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Somebody break up the Baby Pens! The Penguins beat the Minnesota Wild convincingly with a score of 5-2 in Matt Cooke’s return to Pittsburgh. The Penguins have now won 6 games in a row and 11 out of their last 12 games.
The Crosby line took the lead on Thursday night as Crosby, Kunitz, and Dupuis combined for 5 points. Chris Kunitz scored twice and now has his 4th consecutive 20 goal season. Currently the only Canadian hockey player with more goals this season than Kunitz is Corey Perry with 22 goals. Who is the next best Canadian in goals? Sidney Crosby with 19… #Sochi
Crosby had 2 assists and still remains ahead of Blackhawks star Patrick Kane by 5 points. Evgeni Malkin who has been out of action with injury now trails by 10 points and his Art Ross aspirations are probably over at this point.
Former Penguins 3rd liner Matt Cooke had 16:11 of ice time and most of it was uneventful. Cooke’s Wild team got off to a miserable start by allowing the 1st goal of the game less than 1 minute into game action. According to the trends of both teams that was a big deal. Wild Hockey Buzz writer Tony Dean wrote yesterday that the Penguins were 20-2 when scoring the 1st goal and the Wild are 14-1-2. The Penguins are now 21-2 when scoring 1st.
Here are the game highlights:
And here is the amazing Crosby assist because it deserves it’s own clip:
Here is the possession chart:
Penguins rookie defenseman Olli Maatta has been getting love from Penguins fan all season long but just recently he is starting to catch the eyes of the national press. Maatta was the subject of an NHL.com article written by Tal Pinchevsky which you can find
here
Each passing game Olli Maatta has been given more responsibility and right now he is playing top pairing minutes with Matt Niskanen due to all the injuries to the Penguins defense.
Not only is Maatta playing top minutes, but he is thriving with his newfound ice time and responsibility. In the first 27 games of Maatta’s career he had 4 points. In his last 10 games he has 2 goals and 5 assists for 7 points including his 2nd multi point game of his career against the Minnesota Wild (2 assists).
Is Olli Maatta strong arming his way into Calder consideration?
Probably not. It is going to take a lot of things going right for Maatta to realistically have a chance to win the Calder Trophy. Maatta will have to continue playing top pairing minutes even after Letang, Scuderi, Martin, and Orpik return to the team. The likelihood of that happening is very slim. Maatta would also need to keep up his offensive production, because like it or lump it, offensive production is the main facet of Calder voting.
If you need proof just look at last year’s Calder voting and how Jonas Brodin was treated after playing the entire season as a top pairing defenseman for the Wild. Here is the voting break down based on the amount of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th place votes they received:
Jonas Brodin’s offensive output was very similar to the amount of production that Maatta has had so far this year. In 45 games last year Brodin had 2 goals and 9 assists for 11 points. So far this year Maatta has played in 37 games and has 3 goals and 8 assists for 11 points. Maatta is slightly ahead of Brodin’s offensive pace but he will not receive top pairing minutes for the remainder of the year for the 4 reasons listed above.
Maatta has played in 37 games and that means the magic number of 39 games is fastly approaching for him. The significance of Maatta playing in 39 games this year is that he will be one year closer to UFA status. There is no chance that Maatta does not hit that landmark.
The Penguins are set to play the Calgary Flames at 1 PM tomorrow as they look to extend their winning streak to 7 games. Will Geno be back?
Thanks for reading!
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