Hurricanes Forward Brock McGinn Awarded NHL’s Third Star of the Week
Carolina Hurricanes forward Brock McGinn was selected as the NHL’s 3rd Star of this past week.
It was a great week for the Carolina Hurricanes and an even better week for Brock McGinn. The rookie put together a career week, scoring 7 points in only 3 games played. That performance caught the league’s notice. He was awarded the league’s third star of the week. He sits with pretty impressive company next to the first star Nikolas Backstrom and second star Brad Marchand.
McGinn’s insane run this week started back against Columbus last Tuesday. He record his first goal of the week when Matt Tennyson found McGinn parked in front of the crease. McGinn won the battle with the defenseman and knocked the puck in through the five hole.
That was only a taste of what was to come. McGinn scored again in the next game against the Sabres. Elias Lindholm made an incredible couple of stick handling and shielding plays on the boards and then threw the puck on net. McGinn pounced and roofed the puck on the backhand to score on the rebound. He wasn’t done there. In the final 10 minutes, McGinn trailed the play, but found some space and scored in the dead slot off a nice Jordan Staal pass.
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With 3 goals in just 2 games, it was already a special week for McGinn, but he didn’t stop there. He added another goal and 3 assists in the 7-4 win over the Islanders on Saturday. Much like the first of his goals against the Sabres, McGinn was the beneficiary of some great work by Elias Lindholm to score his 4th of the week. Of his 3 assists, 2 were an absolute masterclass of passing. One was a backhander across the slot to an open Lindholm. The other was a sick saucer pass through legs and sticks that landed right on the tape of Brett Pesce who then scored.
Together with Staal and Lindholm, McGinn is on fire right now. That line was the catalyst for so much positive play on both ends of the ice for the Hurricanes all week. This line has stepped up while others haven’t found as much success. It’s a good thing to see if you’re a Canes fan. Carolina looks like they can potentially run up to 3 scoring lines.
For McGinn, a breakout was coming. Even though he wasn’t scoring before this week, he was a presence on the ice. You could see his willingness to take hits, drive the net, and forecheck like a madman. He was finally rewarded. All of his goals were because he won battles around the net. That is something he does extremely well, especially for a smaller player.
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What wasn’t expected was his exquisite passing ability. The two primary assists he had on Saturday were some of best passes made by a Hurricane this season, maybe even in the last couple seasons. To have the vision and determination make such wonderful passes like that is special. Hopefully there is more of this to come from McGinn. On a more personal note for McGinn, he now is the leading scoring McGinn brother in the NHL this season, now leading his brother Jamie by a point.