Sidney Crosby's 2015-16 campaign is a tale of two separate seasons or if you want to be more specific the tale of a coaching change.
Sidney Crosby is back to his fun scoring ways after a miserable (by his standards) start.
I decided to take all the players who are currently ahead of Sidney Crosby in the scoring race and split their years by the December 12th firing date of Mike Johnston. These points/60 stats are all situations.
Sid is near the bottom of this list and Evgeni Malkin is hovering in that middle ground. Patrick Kane and the Stars duo are getting after it to start the season.
Post coaching change for Pittsburgh:
Crosby has skyrocketed up the chart while Tyler Seguin (and Benn to a lesser extent)has cooled off immensely. Patrick Kane is still chugging along at an incredibly high rate of scoring. Evgeni Malkin is still near the middle but he has moved his way up a little bit. Evgeny Kuznetsov is on fire and a very worthy replacement for Alexander Ovechkin at the All Star Game (more on that later).
This date is rather arbitrary for all the other non Penguins in the chart(s) but I just wanted to highlight how different things have been after the coaching change for Sidney Crosby. It is nice to have Sid back.
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Goaltender Matt Murray has removed himself from the AHL All Star Game citing injury as the reason.
Penguins prospect Matt Murray pulls out of AHL All-Star Game https://t.co/hXReyiqQR0 pic.twitter.com/nilnYHDnt9
— Pittsburgh PG (@PittsburghPG) January 29, 2016
Jim Rutherford described it as "precaution with an injury".
Nothing else to go on at the moment. Hopefully nothing too serious because he is the #2 goalie in the organization and would take over if anything happened to Marc-Andre Fleury.
Speaking of all star game injuries the NHL lost both Alexander Ovechkin and Jonathan Toews to their game. Both players will be suspended one game for missing this weekend. Both players are claiming injury.
This rule is ridiculous. No team wants their dinged up super stars playing in an exhibition mid-season when they could be getting rest.
In all honesty Kris Letang shouldn't be going either. He has missed practice as recently as a few days ago because of a nagging (hand?) injury. He has even missed game action. He could definitely use some time off, but won't be getting it.
We're looking for Jagr. He's late. He's "somewhere in Nashville." Not making this up.
— On The Forecheck (@OnTheForecheck) January 29, 2016
Thanks for reading!