Ville Koivunen just needs a goal

Ville Koivunen is one of the Pittsburgh Penguins most talented young players and will hopefully be a long-term part of their future. In his brief time in the organization he has been a dynamic scorer at the AHL level, but has not yet been able to turn that into results or production in the NHL.

Entering Thursday’s game at the Tampa Bay Lightning, he has played in 23 NHL games over the past two seasons and is still stuck on zero goals. At this point it is starting to get a little comical. At least, it might be comical if it were not so frustrating.

It is not for a lack of good opportunities or a lack of chances. Especially this season, and especially over the past few games.

He has spent most of his time in the NHL playing on a line alongside rookie center Ben Kindel, and that duo has mostly produced strong underlying numbers and been a great possession-driving line for the Penguins. In fact, it has consistently been their best possession-driving line.

In 86 minutes of 5-on-5 ice-time together, the Penguins have a 67 percent expected goals share, a 68 percent scoring chance share and 66 percent high-danger scoring chance share when that duo is on the ice. On an individual level, both players are among the Penguins’ best players in terms of driving possession, expected goals and scoring chances. Territorially, they are among the Penguins’ most effective players. There is a lot to be said for that. It matters. It adds up.

It just has not yet consistently translated into actual goals.

The hope is, that it will.

On Monday, the Penguins added another young forward to that duo when winger Rutger McGroarty made his season debut and helped form “The Kid Line.” It was only one game, but it was encouraging to watch. They were constantly creating chances, were constantly in good positions to score and spent the entire game causing chaos in the Philadelphia end of the ice.

It is a line worth keeping together and giving a serious run to see what they can do. McGroarty’s size and finishing ability might be a great addition to that line to help complement Koivunen’s playmaking and passing and Kindel’s all-around two-way play.

It might also hopefully help Koivunen actually get his first goal, because my goodness does this guy need a goal.

For his sake. For the the fan’s sake. For the team’s sake. Just to give everybody a sense of relief and belief that he can and will be a productive player.

He has not been without his chances this season. There have been a few instances where he’s had Grade-A looks and been robbed by great goaltending. He has had several great looks in recent games, only to have his shots get blocked or deflected at that last split second. Late in Monday’s game he caused a turnover in the defensive zone and led a two-on-one rush the other wide, was in a great scoring position, and then simply pulled a Charlie Conway and badly fanned on his shot attempt. It was a rough watch.

I do not think he is a bad player.

I think a lot of it points to a player that is fighting it right now and losing every once of confidence he might have in terms of shooting the puck.

I do not want to try and be a body language expert here, but on some of these recent misses you can see an obvious sense of frustration from him before he heads to the bench. I’ve seen his stick hit the glass on more than one occasion. You might be able to attribute some of those blocked shot attempts to him taking an extra split second to try and get his shot off and perfectly place it.

This seems like the type of situation where if he gets one goal, he might open the floodgates and get a couple of them.

Even if he does reach his full potential he still seems like the type of player that will be more of a play-maker and play-driver than an elite finisher, so big goal numbers may not be in his future anyway.

There still has to be some sort of goal-scoring to his game.

Having said that, I am not yet totally discouraged by the goal drought to start his career, because it is not totally unheard of.

After digging around with the Hockey-Reference StatHead database, I found that since the start of the 2005-06 season there have been 114 forwards that opened their NHL careers by going at least 23 games without scoring a single goal. While that list is mostly made up of players that never amounted to much, and also an extensive list of face-punchers, there are also a nice selection of players that turned into outstanding NHL contributors.

Rickard Rakell is on that list.

David Krejci is on that list.

Brad Marchand is on that list.

Josh Bailey is on that list.

Andrew Mangiapane is on that list.

Rich Peverley put together a strong career for himself as a middle-six forward before health issues ended his career. He is on that list.

Heck, even Tommy Novak is on that list, and for as frustrating as he can be, he is still a legitimate NHL player that has shown 15-20 goal ability.

There is even an extensive list of players like Darren Helm, Johan Larsson and Freddy Gaudreau that maybe did not become top-line players, but still put together extensive careers for themselves as role players.

Koivunen’s skillset and playing style does not really lend itself to the latter group, but the point here is it is not totally unheard of for a young player to struggle offensively early in their career. Not everybody steps right into the NHL and puts up numbers. There is usually some sort of process and growing pains to it.

Even though the goals and point production have not yet been there for Koivunen there is still a lot to like about his game. He is not a negative or a liability when he is on the ice, and there is definitely plenty of skill and vision here. He just needs something tangible to build on. The chances are still there. The talent around him is there. Just get him a goal and see what happens.