The Great Combinator: Malkin's four assists helped Pittsburgh break off a series of six defeats

Four Malkin Points

Pittsburgh on its ice broke off a series of six defeats and defeated Ottawa in the NHL regular season match. Wards Mike Sullivan scored seven goals into the gates of one of the main outsiders of the league, while missing three times. At the same time, Evgeni Malkin was involved in four goals of the hosts, who came out on 66th place in the ranking of scorers in the history of the National Hockey League.

For Penguins, the end of February was a failure. More recently, the team was considered as one of the contenders for first place in the Eastern Conference and the Presidential Cup, but very quickly rolled back to fifth place. The reason is half a dozen consecutive setbacks in which the five-time Stanley Cup winners looked extremely helpless. So, Sidney Crosby, Eugene Malkin and their partners were able to distinguish themselves only eight times, while they missed three times more. Moreover, in the last two meetings, “Pittsburgh” lost to the teams from the basement of the standings - “San Jose” and “Anaheim”.

Hockey players from Pennsylvania did not make a third mistake, easily sorting out rivals from the capital of Canada. Already in the first period, they forced Craig Anderson to surrender three times, and in each of the following they scored twice more. Malkin, however, assumed the role of conductor of attacks and scored at least four points for the second time this season. The last time he succeeded in the confrontation with Vancouver in late November. Then Eugene burst into doubles and three assists.

Already at the 48th second, Malkin constructed the first goal attack, and John Marino completed it. The Russian noticed that the partner is without guardianship near the blue line and instantly made a transfer to him. The 22-year-old hockey player was not taken aback and sent the puck into the Senators goal net with an accurate wrist throw. The last time the defender appeared on the ice in mid-February and quite effectively celebrated his return.

However, this was only the beginning. Malkin got into assistant poker, and his teammate Brian Rast made the most of it. He spends the best season of his career, for which he owes much to the Russian. That evening, he broke out a hat-trick and each time was different after the timely and accurate passes of the Russian.

First, Eugene brought him to a clean throw during the numerical advantage, and then twice helped to prove himself in equal compositions. It is noteworthy that in the episode with the second goal of the American, Patrick Marlo, recently exchanged from San Jose, scored his first point for performance in the Pittsburgh.

During his career, Malkin 24 times scored four or more points in one match of the regular season, but only three times was marked by four assists. For the first time in his career, this happened in the 2008/09 season, when he helped his partners hit the Toronto goal four times. And more than three years later, he repeated this in a confrontation with Winnipeg. True, then he chalked up the exact throw as well.

Thus, Eugene’s asset was 67 (21 + 46) points, which helped him to take 16th place in the ranking of NHL scorers. He walked around Mika Zibanejad from the Rangers, Stephen Stamkos from Tampa Bay and Mitchell Marner from Toronto. From the 15th line striker of Vancouver JT Miller, he is only one point apart.

In addition, Malkin climbed to 66th place in the history of the NHL on points. After a duel with the Senators, he had 1069 (412 + 657) points, which made him equal to the famous King's player Dave Taylor. Moreover, very soon he can surpass both him and the Canucks legend Henrik Sedin, whose track record has one more effective action. As for the separate programs, then in this list it is located a line above.

Buchnevich transfer and the end of the Kucherov series

Unlike Malkin, other Russian legionnaires did not perform so well. Artemy Panarin and Nikita Kucherov looked faded and could not save their teams from insulting defeats. So, the Rangers could not cope with the current Stanley Cup winner St. Louis, and Tampa Bay lost to the league leader Boston.

As for the Lightning striker, it was on this day that his productive series was interrupted. In the period from January 15 to March 1, Kucherov held 18 meetings and never once left the ice without points for performance. During this period, he collected a collection of 13 goals and 17 assists.

A bright spot was the game of Panarin's partner in the Rangers Pavel Buchnevich, who distinguished himself in the third game in a row. The Russian ended up in the special brigade of the majority and took part in a combination with the participation of Ryan Strom and Mika Zibanezhad.

This game day can be called more or less successful for Alexander Radulov. In the current championship, the Dallas striker is not happy with his performance and has only 34 (15 + 19) points in 59 meetings. In the confrontation with Edmonton, he took part in the realization of the numerical advantage, but this did not save his team from the third defeat in a row. It is worth noting that this time the place at the “Stars” gate was taken by Russian Anton Khudobin, who made a total of 25 salvations.