Saturday night featured a busy slate of games with 26 of 30 teams in action. There’s a lot to break down so we’ll get right to it…

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In the earlier afternoon game, the Pittsburgh Penguins managed to defeat the Vancouver Canucks in a shootout despite getting handily out-played. That the Penguins victory came despite Marc-Andre Fleury doing Fleury-type things like letting goals in from center ice in addition to the club getting pulverized at evens is a credit to the talent of one Sidney Crosby (who had 3 assists).

With the win Fleury improved to 7-0-0 on the season, he’s stopping .930% of shots and .935% of even-strength shots (which isn’t actually too far outside what he managed over 20 starts in the regular season last year).

Fact is: Fleury was over praised a couple of years ago as an elite goalie when he was merely modestly above average. Then he was torn down after a couple of iffy playoff performances in consecutive seasons (despite remaining modestly above average). While perception has yo-yo’d, Fleury has remained modestly above average the entire time!

Nice to see an embattled guy like Fuery bounce back a bit, though I doubt he’ll sustain an elite save percentage over a full season as Pittsburgh’s starter.

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Sidney Crosby is off to a completely absurd start to the season with 17 points in 8 games. Making Crosby’s performance more impressive: he’s essentially Pittsburgh’s best defensive center. 

While scoring at a rate of two points per game in the early going this season, Crosby is also starting significantly fewer shifts in the offensive end than teammate Evgeni Malkin. Morever, Crosby is facing way tougher matchups. 

Consider Sunday’s game against the Canucks where Crosby spent twelve and a half minutes chasing around Henrik Sedin, while Malkin was hard-matched against Mike Santorelli. 

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Malkin fared pretty badly against a line featuring (mostly) Mike Santorelli, Jannik Hansen and Chris Higgins (with occasional shifts from Daniel Sedin). True story.

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Mike Santorelli probably won’t play with the Sedin twins too often going forward, but he looks to have cemented a spot for himself in Vancouver’s top-nine. If Jordan Schroeder – who was re-injured on Saturday – is back out of the lineup, then it’s all but certain that Santorelli will continue to log major minutes.

Beyond Vancouver’s need at Santorelli’s position, the reclamation project has played extraordinarily well in the Canucks’ first 9 games. On Saturday Santorelli’s line completely manhandled Malkin’s in their head-to-head matchup. We’re getting pretty close to the point where we reasonably start valuing him as a 40 point player this season…

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Jason Garrison is getting all of the attention, but how about the fantasy season Kevin Bieksa is putting together so far. Vancouver’s stanchion-loving defenseman out-produced Garrison easily this week, and the club has outscored opponents 8-2 in score close situations with Bieksa on the ice. Not too shabby.

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The Oilers were due to regress, and Devan Dubnyk especially, and that process began on Saturday apparently. The Senators outplayed the Oilers consistently, but an offensive outburst from the Nail Yakupov, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Jordan Eberle line powered Edmonton’s club to their second win of the season.

That line will need to keep up their strong play, especially if Taylor Hall is out of the lineup for the medium term.

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The Chicago Blackhawks have a habit of stepping on opponent’s throats, so perhaps Leafs fans can look at Saturday’s dismantling of the Toronto Maple Leafs in that context. Or, y’know, it’s that Toronto probably isn’t a playoff team, a likelihood that is easier to see after you’ve watched them spend an entire game without the puck…

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The Maple Leafs continue to be fascinating because of their speed, and the quality of their against the grain attack. Between that, their goaltending and their special teams dominance, the Leafs have the ingredients in place to outperform their underlying numbers. Also, it’ll certainly help when they get David Clarkson and Nikolai Kulemin back in the lineup.

But how anyone thinks this team has the horses down the middle or on the back-end is beyond me.

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Here’s an interesting deployment note, and something that might be worth keeping an eye on for fans of Central Division teams: the Blackhawks hard-matched Jonathan Toews against the Phil Kessel line on Saturday, but used Seabrook and Keith primarily to battle the Bolland/Lupul group. 

In the past, the Keith-Seabrook-Toews axis has been used to stop the top offensive lines of Blackhawks opponents. But Phil Kessel – one of the most dangerous players in the NHL by any measure – faced the Hjalmarsson, Oduya, Toews axis, which is odd to say the least (though Hjalmarsson and Oduya acquired themselves very well). 

I’ll be curious to see if Coach Q continues to use his top-pairing and top defensive center against different lines as rigidly against other clubs going forward…

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The Ottawa Senators have looked woeful, and the Minnesota Wild have looked offensively challenged. Ignore those mirages, both clubs will start winning (and in Minnesota’s case scoring) in short-order.

The Senators were flat out better than the Oilers, but just couldn’t beat Dubnyk. Honestly, production aside, it looks to me like both Cory Conacher and Kyle Turris have taken a significant step this season.

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The same goes for the Wild and Tim Thomas on Saturday. Minnesota also lost despite outplaying Tampa Bay this week, and were blown out in Toronto in a game which actually looked a bit similar to what Chicago did to the Maple Leafs on Saturday night (results aside, of course).

That Koivu line is shooting an absurdly low percentage, and Charlie Coyle will be returning from injury shortly. With the way the Wild are controling games and generating looks, the goals will come.

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There were some fine plays on Saturday night, but for my money Seth Jones’ game winner was the finest:

Jones now has a couple of goals and four points in 9 games. He’s not hitting enough to really have fantasy value in most leagues in my view, but he’s playing major minutes and putting up some points so he’s worth keeping an eye on.

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I’m just so impressed by this goal and Jones’ overall level of play. Jones is a teenager, a rookie, and he’s playing his off-side to begin the season (he’s usually a right defenseman, but has been on Shea Weber’s left-side). That a player as young as Jones has the balls to jump into the play like this late in the game, and the skill level to deke out an opposing goalie before beating him cleanly is impressive enough. To do it on your off-side while logging top-pairing minutes? Seth Jones is pretty good.

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The Avalanche continued to exceed expectations by handling the Jacksonville Jaguars of hockey (the Buffalo Sabres) a 4-2 defeat on Saturday. The Avs also continue to get .950+ goaltending at even-strength. I’m really not a believer in what they’ve got brewing in Denver, though I am impressed with Roy’s coaching (and with Andre Benoit’s emergence).

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Dallas Stars goaltender Kari Lehtonen may make his regular season debut on Sunday, after practicing with the team on Saturday. As a Lehtonen fantasy owner, and just for the sake of a Stars team that has been pretty exciting to watch this season: thank goodness.