Sometimes luck just works like this.
There is a player in the NHL who is set to be a Hall of Famer, is one of the best American-born players of all time and is having one of the best seasons of his career. Heck, he’s having one of the best seasons the league has seen over the past decade.
But barring any drastic changes, all Patrick Kane has done is lock up second place in the voting for the Hart Trophy for league MVP. And that’s just he way it goes.
Kane will miss out on his second Hart Trophy (first coming in 2015-16, the year after his Blackhawks won their third Stanley Cup) and it’s all because Nikita Kucherov is having a season for the ages.
The Lightning’s superstar reached the 100-point mark on Thursday night in Game No. 62, the fewest games needed to reach the century mark since Mario Lemieux in 1996-97 — when Kucherov was 3-years-old. (Just for context, Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky are the only two players in history to reach the 100-point mark in 40 or fewer games, Gretzky doing it four times and Lemieux three.)
So, of course, we should all genuflect at the season Kucherov is having. His team is outstanding, one of the best the league has seen in a long time — and likely to get better when they add before Monday’s trade deadline. (Wayne Simmonds would be a perfect fit.) Kucherov has talented linemates like Brayden Point and Tyler Johnson, and is on a power play with Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman. He is still the best player on the best team, and deserves the Hart as much as anyone has over the past few years.
But if he wasn’t around, it would be a lot easier to gawk at Kane’s 92 points through 60 games. It would be impossible to overlook the 19-game points streak he brought into Friday night’s contest in Chicago. It’s the longest points streak in the league this season, and the 42 points during this stretch has already eclipsed the points total (40) from his 26-game streak during his Hart season. It’s the quickest a Blackhawk has reached the 90-point mark since Denis Savard in 1987-88 — a season completed just months before Kane was born in Buffalo on Nov. 19, 1988.
And yet maybe what’s more impressive is that Kane has put this Blackhawks team on his shoulders and taken a dreadful season and made it relevant. On Nov. 6, the club fired legendary coach Joel Quenneville, promoting then-33-year-old Jeremy Colliton from the AHL. On Dec. 11, they lost in Winnipeg for their eighth straight defeat and were 9-18-5, the worst team in the NHL. But they won the next night at home against the Penguins, starting a run of 17-8-3 that brought them to Friday night within one point of the second wild-card spot in West (with three teams to leapfrog).
It hasn’t all been roses. On Jan. 17, they came into the Garden and looked mostly lifeless while losing a 4-3 game to the rebuilding Rangers. It took their record to 1-4-3 over their previous eight and seemingly buried their season.
But starting with the next game on Jan. 20, a wild 8-5 win at home against the Capitals, the Blackhawks have four of the league’s top six points leaders: Kane (27), his young linemate Alex DeBrincat (22), recent trade acquisition Dylan Strome (20), and Jonathan Toews (19), the stalwart captain who had been in the midst of one of the worst seasons of his career. They lost just two out of the next 12 games, and Kane has been the catalyst.
“Kaner’s as determined as ever to prove he’s the best scorer, the best player in this league,” Toews said on Wednesday night in Detroit after his longtime running mate scored twice, including the game-winner in a 5-4 victory over the Red Wings. “It’s fun to play with a guy like that. There’s no shifts off, there’s no periods off. He wants to go out there and he wants to score all the time.”
That’s exactly what he’s done in one of the most impressive runs in his impressive career. If the Hart really did go to the player who means the most to his team — and it doesn’t — then Kane should get it. But if things stay the course, Kane’s season might only be a footnote to Kucherov’s hardware — and sometimes, that’s just the way it goes.
Cory’s comeback
Let’s take a moment to appreciate what Cory Schneider is doing in New Jersey right now. The Devils netminder has been through a rash of serious injuries — including hip surgery in May and an abdomen strain this season. He had not won a game since Dec. 27, 2017, and he came darn close to breaking that streak by playing a terrific game against the Islanders on Feb. 7, eventually losing in a shootout.
But the affable 32-year-old Massachusetts native finally won on Feb. 15 in Minnesota — coming in mid-game and stopping all 15 shots he faced over the final 36 minutes.
“Thanks guys,” he said afterward. “Sorry it took so long.”
It was the first of three straight wins, including a 30-save shutout against the Senators in Newark on Thursday. Schneider has now allowed one goal in 85 shots over these three games. Hard not to root for him to at least get back to form.
Gudas the goon
This ought to teach him, right? Perpetual miscreant Radko Gudas got suspended for two games after swinging his stick and nailing Kucherov in the back of the head on Wednesday night. Gudas has been suspended three times for a total of 19 games, including a 10-game ban this past year when he tried to decapitate the Jets Mathieu Perrault with his stick.
See, he’s learning his lesson!
As long as completely pointless suspensions like this keep coming down, the NHL can’t be taken seriously when it comes to player safety.
Face-in
Interesting way for Justin Williams to score the Hurricanes’ game-opening goal on Thursday night — taking one off the face. A shot from defenseman (and Long Island native) Brett Pesce was deflected and caught Williams in the face for career tally No. 306.
“Thank God it was Pesce,” Williams said. “If it was anyone else I probably would have broken my jaw.”
Stay tuned . . .
. . . to the fallout from Connor McDavid’s two-game suspension handed down Friday afternoon. The Oilers wunderkind leveled a serious headshot to the Islanders Nick Leddy on Thursday night — a two-minute minor! — and it was the same discipline as Gudas axing a guy in the head? And now McDavid has a history of suspensions, too.
Well, so it goes.
Parting shot
I’m not the biggest fan of the “Security Guard Dancing on the Bigscreen,” but this guy in Montreal has moves.