has been a tenacious net-front presence all season long. He scored the empty-netter to seal the deal Tuesday night but has picked up eight of his 15 points with the Pens so far on the power play.

Furthermore, Malkin and Crosby lead the NHL in power-play production so far with 11 and 10 points, respectively.

The season is young, but Pittsburgh's gaudy 41.3 percent success rate is worth our attention.

With their sixth-ranked penalty kill, the Wild did well to limit Pittsburgh to just one power-play goal on three attempts Tuesday, lowering the team's efficiency rate by a fraction.

All four remaining teams on this road trip deploy effective penalty kills that rank in the top half of the league, but it's been virtually impossible to stop the Penguins with the man advantage this season. They've scored power-play goals in all but two games this year and feasted on the Maple Leafs' and Sabres' penalty-killers in their first meetings of the year, scoring three goals against each team.

Pittsburgh's goaltending situation also looks extraordinarily strong this season, no matter who's in net. Greiss' win Tuesday shows he can deliver solid performances against good teams when needed, which should help Fleury feel more confident than ever.

Now in the last year of his contract, Fleury has been playing with renewed confidence since new general manager Jim Rutherford gave him a vote of confidence on October 21.

"He's been and he will be in the future a key member of this team," Jim Rutherford told Rob Rossi of TribLive. "As long as I'm the general manager, Marc-Andre Fleury will be our goalie."

Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press

Flower has gone 4-1-0 since Rutherford made those comments, posting shutouts in three of his last four starts. He's currently among the league's leaders in both goals-against average (1.89) and save percentage (.931)—sharp improvements over his career averages of 2.61 and .911.

Fleury's three shutouts in nine starts this year already put him within shouting distance of his career high of five, set last season.

Now in his 11th NHL season, all with Pittsburgh, Fleury is the team's longest-tenured player. His ride hasn't always been smooth, but he has his teammates' confidence as well as Rutherford's.

"He calms us down on the ice," Sidney Crosby told Rossi. "For a guy who isn't really that way off the ice—like, he can't even sit still most times—you notice right away that he's calm in the net. That's how he leads for us."

The Penguins picked up two points in Minnesota on Tuesday and stretched their winning streak to five games. The question now is just how good they might be on this road trip.

Other than defenseman Olli Maatta's thyroid surgery, the team is reasonably healthy. The schedule is nicely spaced out, with no back-to-back games, and there's no doubt Crosby and Co. will have fire in their bellies when it comes to the third game of the trip, when they'll finally get their rematch against the Rangers, who knocked them out of the playoffs last year.

Expect Pittsburgh to continue playing some of the best hockey in the league for the next four games as the road trip continues.

All stats courtesy of NHL.com.