I was reading over some of last night’s results and I thought: wow, Ryan Kesler’s putting up points again. While I questioned his “elite” star power when I heard that the two-way center was named the NHL 2K11 cover star, it sure seems like he’s beginning to earn that status. He’s been on a hot streak lately and it got me to thinking: which players are on the biggest hot streaks since the trade deadline/Olympics finished?
Using Yahoo’s software to group the top players for the month of March, I think this will give an interesting (though overly simplistic) idea of some of the players who are achieving the most since the over-sized candles were blown out in Vancouver and players found a new home.
Top 10 skaters “overall”
- Daniel Sedin (apparently hits aren’t a big factor in Yahoo’s ratings)
- Paul Stastny
- Mikael Samuelsson (take that, whoever chose team Sweden!)
- Chris Stewart (Colorado’s under the radar power forward)
- Brooks Laich (not sure how he got on here with 9 points, but it’s hard not to “Laich” the choice. Hey-oh!)
- Peter Mueller
- Mike Richards
- Steven Stamkos
- Henrik Sedin (the twins can never be too far apart, can they?)
- Ryan Kesler
Top 5 goal scorers
- Mikael Samuelsson - 9
- Chris Stewart - 8
- Simon Gagne - 8
- Lee Stempniak - 7
- Steven Stamkos - 7
Top 5 assist leaders
- Daniel Sedin - 12
- Paul Stastny - 11
- Henrik Sedin - 11
- Bryan McCabe (!!!) - 10
- Patrick Kane - 10
Top 5 goalies (according to whatever Yahoo! looks at - probably GAA, save %, SO, wins)
- Ilya Bryzgalov
- Pekka Rinne
- Jose Theodore (time to get that contract, Theo!)
- Jaroslav Halak
- Craig Anderson
And, finally, the top 5 in points scored on the powerplay
- Nicklas Lidstrom - 7
- Paul Stastny - 7
- Mike Richards - 6
- Brad Richards - 6
- Brooks Laich - 6
(Weird side note: every stat category had a clear top 5. Every time I got to a sixth player, they had one point lower. The lack of ties strikes me as very unusual. Sorry, I know you don’t care ... I’ll go back to the basement.)