Who’s Hot?

raine salminen

2014-11-25

JakubVoracek

This week, the Eastern Edge takes a look at forwards and defensemen who have been hot over the past month.

Is there still anyone questioning whether the league’s top scorer heading into last night’s action, Jakub Voracek, can hang with the big dogs? Two weeks ago, he was scoring at a 129-point pace. He’s really starting to fall off the pace and now is “only” on pace for 125 points with 29 points in 19 games. Voracek has more multi-point (10) efforts than single-point games (7) and has been blanked only twice so far this season. Over the past month, no one had more points than Voracek’s 20 and he led in points per game (1.67) over that stretch as well, ahead of Sidney Crosby (1.31), Claude Giroux (1.25), Mark Giordano (1.23) and Vladimir Tarasenko (1.20). His points-per-game average isn’t exactly fading fast, but he’s not going to record 120 points this season. Even if he were to score at a point-per-game pace from here on out, he’d still finish with more than 90 points.

Any talk about hot players right now has to include Vladimir Tarasenko. Only Voracek had more points over the last month than Tarasenko’s 18. His points-per-game average of 1.20, puts him in the company of Crosby, Giroux and Voracek. Riding on Tarasenko’s rather large coattails right now is Jori Lehtera. Over the past month, Lehtera had as many points as Crosby and Steven Stamkos, which isn’t bad company to keep. Tarasenko and Lehtera led the NHL in plus/minus during the past month with a plus-13 and plus-12 respectively. Lehtera has 14 points in his last 11 games with points in 10 of those contests.

Filip Forsberg

Nsh

Mark Giordano stands head and shoulders above the next defenseman with 16 points in 13 games over the last month. Overall, he has 23 points in 22 games this campaign. Combine that with the 47 points in 64 games he had last season, a 60-point pace, and it seems that only an injury will prevent Giordano from hitting north of 60 points this year. He’s going to garner serious Norris trophy consideration with how he’s playing right now.

After Giordano, the next highest point producing defensemen over the last month are Cody Franson (12), Sami Vatanen (12), Tyson Barrie (11), Erik Johnson (11) and Justin Faulk (11). Franson had his nine-game point streak broken last Saturday. Vatanen has 11 points, including five via the power play, in his last nine contests.

When you look at points-per-game averages, Giordano (1.23) and Franson (0.86) were the only defensemen to have the same or better points-per-game than the Stars rookie John Klingberg during the past month. He played seven games, recording a points-per-game of 0.86. He has six points in his last four matches and is starting to get more ice time with the Stars top man advantage unit. The bad news is that in most keeper leagues, you may already be too late to board this train, but depending on your league settings, he might not be a bad option even in one year formats.

The fifth best points-per-game average over the last month by a defenseman belonged to Panthers rookie Aaron Ekblad, who scored at a 0.75 rate over 12 games. After getting off to a slow start with two points in his first eight NHL contests, Ekblad has nine points in his last 10 games and is a plus-four over that period.

Leading the plus/minus parade amongst rearguards over the last month are Alexei Emelin and Christian Ehrhoff, both at plus-nine, with Franson and Giordano next at plus-8 respectively. Up front, after Tarasenko and Lehtera, comes a couple of Preds, Filip Forsberg and James Neal at plus-11. Kucherov and Mike Ribeiro were plus-10 and Carl Hagelin, Ondrej Palat and Claude Giroux all were plus-nine over the past 30 days.

Here’s a look at the top bad boys over the last month:

Position	Player	Team	Penalty Minutes
LW/RW	Steve Downie	Pit	62
D	Eric Gryba	Ott	41
LW	Antoine Roussel	Dal	37
RW	Derek Dorsett	Van	36
D	Mark Borowiecki	Ott	34
D/RW	Dustin Byfuglien	Wpg	31
RW	Adam Burish	SJ	31
D	Matt Greene	LA	30
RW	Tim Jackman	Ana	30

I’ll finish with shots on goal. It should come as no surprise that Alex Ovechkin led the way with 65 over the last month, followed by Max Pacioretty with 57, then Blake Wheeler, Tyler Seguin, Joe Pavelski and Claude Giroux each had 56 shots on goal. The top shooting defenseman over the last month is no real surprise either; Erik Karlsson had 53, then Oliver Ekman-Larsson (51), Kris Letang (50) and Alex Edler (49) were next best.