By the numbers
1
Goals in his past 13 games, as of Thursday, for the New Jersey Devils' $100-million man, Ilya Kovalchuk, which leaves him on pace for the poorest goal-scoring season of his NHL career. Kovalchuk has had six consecutive 40-goal seasons, the longest streak in the NHL, and only Alex Ovechkin has scored more goals than Kovalchuk since 2005.
7
Consecutive victories by the suddenly red-hot Phoenix Coyotes, tied for longest streak of the season with the St. Louis Blues. The Coyotes are undefeated in nine and 8-1-2 in November, with two games remaining. It's their best November since 1998 when they went 10-0-1.
They said it
"Maybe during the warm-up seeing all the guys on the opposite side it started to feel more than just a normal game but I was able to keep my head pretty calm there. Getting a win against them was huge," Antti Niemi. The San Jose Sharks goaltender has the last laugh, defeating his ex-Chicago Blackhawks team 5-2 Wednesday night. The Blackhawks permitted Niemi to leave as a free agent following their Stanley Cup triumph last spring, and Neimi subsequently signed with their archrivals and primary contenders, the Sharks.
"I just knew he was talking about when I dove a couple of times when I played for him to draw penalties. … Back then I was in and out of the lineup, so that was one of my bonuses, drawing two or three penalties a game and getting on the power play. That's the way I would play," Marc Savard. Inching closer to a return to the Boston Bruins lineup, the forward acknowledges he intentionally fell to draw penalties in his early days of playing for the New York Rangers under Colin Campbell. Campbell's assertion that Savard was "a little faker" led to an e-mail scandal involving the NHL's senior vice-president of hockey operations last week.
O'Sullivan comes full circle
Patrick O'Sullivan will get a chance to revitalize his stalled NHL career back where it all began - sort of. O'Sullivan was the Minnesota Wild's second choice (56th overall) in the 2003 entry draft. But he never played a game for Minnesota. He was traded to the Los Angeles Kings in the Pavol Demitra deal, shuffled off to the Edmonton Oilers, then the Carolina Hurricanes, and is now back with the Wild after they claimed him on waivers this week. Minnesota hopes O'Sullivan can follow in the footsteps of Guillaume Latendresse, who made the most of his second chance when he joined the Wild from the Montreal Canadiens last year. O'Sullivan, who scored in his Wild debut, has had a steady scoring drop off in each of his four NHL seasons and essentially replaces Latendresse, who will miss the next three months recovering from two surgeries, one to his hip, the other to repair a sports hernia.
Staal cleared
New York Rangers defenceman Marc Staal escaped supplementary discipline for a crushing hit on Matt Stajan that left the Calgary Flames' centre woozy and struggling to get off the ice, on the grounds that it wasn't a blindside hit, even though there is contact between Staal's shoulder and Stajan's head. This is the grey area that the NHL's new head-shot rule left on the books - that Staal was already in the act of delivering the hit when Stajan turned at the last instant, changing the point of contact. Staal wasn't guilty of an infraction in the same way Mike Richards wasn't guilty last year with his hit on David Booth, but it doesn't change the injury to Stajan, who was concussed by the blow and was forced to miss Calgary's game against the New Jersey Devils on Wednesday. The next logical step: making every hit to the head illegal.
Snap shots
The St. Louis Blues hit a roadblock after a great start, largely because injuries sidelined two key forwards, T. J. Oshie and David Perron, along with workhorse defenceman Barrett Jackman, a former Calder Trophy winner. Jackman is now back after missing nine games because of a sprained knee, good news for goaltender Jaroslav Halak, whose numbers fell after Jackman's steadiness on the blueline went missing. … Strange to think that the best home-and-home series of the U.S. Thanksgiving weekend will take place between the Detroit Red Wings and Columbus Blue Jackets, but it's true. The teams were in a virtual dead heat after the Blue Jackets won their sixth in a row this week, defeating the hapless New York Islanders. Columbus took some heat for drafting Jakob Voracek with their first choice in their hometown draft a couple of years ago, but general manager Scott Howson's faith in him appears justified, as he's become one of the more dynamic and fun-to-watch scorers in the league.