Most productive player
In four games, Brandon Hagel managed to maintain a record of two points per game. The Tampa Bay forward helped his side to wins over Montreal, Detroit and twice against Ottawa with four goals and the same number of assists. What's more, he managed four points (2+2) in Saturday's 6-3 defeat to the Red Wings.
Hagel also improved his +/- significantly, adding ten positive points. He scored the winning goal against Ottawa, his third of the season. This tied his season high, a number he has achieved three times in his career.
Goaltender of the week
When Thatcher Demko gets going, he's hard to top. Colorado sure found that was the case last week, failing to score past Vancouver's goalie with 25 shots as the San Diego native kept his first clean sheet of the year.
The San Jose Sharks subsequently beat him just once with 33 attempts. Against Toronto on Saturday, he stopped six shots before getting subbed out due to injury. That pulled his goals-against average down to an impressive 0.46 in less than three games.
Moment of the week
The shootout has been a part of the NHL since the 2005/06 season and it has a new ruler, thirty-six-year-old American forward Patrick Kane from Detroit.
When the three-time Stanley Cup winner decided the match against Seattle (5-4), he scored shootout goal number 53 of his career and leapfrogged his long-time partner Jonathan Toews in the all-time standings.
"I had a little bit of an advantage, Lucas Raymond was in front of me, so I could see how the goalie was going to react," Kane told NHL.com after the match.
"I figured this time I'd go straight ahead, slow it down a little bit and see if he's going to pull back for a shot or if he stays out, I'd try for a backhand," he added, describing his record-setting goal in Joey Daccord's net.
There are just three other active players currently in the top 10 of all-time shootout goals besides Kane, TJ Oshie of Washington (49), Sidney Crosby of Pittsburgh (46) and Anze Kopitar of Los Angeles (43).
Stat of the week
The 2003 draft still has several representatives in the league and one of them is defenseman Ryan Suter. The St. Louis Blues veteran played his 1,500th game on Saturday against Chicago (6-5), becoming only the seventh defenseman in history to do so.
Overall, only 22 hockey players and only two Americans have reached that mark before him. He is the only one among active players.
Social media highlight
When goaltender Martin Jones won the Stanley Cup with Los Angeles in 2014, there was an eight-year-old in the crowd as he celebrated with the Cup in Vancouver. An unknown kid at the time, he is now the last No. 1 draft pick, Macklin Celebrini of San Jose.
And does he remember anything from the event? "Not really, I was young. I don't even know how I got there," laughed one of the Calder Trophy candidates for Rookie of the Year.
Photo of the week
One more memory this week, Ottawa forward David Perron showed how time flies in a photo. He entered the NHL in 2007 in the colours of St. Louis and met ageing forward Keith Tkachuk and his sons Brady and Matthew.
Both are now league stars and Brady is the captain of the Senators. How crazy that he and Perron play on the same team all these years later...
Ladislav Smid's take
"We have the 4 Nations Face-Off coming up. I think it's an artificial thing, but it will be great for the fans because the best players will be there. Although of course not all of them...
"What about the ones who won't be playing? There will definitely be rest on the schedule, which is an advantage at this stage of the season - especially if someone has an injury.
"Some players who were called up for one of the four countries will not go either, perhaps because of minor injuries, and I believe their employers will be very relieved.
"Anyway, whoever will be there is already a serious hockey star. Plus, they're all representing their countries, it's going to be very high-profile, and everybody's going to give it their all on the ice.
"Plus there are two big rivalries, USA vs Canada and Finland vs Sweden. I'm looking forward to some great hockey, although it's hard to say how much everyone will go all out because it's not the Olympics, which has a huge heritage.
"You can see that the NHL is trying to hype the tournament a lot, not to mention hosting it. There's a huge amount of money involved! And it's hard to say yet if everything will be repeated, that will be evaluated after the tournament.
"I have to add that I'm probably looking forward to it more than the All-Star Game because it hasn't been the same the last few years. So we'll see."
