Mark Madden: More changes needed for Penguins to contend after All-Star break

The Pittsburgh Penguins have nine days between games and are five points out of a playoff berth as the NHL All-Star break beckons. They have won 21 games, lost 23. They have games in hand on seven of the eight teams they’re chasing.

The Eastern Conference is mostly rotten. The situation isn’t hopeless.

But it’s fair to say there’s much the Penguins could do differently or need to do better.

• Keep Evgeni Malkin and Erik Karlsson on the second power play, a long-overdue move just made.

The power play somehow got appreciably worse with the addition of Karlsson, who had 27 power-play points among his 101 with San Jose last campaign. But stats don’t lie: The Penguins’ man-advantage unit ranks 31st in the NHL (out of 32) with a conversion rate of 13.1%. Last year they were 14th at 21.7%. This season’s power play looks even worse than its numbers.

It’s easy to describe what Karlsson and Malkin do badly on the PP: everything. They look like they’re treading sewage. They’re indecisive and bungling.

Keep them on the second unit for now. It doesn’t have to be permanent. (The PP was 0 for 2 Saturday, the first full game using this switch. Uh-oh.)

• Practice three-on-three overtime. The Penguins don’t. They look it. Their play on defense, especially in transition, is downright amateurish.

The Penguins are 4-7 in OT, including shootouts. They have won during three-on-three just twice in 11 tries, losing five.

Given their talent, that’s inexcusable. Not everything revolves around the pursuit of 200-foot excellence. Three-on-three is different. Get better at it. Learn it.

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• Stick Bryan Rust or Rickard Rakell at wing on the third line. Put rookie Valtteri Puustinen on Malkin’s line.

Puustinen is a top six-style winger. That’s his skill set. He doesn’t contribute on the bottom six. He’s a tiny 5-foot-9. He can’t grind.

Rust has one goal in 11 games since returning from injury. He is a solid third-line talent who hit the linemate lottery by often skating with Crosby. Coach Mike Sullivan has always wanted three lines that score. Maybe Rust triggers that.

Put Malkin between Puustinen and Drew O’Connor. Perhaps Malkin can be ignited by youthful adrenaline. (The 2016 and ’17 Stanley Cup runs were ignited by youthful adrenaline: Rust, Jake Guentzel, Conor Sheary, etc.)

• Defenseman John Ludvig just got healthy. Put him in the top two defensive pairings.

Ludvig’s play merits that, not least his physicality. Ryan Graves has been a disaster and deserves fewer minutes. Drop Graves to the bottom pair.

Director of hockey operations/GM Kyle Dubas should trade Graves if possible. There’s no difference between him and P.O Joseph besides price tag.

Trade Reilly Smith, too. His lingering disappointment over leaving Las Vegas exceeds Nic Cage’s. That merits Smith’s exit, as does netting just two goals in his last 30 games. (Smith is currently hurt.)

• Promote Jesse Puljujarvi and/or Sam Poulin from the Penguins’ Wilkes-Barre/Scranton farm team. They couldn’t be less impactful than Jansen Harkins (zero goals in 31 games).

Both were first-round picks: Puljujarvi by Edmonton in 2016, Poulin by the Penguins in 2019. Puljujarvi has four goals in his last seven games with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. Poulin has 11 goals in 23 games. Give their talent a chance.

It’s hard to imagine much of this happening. Sullivan is exceedingly slow when it comes to change, if he ever implements it. It took Sullivan 43 games to significantly alter an abysmally bad power play. It’s a fine line between having faith in your team and coaching by rote.

Mostly, the Penguins just need a lot of players to perform better.

Dubas should trade Guentzel rather than let him walk away for nothing via free agency in the offseason.

But Dubas might not. This organization is good at conning itself into thinking this group can make one more run despite not winning a playoff series since 2018. But maybe Dubas is too smart for that.

Even if Guentzel isn’t traded, not one ounce of future should be sacrificed to get help for now. It’s impossible to get enough help. At any rate, the Penguins’ system is nearly bereft of prospects to trade, and they’ve already dealt this year’s first-round draft pick.

It’s no stretch to say the Penguins’ system has one legitimate prospect: Brayden Yager, their first-round pick in the most recent draft. That’s it, that’s the list.

What should the Penguins be realistically angling to achieve? The Eastern Conference is bad, but not 1967 expansion-level bad. What constitutes a “run?”

It’s a shame to waste Sidney Crosby’s epic season at 36. That pass to Guentzel for Saturday’s tying goal vs. Montreal looked like something out of Chexx bubble hockey: A spin that approached 360 degrees launching a pass for a tap-in. How did Crosby see it, let alone do it?