15

Filip Forsberg

Nsh

13

15

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:

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.