Pittsburgh Penguins 2-4 New Jersey Devils
The match at PPG Paints Arena was one of the most exciting New Year’s Eve game days in the NHL. Pittsburgh and New Jersey are having a good season, making their way into the playoff zone and competing in the Capital Division. But at the same time, both are frankly unsuccessful at the moment.
The Penguins have lost three times in a row and have only had one win in their last five games. The Devils had two losses in a row, but in the last nine games, Lindy Ruff’s young and daring team, which started the season quite cheerfully, only managed to win once. The situation had to be urgently broken.
But for the guests, it all started extremely unsuccessfully. The Devils had an advantage in the first period, but in one of his attacks Evgeni Malkin took the puck from the defender on the blue line, fled to meet Vitek Vanechek and made it into the top nine brilliantly!
For Malkin, it was his 12th goal of the season, but most importantly, he scored his 1180th (456 + 724) in the NHL, bypassing Sergei Fedorov, with whom he shared the second place in the history of Russian strikers.
Only Alexander Ovechkin is ahead on the list of snipers in the world’s strongest league in history, chasing Wayne Gretzky. But it will be unrealistic to take the captaincy of Washington as he has 1452 points and continues his career.
At the beginning of the second, Jack Hughes, the young leader of the “devils”, struck the balance by transforming the majority, but then Jeff Carter brought the “penguins” back into the lead.
But lately, Mike Sullivan’s team has been bad at getting the upper hand. The peak came in the previous game, where Pittsburgh was leading 4-0 in Detroit, but managed to squander all the advantage and accepted in overtime (4:5 Overtime).
So New Jersey was able to turn everything around and win the victory, and in regular time. The key to success was the end of the second period and the opponents working in special teams. Pittsburgh managed to not use any of the nine majority attempts at that meeting, and also missed out by having a player surplus with 38 seconds left in Niko Hishir’s second period.
By this time, the scoreboard was already even, because just minutes ago, defender Dougie Hamilton punched Tristan Jerry.
Interestingly, Hamilton, who assisted Hughes for the first goal in this match, recorded the 400th in his career and the 401th with the abandoned puck. It’s also 18-0-1 if New Jersey leads after two periods this season.
The Devils’ minimal advantage was retained until the very end, but with five seconds left, Hughes scored a double and set the final score.
Carolina Hurricanes 4-0 Florida Panthers
Whoever is doing well, the Carolinas are already considered one of the Stanley Cup contenders, but have now gained so much momentum that they are confidently leading the league.
The Hurricanes came close to encountering “Florida” who was strong but neither wobbly nor tumbling in a 15-game streak with score and nine consecutive wins.
The first is the longest among all teams in the current season, and the second is a repeat of the club record. Well, now it’s new and round – ten wins in a row.
This time, Hurricane’s goal was not Petr Kochetkov, but Finn Antti Raanta, who played great and protected without conceding a goal. It’s also his second “close” in a row, and since Kochetkov has done the same this season, Carolina is the third team in league history to achieve such a feat in the first 36 games of the season. Los Angeles last did this in the 2013/14 season, and before that in the Montreal 1932/33 season.
Additionally, Raanta has not conceded 17 goals in the past two seasons, and the Hurricanes are the fifth team in the NHL in a ten-game or more winning streak without conceding four goals.
At the gates of the Panthers, Spencer Knight also played great and took 30 shots, but the majority host’s game decided everything. The first three goals flew to the gates of “Florida” just as the opponent was selling too much.
In the second case, Russia’s Andrey Svechnikov prevailed and hit the target with a stylish wrist shot in the starting nine. The striker, the best sniper of the season, has already scored his 19th.
Seattle Craken 2-7 Edmonton Oilers
“Edmonton” won a super big away victory with “Seattle” and knocked out their opponent from the playoff zone.
Russian Klim Kostin, who has been playing for the Oilers since this season, scored a couple of goals. He currently has four goals in the championship.
But she did not manage to become the main character. The match was 2+1, for example Zach Hyman scored, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins had four assists and the captain of the “oilers” again showed that he is a true king.
Thanks to Connor McDavid, he had one goal and four assists in this fight. Thus, he scored 70 (32+38) points in only 37 games in the current championship. Since the 1990/91 season, only Mario Lemieux (three times) and Jaromir Jagr have done it faster, and Adam Oates and Wayne Gretzky have done it once again at the same pace.
And this is the victory of “Edmonton” in the match, which, due to his injury, missed the team’s second-place superstar, Leon Draisaitl.
Anaheim Ducks 1-6 Nashville Predators
Russia’s Yakov Trenin has also scored four goals this season and played well in a foreign territory after a kick-off. What’s more, his shot from an uncomfortable hand also won for Nashville, after which the team literally smashed Anaheim, the main foreigner of the season, in the remaining time.