With injuries withering the Pittsburgh Penguins’ blue line down to its last legs this post-season, 39-year-old veteran Mark Streit is poised to make his Penguins playoff debut.
Streit played 19 games for the Penguins during the regular season after being acquired in a three-way trade with the Tampa Bay Lightning and Philadelphia Flyers, scoring once and adding five assists.
He has been a consistently underrated player throughout his career, from breaking in as a defenceman forced to play forward in Montreal, to being a strong contributor with the Islanders and Flyers through his 30s, but at 39 years old the question is can Streit be a positive contributor after being dropped into a lineup in the third round of the playoffs?
During the regular season Streit maintained a positive Corsi relative to his teammates, in fact his possession numbers were remarkably similar to Brian Dumoulin (Both at plus-1 per cent relative Corsi, Streit at 51.6 per cent raw Corsi, Dumoulin at 51.3 per cent), though he had a slightly higher quality of teammates and slightly lower quality of competition.
That’s not troubling for the Penguins, because they’re not going to be asking Streit to play minutes as heavy as Dumoulin anyway. So what exactly can Streit bring to the lineup?
When Streit was in his prime he was a premier puck mover, and while those days have passed him by a little, he’s still a big offensive threat from the blue line at even strength.
Compared to the Penguins’ regular season performance, Streit’s offensive game doesn’t stand out so much because of the impact Kris Letang has on team averages, but since he’s out of the lineup, you can see right away that Streit produces way more scoring chances than the rest of the Penguins’ defence core.
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Streit doesn’t shoot that much more than the average Penguins defenceman, but he makes high leverage passes far more often, and though he doesn’t recover many loose pucks in the defensive and offensive zones, he’s still an excellent neutral zone defender.
It would be unfair to expect Streit to step into the lineup and be a huge difference maker, but he should allow them to create a bit more offence without sacrificing defensive play. It may take him a game or two to get up to speed, but going forward it’s tough to imagine that he isn’t worthy of being in the lineup.
The Penguins’ defenders have been getting the job done by committee with Letang out, but they’ve struggled to get involved offensively at even strength in the playoffs. Streit should help them out there.
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