The fifth week of the NHL season featured another scoring spurt from Patrik Laine and a meeting of the two teams atop the conference standings. The National’s ice hockey writer, Rob McKenzie, revisits the highs and lows.
A bunch of lonesome heroes
The week began with a Sunshine State battle, Tampa at Florida. The Bolts and Cats are among the league’s stronger teams, too bad so few Florida fans turned out for last Monday’s match. Attendance was given as 11,703. Watching it on TV, there were entire rows in the lower bowl area, especially upper rows, that had maybe one or two people in them.
Florida have the league’s fourth worst average attendance at 13,981, which puts their home in Sunrise, Florida ahead of only Phoenix, Arizona; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Brooklyn, home of the New York Islanders. The Panthers won 3-1, with Roberto Luongo making 31 saves to earn honours as the first star. Luongo shaved his beard before the game, which makes it even tougher for the team’s six fans to recognise him on the street. Well, that and the mask.
I’m your man
The rookie sensation Patrik Laine contributed to five goals as the Winnipeg Jets pasted the visiting Dallas Stars 8-2 on Tuesday night. He scored three, assisted on another, and served as a decoy on the one shown at left, which opened the night’s barrage of scoring. It happened barely three minutes in. The Jets had a three-on-one break with Nikolaj Ehlers carrying the puck on the right. Laine was nearer the middle, his stick half-raised, ready to snap a shot home at lightning speed. This is a sight that is going to mesmerise goalies for years to come — Kari Lehtonen won’t be the last. Ehlers then slid a pass across to Mark Scheifele on the left, and Lehtonen was late getting over. It didn’t held that Dallas’s Dan Hamhuis crashed into Lehtonen after diving to try to break up the play.
Laine’s 11 goals in 14 games through Tuesday was an exact match for the pace set by the last great Jet rookie sniper. That would be his fellow Finn Teemu Selanne, who ended up with a league-leading 76 scores back in his rookie season, 1992/93. Final score: Winnipeg 8 Dallas 2.
The captain
Also on Tuesday, Connor McDavid played against Sidney Crosby for the first time. McDavid is regularly described as “the next Crosby” and he showed why, assisting on all three Edmonton goals. Crosby was pointless but his team got the win, 4-3. Both men wear the “C” on their jerseys but only one gets the “W” in the standings.
The game pivoted on a third-period sequence in which neither star was involved. The Oilers’ Tyler Pitlick half-whiffed on the puck while all alone in front of the Pittsburgh net. The play then went the other way with the Pens’ Phil Kessel carrying the puck up the wing. He passed it towards Evgeni Malkin who was storming the net with an Oiler defender bearing down on him from behind. The pass was a bit late so Malkin reached out with his right hand and, with only one hand on his stick, deflected the puck over Cam Talbot’s right pad to tie the score at 3.
The decider came late in the third. Edmonton’s Benoit Pouliot tried to clear a rebound away but mishandled the puck and ended up poking it into the net.
Tonight will be fine
After a slow start the Blackhawks have asserted themselves. Their 2-1 defeat of St Louis on Wednesday was their seventh straight win and they have fixed the penalty-kill problem that plagued their early season. However, the win streak would come to an end on Friday night against Washington. The game was playoff-style, lots of tight checking, good goaltending — but without the stakes of playoff elimination it was frankly a bit dull until the final minutes. Chicago pulled the goalie with 2:13 left — earlier than a lot of other teams would do it, though that is changing; an inefficiency being purged — and Marian Hossa tied the score with 22.3 seconds on the clock. In OT the Hawks had bad luck. Washington’s TJ Oshie fell, then accidentally on purpose tripped the Chicago youngster Vinnie Hinostroza. That opened up the ice for Washington, which had the puck, and Marcus Johansson ripped one past Corey Crawford.
Different sides
Columbus are on the brink of becoming a good team. But they have been there before and keep falling short.
If they wanted to set a marker, they did it on Nov 4 with their 10-0 pasting of Montreal. Since then, however, they have been on a roller coaster — an overtime loss in St Louis, an overtime win over Anaheim, a sloppy 5-2 loss to Boston and an 8-4 pasting of the Blues. In Boston on Thursday the Blue Jackets stung themselves with a slew of giveaways in their defensive zone. And it could have been worse. In the opening seconds Zach Werenski, eighth overall pick in the 2015 draft, blindly backhanded the puck up the middle, where Brad Marchand pounced on it and had a prime chance to score.
Werenski had scored the overtime winner the night before against Anaheim. This frankly is a team that seems unable to build on success.
Why don’t you try
The Calgary Flames were supposed to be better than this. In the off-season they addressed their glaring problem in net by snatching Brian Elliott away from St Louis. But under new coach Glen Gulutzan the Calgarians are 5-10-1, including four losses in a row. Their 9.4 per cent success rate on the power play is a joke — they didn’t get their first man-advantage score on home ice until the third period of Saturday’s 4-1 loss to the Rangers.
As Saturday’s defeat wound down the Hockey Night in Canada announcer Cassie Campbell-Pascall, who was captain of Canada’s gold-medal women’s hockey teams at the 2002 and 2006 Olympics, was blunt: “It’s getting worse rather than better. And you know, you look at their bench all night long, there’s just no positive energy on it, it’s just deflated.”
She said the Flames were suffering from “paralysis by analysis” and should take a day off away from the rink. Her husband, Brad Pascall, is an assistant general manager with the Flames.
Show me the place
Chicago’s United Center is a great place to watch a hockey game. The fans love their Hawks, they joyously break out in Chelsea Dagger every time the home team scores, and the anthem singer Jim Cornelison fires them up with his animated performances. When Montreal visited on Sunday night, he even sang O Canada half in French and half in English — you don’t often see that in US cities. The Habs were on a four-game win streak but started their backup goalie, Al Montoya, who had not played since that 10-0 shellacking in Columbus. Montoya was born and raised in the Chicago area. He was fine on Sunday but the difference came late in the second after Jonathan Toews, who was buzzing all over the ice, broke up a Montreal breakout attempt and got the puck to Patrick Kane, who somehow slid between two Habs players and, as he fell to the ice, lifted the puck past Montoya. Spectacular goal. Final score, 3-2 Chicago.
Going home
The Hockey Hall of Fame enshrines four new members today/NOV14/: Sergei Makarov, Pat Quinn, Rogatien Vachon and Eric Lindros.
The Lindros story is wrenching. The hulking centreman was the next big thing when he joined the league in 1992. He was MVP by 1994/95 and took Philadelphia to the Cup final in 1997. But his body had begun to break down, with the worst damage being from concussions. The one that Scott Stevens laid on him in the 2000 playoffs was sickening. Meanwhile the Flyers’ general manager, Bobby Clarke, seemed to view Lindros as a big sissy and had little patience for his injury time. In Nashville in 1999 Lindros almost died of internal bleeding from a cracked rib but his teammate Keith Jones insisted he go straight to hospital, whereas the team wanted to put him on a plane back to Philly and check him out there. Lindros had the sense to get out of the NHL before it destroyed him. Today he raises money for charities and for concussion research.
Closing time:
(All stats through Sunday)
Standings: The Montrealers remain atop the league with 27 points. The division leaders are all the same as a week ago: the Habs, obviously, then the Rangers, Chicago (most points in the western conference, with 24) and Edmonton. Arizona are still the bottom-dwellers, with 10 points. Coyotes? More like catfish!
Standouts: Tyler Seguin of Dallas and Winnipeg’s Scheifele are tied for the scoring lead on 20 points. Laine has the most goals, 11. Montreal’s Shea Weber remains No1 in plus-minus, at plus-16. His teammate Carey Price has the stingiest goals-against average (minimum five games played) at 1.40.
Stand and deliver: Dallas’s Antoine Roussel has punched his way to the top of the penalty parade at 54 minutes of sin-bin time, thanks to fights last week against Winnipeg’s Dustin Byfuglien and Calgary’s Micheal Ferland.
Standing tall: When they met on Tuesday the Rangers led the league in goals per game and the Canucks were dead last; yet Vancouver came up big with four third-period scores for a 5-3 win.
Standing small: In the Jets’ overtime loss to Colorado on Friday night Ehlers made a pass to a phantom teammate and the puck beat the Jets goalie. Game over.