The Montreal Canadiens really couldn't offer us a better week of hockey than the one they just gave us just before Christmas.
The Habs obtained three victories, including two total dominations, scored 14 goals, allowed five and gave us great emotions throughout the week.
It was really pleasant and fun to watch CH this week, as the team really played some excellent hockey.
Well, I know, it was against the Buffalo Sabers and the Detroit Red Wings (2X), but still, CH won those games.
Last night, the CH's great 5-1 victory against the Red Wings allowed Martin St-Louis' troops to move up to 6th place in their division and to get within seven points of the Ottawa Senators and the last place giving access to the series.
However, what attracts attention, well before the ranking among CH fans, are the performances and individual statistics of the players.
And the ones that are most striking are those concerning a certain Patrik Laine.
With his 8th power play goal last night, the Finnish sniper now finds himself 2nd in the ENTIRE NHL for power play goals since the start of the season.
Only Brayden Point has more than Laine with 11, and three players (Andrei Svechnikov, Brady Tkachuk and Kyle Connor) also have eight tied for CH number 92.
It's completely crazy that Laine is already in 2nd place, even though he has only played nine games this season.
If he continues at the same pace, he will catch up to Brayden Point fairly quickly and take the lead in this stat.
What's even crazier about Laine is that all his goals were scored this month, in December.
And so, in the entire month, virtually every team in the NHL didn't even score as many goals as Laine on the power play.
Indeed, with eight goals, Laine has more goals in AN in December than 26 teams in the National Hockey League.
In 3rd place, we can replace “Montréal Canadiens” with Patrik Laine, given that Laine has counted all of CH's power play goals since he returned to the game.
In short, Laine completely changed the Habs and brought a breath of fresh air to the locker room.
You can see it in the players' faces how they themselves are impressed by Laine and so happy when he scores.
What also helps a lot is that Laine seems very humble. He doesn't get a big head in any way and just does his job by scoring goals.
Even as yesterday, he was looking more to feed his teammates than anything else in the five-man attack.
On his goal, he is clearly trying to reach Juraj Slafkovsky, but Ben Chiarot deflects the puck just before.
And later in the game, Laine attempted the same pass again for Slaf, as well as looking for Cole Caufield throughout the power play.
We see that Laine does not want to steal the spotlight from anyone, and above all, that he respects the fact that Caufield was the club's scorer before he returned to the game.
Laine took Caufield's spot on the left side of the power play, and since Laine returned, Caufield has just one goal in nine games.
Despite everything, Caufield has eight points during this same sequence.
In short, Laine clearly wanted to see Caufield score, but that will be for another time, hoping that Caufield will start finding the back of the net again soon.
In Burst
– We wish Anthony Marcotte a good recovery.
– Bravo !
– Ouch.
– Indeed.
