If I was from the future, and I came back to visit you before the season started to tell you that, seven games in, Justin Brazeau would be leading the team in goals, you probably would have one of two questions:

• How did everyone get injured in the first game?
• Man, how bad is this Penguins team?

That’s completely ok. I would have asked the same questions!

Yet, seven games into the season, Brazeau’s team-leading five goals is not only a representation of an amazing start for the free agent signing personally, it shows the incredibly varied goal scoring that the Penguins have received so far this season, even with a mostly full healthy.

In previewing the season, the defense and goaltending departments were obviously the biggest problem areas on the roster. But when I did my season preview, I said the forward group honestly looked the best it has in three years. Based solely on what I’ve seen through seven games, I might have to broaden that range.

Evgeni Malkin has turned back the clock with a team-leading ten points, including eight assists. Sidney Crosby is still dominant, with eight points in seven games and a new accomplishment under his belt.

But it’s not just the typical names that are scoring for the Penguins. Fellow free agent forward Anthony Mantha has three goals and as many assists in seven games to open the year.

Connor Dewar, from the fourth line, has a trio of points. Filip Hallander and and Blake Lizotte have a goal so far.

Through seven games, every full-time forward has at least one point, and all but two of them are already multi-point players. That’s an amazing sight to see.

Even from the blue line, they are getting offensive support. Of all defenseman, Ryan Shea surprisingly leads with four assists, and both Erik Karlsson and Kris Letang have three assists so far, including a milestone marker for the latter last night.

Defensively, the Penguins are still not great. They’re a unit that looks out of sorts more often than you would like for a team with serious playoff aspirations, but for a team that’s where the Penguins are right now, it’s not the absolute worst. I do think it’s important to note though that the defensive struggles feel like more of a talent/individual problem as opposed to an overall scheming issue.

Under new head coach Dan Muse, the Penguins just look so much different on the ice right now. They don’t look nearly as tense; they look like a team that has nothing to lose.

Sometimes, those are the most dangerous ones.

I thought last night was a prime example of this new vibe they have, after Vancouver potted a goal on their first shot of the game, just over a minute in against their old friend, Arturs Silovs.

We saw that happen a ton last season. Tristan Jarry had an incredible knack for being on the wrong side of those events, and backup Alex Nedeljkovic wasn’t exactly a stranger to that either.

More often than not in those games, a one-goal deficit, even that early into the game, felt like a mountain for the Penguins to climb.

Last night? It didn’t seem to be much of an issue.

Yes, it helped that unlike Jarry and Nedeljkovic from last season, Silovs locked it down for the rest of the game, saving the next 23 shots he faced for a .958 save percentage. But for the rest of the team, they didn’t seem fazed by it either.

Midway through the first, the fourth line had nearly a minute of sustained pressure before Connor Dewar deflected a Parker Wotherspoon shot from the point for his second goal of the season.

Late in the second, the Penguins scored a flurry of goals to really put this game out of reach for the Canucks. On the power play, Tommy Novak ripped one in open space for a much-needed first goal of the season for him. Less than two minutes later, Crosby added a snipe shortly after a faceoff win, and before the period was out, Mantha picked up the loose change from a Malkin shot to score.

In a matter of six minutes, a 1-1 tie turned into a 4-1 lead, and unlike a lot of times last season, it never seemed in jeopardy. Brazeau added his fifth goal of the season in the third, and Muse’s Penguins never let the Canucks get back into it.

After the first five minutes or so, it was really a great game by the Penguins, bringing them to 5-2-0 on the year and giving them their third win in a row.

Truthfully, that 6-1 blowout at the hands of the New York Rangers and Mike Sullivan’s return to Pittsburgh is the only bad game they’ve had so far this year. That’s certainly not something I expected heading into this season.

Their only other loss was during that early California road trip, when they dropped one in Anaheim, 4-3. But even in that game. the Penguins were in it pretty much the entire time. They had a tied game with less than two minutes left in regulation, until Wotherspoon shot the puck over the glass and took a delay of game penalty.

Had Chris Kreider not scored on that power play, we might very well be talking about a 6-1 team right now. And by the way, Wotherspoon deserves a lot of credit for how he’s bounced back since that costly penalty.

Seven games in, the Penguins are one of the more surprising teams in the NHL. Even their goaltending has played abnormally well.

Muse has alternated back and forth between Silovs and Jarry to start the year, giving them both an adequate look with a new perspective.

Silovs, coming off his third win in four games, now has a .919 save percentage and 2.25 goals against average. Jarry, in three games so far, has a .922 save percentage and 2.35 goals against average.

Both of them already have a shutout on the season.

Given both of their careers to this point, it’s hard to trust that those numbers are sustainable (Silovs for inexperience, Jarry for inconsistency issues), but they are both amazing starts.

While it makes Muse’s ability to eventually tab one of them as the starter, it gives him a lot more confidence that no matter which guy he puts between the pipes, they can give the Penguins a chance to win.

It seems like almost every year in the NHL, there’s two teams that really surprise us: one that’s really bad even though they were projected to be good, and one that’s really good even though they were projected to be bad.

I know, it’s very early. But is it possible that the Penguins are the latter of those two teams in 2025-26? This next stretch of games for Pittsburgh is suddenly pretty pivotal in telling us whether this good start was a fluke, or a sign of a secretly good team.