Johnny Hat-Trick, Craig Smith heating up, Holtby is cooking and more…

 

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Johnny Gaudreau, we are not worthy! He scored three unanswered last night for the natural hat-trick to bring his team back from a 3-0 deficit to force overtime, where they won to end an eight-game losing skid. Two of those goals came in the final 2:12 with the net empty. Impressive stuff.

 

Now, the caveat, the third goal was a total fluke as a pass to no one bounced in off Drew Doughty's skate. But let's not discriminate, the Flames certainly aren't. Gotta be good to be luck and lucky to be good, right?

 

Gaudreau has proven fairly slump proof since that healthy scratch way back in October. Even during this losing skid Gaudreau managed three goals and four points in eight losses. If that's as bad as it gets, Gaudreau's going to put up some numbers.

 

Mark Giordano hit double-digit goals scoring the game-winner and added an earlier assist. I think Giordano is great and all but I made the case for selling high on him last week and I still think that's good advice. Better to sell too early than too late right?

 

Finally Jonas Hiller catches a break. He stopped 31 of 34 last night to keep his team in it when it could have been a route. He gets rewarded with a win after too many tough losses in a row. Looks like he has won some rope for the starting spot but let's not kid ourselves, this is a back-and-forth affair between Hiller and Karri Ramo.

 

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Tough to get down on the Kings for that one. I mean, they got hit by a pint-sized freight train after dominating much of the game. Sometimes, them's the breaks.

Drew Doughty, Anze Kopitar and Marian Gaborik all recorded a point each to keep their hot streaks going, which might be what is most important here seeing asJonathan Quick has been so good this season that he can probably afford this loss.

 

Having said that, Quick has allowed three goals or more in five of his last six starts, which is somewhat disconcerting. Adding to that is the fact that the lone outlier was a win against Arizona where he allowed two goals on just 17 shots. We'll see if some Christmas cheer can't end Quick's cold spell.

 

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After such a hot run Sergei Bobrovsky was probably due for a stinker or two but woof, last night was tough. Bobrovsky got chased early in the third allowing four goals on 30 shots. This doesn't turn me off of him at all though. I've been championing Bobrovsky's second half potential all year. Even the best goalies have off nights. As the Jackets get healthier Bobrovsky just looks better and better.

 

It wasn't all horrible for Columbus last night, as Alexander Wennberg scored his first career goal.

 

Wennberg had been skating on the third line all night but earned a turn on a garbage time power play by drawing the penalty resulting in said power play. Wennberg's chance came at the expense of Jeremy Morin who had been up on the top line and top power play unit the past couple of games. These are the make-or-break moments for Morin, now on his second team.

 

Morin will still get plenty of chances both here and at another couple of stops. It takes a while to truly play your way out of the league, especially when you are as proven a scorer as Morin is. But this is a golden opportunity with all the injuries for Columbus and had he hit, well he may never have looked back.

 

Look for Wennberg to get a shot on the top line next time out, though I don't think he's ready enough to take advantage of it himself.

 

All of this is possible because of continued injury woes for the Blue Jackets with Nathan Horton's career potentially over, Scott Hartnell out and now Boone Jenner is hurting again. There's an opportunity for someone to step up here. That probably just means extended awesomeness from Nick Foligno (who still has the percentages working against him) but could mean a young gun shows us something.

 

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Hot streak happening here for Craig Smith. He has scored three goals and four points in the last two games with seven SOG in each of those games. He's now up to 10 goals on the season, looking good for something resembling a repeat of last season's 24 goals and 52 points, depending on how the hot streaks break for him.

 

The big reason for this streak is getting minutes up on the top line with Filip Forsberg and Mike Ribeiro with James Neal missing the previous contest against Minnesota and skating on the third line last night. We'll see how long that lasts but considering Smith had been scoreless with just four SOG over his previous five games, I'd say we are all hoping this lineup arrangement holds for Smith.

 

Check out this saucy pass from Ribeiro:

 

 

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Holtby's performance ends the Senators' hot streak but not for lack of effort by the Sens. Their big guns were at it all night trying to crack Holtby to no avail. That was Clarke MacArthur getting stoned above, now watch Kyle Turris get similar treatment:

 

 

Turris, MacArthur, Bobby Ryan, Erik Karlsson and Mika Zibanejad all fired at least four SOG apiece last night. They were cooled for a night but not necessarily for good.

 

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So I promised a closer look at the Panthers to help deduce what's going on with Aleksander Barkov and of course last night he scores his first point since returning from injury. To be honest, I barely noticed Barkov until he scored the shootout winner. It was his linemate, Jimmy Hayes, who stole the show with a pair of goals on five shots and added six hits.

 

Hayes has almost matched last year's output of 11 goals and 18 points (in 53 games) in half as many games. He's clearly got a pro game, with upside if he ever gets to be used in that net-front role on a good team. The good news is that Hayes is seeing a couple more minutes per game here in December than he was in November, a good sign for continued production even if that boost in minutes has actually come with a decline in production.

 

One of the things I noticed was how well the Panthers moved the puck on their power play. Officially the Panthers' power play went 0/3 but they scored their first goal just seconds after one penalty expired, making it essentially a power-play score.

 

Looking at the Panthers' numbers for the season, they are generating shots at a bottom-10 rate on their power play so that helps explain how they can have such poor success on the whole, ranking third worst in efficiency. I thought they looked good last night but maybe that was more a result of the Penguins (normally an excellent penalty-killing team) missing so many regular penalty killers due to the mumps than anything the Panthers have been doing.

 

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