Early Season Statement Makers
There is no hockey family I love more than the Pesce Family. Considering Brett Pesce is the only one playing at the NHL level in that family, this is high praise. His ability to shutdown offenses and keep the puck moving and away from our net is not praised enough. Especially short handed.
Can we take a moment to appreciate that he played a total of 2:10 short handed against Tampa Bay and kept them without so much as a shot? 2:10 is also the amount of power play time they had in the second period. The period they registered zero shots thanks to this defense. With Pesce leading the way in shorthanded time. Oh he also scored that game.
Petr Mrazek‘s Numbers would suggest that he doesnn’t belong this high up on my power rankings. After all in two games he has allowed six goals and has a save percentage of 0.878%. But he does have two wins. All’s well that ends well right? In this case the answer is yes. While he has allowed six goals he has only faced 49 shots in 127 minutes of game time.
You really can’t blame him if he only faces 13 (13!!) shots for the entirety of a game. Seriously, warn the man before you do that so he can catch up on his reading. That leaves 36 shots faced against Montreal which only found the net thrice for a nice 0.917 sv% . Not to mention he didn’t had a perfect shutout during the shootout. When it really mattered.
Oh captain my captain! Jordan Staal has finally (for the second time?) earned the “C” to lead the Carolina Hurricanes. He has taken that leadership onto the ice. With a goal and two assists he is just shy of a point per game four games deep into the season. Whats more impressive is his +4 rating. That just means his presence has established a need to score.
And score his teammates have. Makes you wonder what the ceiling for this season will be for him. If he stays healthy he just might beat his career high of 50 points. That would be something to see this season. For now he sits eighth in my power rankings.
Dzingel bells, Dzingel Bells, Dzingel all the way. Oh what fun it is to watch Ryan Dzingel score consistently. HEY!
Well we are still a few months away from Christmas season, even if your local dollar store seems to disagree with me on that, but Ryan Dzingel has already made his mark on this team. Two goals back to back against Florida and assists on important goals by Erik Haula has him sitting at a goal per game so far.
This guy was the forgotten Blue Jacket that walked away from Columbus. Everyone is talking about Artemi Panarin, Sergei Bobrovsky, and Matt Duchene. But Dzingel is keeping pace with them so far this season. And we all just saw officer Bob get stunned out of a game just a few days ago.