Tuesday night saw plenty of action from the 10 games on the schedule. There were 56 goals and 104 assists. Two of the games ended with a shut-out and one went to a shoot-out. There were 9 game-winning-goals and they were scored by the following players. Timonen, Tarasenko, Raymond, Paille, Pacioretty, S.Weber, Landeskog, Eberle and J.Williams.

STUDS

The Natural
Max Pacioretty must have been listening to the pre-game commentators saying that he needed to pick up his play. Entering the game he had just one point in the last eight. He definitely padded his stats and made fantasy owners extremely happy. Max finished the night with a first period natural hat-trick, +2, 1 hit and fired a whopping 10 shots on goal. Not a typo, he recorded 10 SOG!

Happy Birthday Patches, here’s hoping for many more 3 goal games.

Make mine a “double double”
David Perron did last night what first round draft picks are supposed to do, put up amazing stats. He had the following doubles, 2 goals, 2 assists, +2 and 2 hits. He put 5 shots on net but also gave the puck away 3 times, I guess we can forgive him for that. Perron now has 17 points in 19 games, very respectable.

Age is nothing but a number
Kimmo Timonen is a 38 year old, 15 season NHL veteran, who must have been really pissed at the Flyers play for the majority of this season. He did everything he could to help them win by getting 1 goal, 2 assists, +3, 5 shots on goal, 3 blocked shots and 2 hits. All that was missing was a couple of penalty minutes but hey, last night’s production more than made up for it.

The “Second Fastest” trigger in the East
Kessel, Lupul and Smith were wide awake last night, they combined (although not all at the same time) for a total of 8 points. As is expected from Phil Kessel, he finished the night with 2 goals (one was on the power-play), +1, 4 shots on goal and 1 hit. Joffrey Lupul is another skater that we expect big nights from and he also produced the following, 3 assists, 2 penalty minutes and 2 hits. And then there was Trevor Smith who produced like a star, even though he has only played 36 NHL games to date. The undrafted 28 year old scored a goal 22 seconds after the game started, assisted by Lupul no less, and also contributed 2 assists, 2 shots on goal, 2 blocked shots, 1 hit and went 57% in the face-off circle. Well done Smith.

Double “D” delivers donut
Devan Dubnyk needed to make just 14 saves for his first shut-out of the season. It was a much needed win for Dubnyk and the Oilers. Devan is now 5-10-1 on the season with a mediocre 0.892 save percentage and an abysmal 3.31 goals against average. At least it would appear that they are trending in the right direction though.

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DUDS

What! It’s an Olympic year?
Corey Crawford destroyed whatever outside chance he had of being invited to Canada’s Olympic squad. He was chased from the net last night after allowing 3 goals on just 7 shots. His save percentage was an absolute pathetic 0.571

Columbus cannons fire blanks.
The entire Blue Jackets roster should be ashamed of themselves. They had 3 shots in the first period, 7 in the second and 4 in the third. I think there’s a youtube clip somewhere of Dubnyk playing solitaire in his crease while the game was going on. Atkinson, Anisimov, Dubinsky, Foligno, Johnson, Murray, Umberger and Wisniewski all failed to take a single shot. Edmonton did block 15 shots so it’s quite possible the above mentioned may have at least tried. Shame on you Columbus, you’re almost as lost now as Christopher was back then.

Wings winless in seven thanks to gratuitous giveaways
Detroit didn’t do much of anything last night except shoot, hit and give the puck away 14 times. The biggest culprits are two names you wouldn’t have expected, Johan Franzen and Henrik Zetterberg each coughed the puck up 3 times. Just under 50% came solely from those two.

Heatley warming up, now up to a mild chill
Dany Heatley is paid 5 million dollars, I guess with that kind of money he has nothing to prove to anyone (except maybe himself). Heatley has only scored 3 goals this season, all on the power play, and also has just 2 assists. He has 5 points in 22 games and apparently can’t score at even strength. Dany deserves to be permanently attached to the dud list whenever he plays. If Dany Heatley scores more than 30 points this season I will donate $50 to Canucks Place in his honour.

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The fastest goal scored to start a game was last achieved by Alexander Mogilny in 1991 at 4 seconds. Last night Tyler Ennis scored just 10 seconds after the first puck drop, sadly that was also the only goal that Buffalo could muster.



Cheers

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