Going into the Flyers game tonight...

Things are still up and down and frustrating.

The Penguins come into tonight's matchup 7-6-1, good for 15 points in 14 games. Which is not that good.

They're tied for 3rd in the Atlantic (with a game in hand) with the New York Rangers.

Overall in the East, the Penguins are in a 4-way tie for 6th place. But the team in last place (fimiliar to see Washington) is only four points back, so things are much more clustered in the middle-to-lower part of the conference then up top, where Ottawa (26 points) and Carolina (21 points) are starting to break away from the pack.

Stats that will make a Penguins fan smile:

• -The Penguins are currently on a 13 game streak of scoring atleast one powerplay goal. As mentioned here, they can tie the NHL record of 14 games (held by the 1989 Penguins) tonight.



• -As you'd expect with a powerplay clicking like that, it ranks well. 3rd in the NHL at the moment at a rate of 24.3%.

-Quietly the penalty-kill is 8th best in the NHL, success rate of 86.4%

-Crosby has a 13 game point streak, and is 2nd in the league in scoring. Malkin is tied for 8th in the league in scoring.

-Guys like Brooks Orpik (35 hits, 27 blocked shots), Mark Eaton (10 hits, 39 blocked shots) and Robert Scuderi (27 blocked shots) have been stellar at their roles of low profile but highly effective defensive defensemen.

-Crosby has won 53.9% of his faceoffs, up considerably from last season.

Stats that have been making Penguins fans' blood pressure go up:

-The Penguins are -6 when considering their 5 on 5 play (24 GF and 30 GA).

-Jordan Staal has 1 goal and 1 assist through 14 games. And is only averaging 0:46 powerplay ice time per game.

-Mark Recchi is averaging 17 minutes of icetime and has 1 goal to show for it.

-Marc-Andre Fleury has been inconsistent.

-Ryan Whitney has 19 giveaways and 2 takeaways and hasn't shined like he did last year.

-Sergei Gonchar is 8th in the league with 22 "missed shots".



Up and down and up some more. Hopefully the boys can continue to right the ship. The Flyers are much different from the team that got beaten 8 times by the Penguins last year. Should be an intense and interesting game.