It was a week when two of the league's oldest clubs played a game in the Canadian cold and when two of the league's younger clubs faced off in a match without precedent. The National's ice hockey writer, Rob McKenzie, recaps the highs and lows of last week in the NHL. Click or swipe through for more.
Old-fashioned hockey
Hockey is an outdoor game.
It belongs in the cold.
And while the league’s outdoor games are not so ardently received as when they were first added to the schedule in 2008 — familiarity has bred fatigue — some still jump out. On Sunday afternoon, Toronto finally got its turn to host an open-air match, with Detroit as the visitors. An Original Six matchup in a hockey hotbed on New Year’s Day — that’s an appealing ticket.
A slow start ...
As happened in Winnipeg back on October 23, the start of the game was delayed because of too much glare off the ice.
In the dressing room as the teams waited, the Toronto coach Mike Babcock tried to keep things simple for his young team, which had won four in a row thanks to the continued rise of rookie star Auston Matthews and excellent goaltending from Frederik Andersen. Babcock instructed the players: “All you gotta do is do your simple part. You do your simple part, and you’re great together. So just do your part. Take care of the puck, that’s when we’re our best.”
Toronto dominated the early part of the game but it felt like both teams were cautious, maybe playing it safe on the big and novel outdoor stage with 40,148 spectators at BMO Field. Through two periods the only goal was by Detroit’s Anthony Mantha on a top-corner snapshot a little after sundown.
Most Canadian moment: in the pregame concert, Bryan Adams' drummer was wearing a tuque.
... and a big finish
The game came alive in the third period with seven goals. Leo Komarov jammed one past the Wings rookie goalie Jared Coreau barely a minute in. With the temperature at 2C the fans must have been happy for the chance to jump up and clap — it gets the blood flowing. Then a fight got the crowd even more fired up. Toronto scored three more to move up 4-1. But Detroit, which is not having a great season, showed some mettle. They came all the way back, tying the game on Mantha’s second goal with their net empty and one second left. In overtime both teams had chances but Matthews won it with his backhand flick off a rebound.
Save of the week
We bring you indoors now ...
It’s 2-2 late in the third, Minnesota at Nashville on Tuesday night. The Wild have won 10 in a row and are pressing on the power play. Logjam in front of the Nashville net — nine players in or around the crease. The puck pops out to Matt Dumba at the left side and he has plenty of space to snap home a winner. And then the Nashville defender Ryan Ellis, with his back to Dumba, sticks out a leg to take away some of that open space. The shot hits Ellis’s leg, Pekke Rinna smothers it with his blocker and the tie is preserved.
In the end the Wild won on an overtime goal by Jared Spurgeon, to bring their streak to 11. But thanks to Ellis, at least Nashville got a point out of it.
It was the Preds’ fifth game in a row without PK Subban, who has an upper-body injury. He was placed on injured reserve at week’s end. So far the team has gone 3-2-2 without the talismanic defenceman.
Jackets on fire
They come at you in waves.
The Columbus Blue Jackets won their 14th game in a row on Thursday, 5-3 in Winnipeg. This tied for the third-longest win streak in NHL history and marked a huge turnaround for a team that missed the playoffs last season.
The Jackets seemed to endlessly be in the midst of mass breakouts towards the Winnipeg zone. Like Pittsburgh last season, they have speedy forwards outside their top two lines. That wears an opponent down. They are very good at stealing the puck via poke check, and as soon as that happens everyone shifts into offensive mode in a flash. They also have the league’s most proficient power play, which scored twice versus the Jets.
All streaks end, but what could more seriously derail the Jackets? Two things: their injury luck could run out or they could become exhausted by their style of play. This is not a team that is conserving energy for the playoffs.
Delayed gratification
It was the happiest meeting of two left-wingers that Washington has seen in a while.
The New Jersey Devils beat the Washington Capitals 2-1 in a shoot-out on Thursday but there was a weird backstory to the game. It turns out that Miles Wood, a rookie winger with Jersey, had 10 years ago sent a letter to Alex Ovechkin, the Caps superstar who was then bursting onto the scene. As recounted by Wood’s father, a former NHLer named Randy Wood, the kid said that if Ovie didn’t send him back an autograph, he’d grow up to play in the NHL and make him pay with a body-check.
Ovechkin, presumably swamped with autograph requests, did not reply ... until before Thursday’s game, when Wood received a signed picture that said “To Miles: Take it easy tonight!!!” The threatened body-check never did come, and the two shared a laugh in the bowels of the arena after the game, Wood in his street clothes and Ovechkin in his red bathrobe.
Neither Ovechkin nor Wood scored in the shoot-out, which was over after two rounds — Mike Cammalleri and Jacob Josefson scored for Jersey while TJ Oshie and Evgeny Kuznetsov missed for the Caps.
An unprecedented game
The Blue Jackets put their 14-game winning streak on the line Saturday in Minnesota, whose own streak had reached 12 by then. It was the first meeting in North American pro sports of two teams with win streaks of at least a dozen games. The Jackets and Wild, coincidentally, both entered the league in the 2000 expansion.
This game tilted early in the second. Columbus won the puck deep in its own zone and erupted with one of its fast breakouts. Jack Johnson scored on the 3-on-2 for a 2-0 lead and the Wild fans got awfully quiet. Fifteen seconds later Brandon Dubinsky intercepted a pass, here comes another breakout, and Cam Atkinson makes it 3-0 with a tip-in. Atkinson has 17 goals this season after a career-high 27 last season. Pretty good for a guy drafted 157th overall, discounted by many teams because even though he’s fast he is on the small side.
Columbus is now two away from tying the all-time NHL win streak of 17, set by Pittsburgh in 1992/93.
Sophomore update
Shayne Gostisbehere and Robby Fabbri were two of last season’s standout rookies — the former more so in the regular season, the latter in the playoffs. Their second seasons have been a bit flat but that changed for one of them when their teams met on Wednesday.
This would be the night of Fabbri’s first career NHL hat trick. His opening goal came on the power play, a snap shot past Philadelphia’s goalie Steve Mason after an Alex Pietrangelo rush broke down the defence. The second was more Fabbri’s own doing. He spun around on the boards to leave Nick Cousins in his wake, then once more snapped it past Mason on the short side. The third was an empty-netter to cap St Louis’s 6-3 comeback win. Down came the hats from the crowd, and the arena organist played “When the Saints Go Marching In”, the team anthem. Now that’s old school.
Gostisbehere’s highlight was an assist via a lovely cross-ice, no-look pass to Brayden Schenn on the power play.
In summation
• Standings: Columbus top the league standings with 56 points; Chicago remain best in the West at 51, a point up on Minnesota. The other division leaders are Montreal (50) and San Jose (47). Colorado are still the league doormat at 25 points.
• Standouts: Pittsburgh's Evgeni Malkin has moved into a tie with Connor McDavid for the points lead at 43. Malkin's teammate Sidney Crosby is one point behind and has the most goals, 26. Among rookies Matthews now has the most goals, 20 versus 19 for Winnipeg's Patrik Laine. The plus-minus top 10 is dominated by Columbus and Minnesota players, with the Wild's best defenceman, Ryan Suter, in first spot at plus-26. The goalie he protects, Devan Dubnyk, has the best goals-against average at 1.75.
• Standing tall: Carolina used one of their equipment managers as a goalie on Saturday. With regular backup Eddie Lack sick, the team signed Jorge Alves as an emergency fill-in. This happens now and then, but what is rare is that Alves (#hiphopjorge) actually saw some action. Trailing 3-1, the Hurricanes put him in net with 7.6 seconds left. Alves recounted his thought as the puck came into a corner of the Carolina zone in the dying seconds: "Stay in that corner."
rmckenzie@thenational.ae
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