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.