"He's a Goal Scorer"

After the Penguins' 3-0 victory over Buffalo on Saturday at KeyBank Center, Jake Guentzel discussed what has helped the team go on a five-game win streak.

"We might not have it every night, but we just got to play consistent hockey," he said. "That's one thing we're trying to key on, being consistent and just being hard to play against."
While he was talking about the group in general, that mindset applies to Guentzel individually as well. Heading into the season, he said that's exactly what he wanted to do night in and night out. And lately, he's been making strides in that regard.
Guentzel now has goals in three straight games after scoring his team-leading 10th tally of the year, which stood as the winner. He now has points in 14 of 19 games, ranking second on the Penguins with 24. And tonight, Guentzel also established a new career high with eight shots.
"I think the puck may've found me a couple times," he said. "Just trying to shoot the puck as much as I can, so a couple of good saves, but I was glad to get that one."

It came early in Pittsburgh's first power play of the night. The puck went back to the point following a battle along the boards, and Guentzel drifted in front of the net. Evgeni Malkin put a pass on his tape, and the winger got a couple of cracks before burying it.
"Got help from Sid and Rusty to get it over up to Tanger, and G found me in the slot alone," Guentzel said. "I think I just tried to tip it in, and then got a stick on it in the air. Definitely one I'll take there."
As Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan said, Guentzel just finds the ice where opportunity presents itself for him, and that's what has helped him become an elite goal scorer in this league.
"He's got a knack to find the back of the net," Sullivan said. "He's a goal scorer. There's no other way to describe his game."
After scoring 16 goals in 40 games his rookie season, Guentzel reached at least 20 goals in each of his next three seasons (netting 40 in 2018-19) and is now halfway there this year. His accomplishments are even more impressive because as Sullivan said, nothing about Guentzel's physical attributes stand out.
"He's not an imposing presence physically," Sullivan said. "He's not lightning fast. He's not big and strong. But I think his hockey IQ is off the charts. When we talk about him as a coaching staff, the phrase I always use is that he's a hockey player. He just knows how to play hockey. He finds the soft spots at the right times that Sid gets him the puck, or his linemates get him the puck, that give him the looks - and then he has a knack to finish."
When the cameras panned to Guentzel on the bench following his goal, he was sporting a cut above his left eye. Nicks on the Picasso are nothing new for the 26-year-old with the way he plays the game.
"He plays a lot of courage," Sullivan said. "He's competitive. He's not afraid to go to the dirty areas, the hard areas, where he knows he's going to take a crosscheck in order to get a scoring chance. He's just a good player."
It was a challenging calendar year for Guentzel heading into the 2020-21 season after playing just four games following major shoulder surgery. But now that the Penguins are nearly midway through, he's happy with where his game is at and where it's going.
"I think it's been getting better as the season's gone on," he said. "Obviously the start I didn't like as much as I wanted to, but I think now I'm starting to feel the swing of things and getting ready to go. I've just got to be at my best and hopefully it keeps coming here."