The following link is to one of those recap pieces we see from a number of different sites.  You know; they show you videos of the great goals of the night and so forth.  While we understand the importance of the highlight reel, we wanted to take this occasion to do our own recap of last night, HFFA style.  Our headlines would read:

Par Lindholm draws two penalties in Leafs 5-3 win – one of those penalties resulted in a goal…..which turned out to be the difference in the game, save for an empty net tally at the end.  Any fourth line guy who can put Tavares or Matthews on the ice 5×4, at a 50% conversion rate is worth his weight in gold.  Those two penalties resulted in a beautiful goal for Par Lindholm…….and he wasn’t even on the ice when it happened!!

Sorry no highlight film.

The next thing we wanted to share was the play of Andreas Athanasiou…….while his name will not show up in the box score (despite 4 shots), he would have if he had just a bit of puck luck.  While the Pastrnak and McDavid videos were impressive because the puck went in, have a look at AA……its equally impressive to us.

When you don’t score, there usually isn’t any footage for your style points.  However, what we can say is that we have always like AA, because he is exactly what DET needs, and would be a FANTASTIC addition to a team with superior firepower like TOR, PIT, PHI, DAL, BOS, TB etc.  AA had an even AB score on an otherwise mis-er-a-ble Red Wing team and was about +9 in his rookie season.  He is the real deal…..and probably even better than Par Lindholm.

The last guy we wanted to mention for having an incredible string of bad puck luck was Pavel Zacha of the Devils.  You guessed it, no video evidence of his night either.  However, he was all over the ice and wreaked absolute havoc on the Capitals.  The box score only gives him credit for 4 shots, but we assure you he had twice as many scoring chances if that is possible.  Even though he couldn’t shoot the puck in the ocean last night, he was 13 for 15 on faceoffs.  While his -3.11 AB score needs improvement, if he plays like he did last night, it will.

Oh and BTW, in other news, the “sucky” Canuck(y) beat Tampa Bay 4-1 and the “Gods of NHL Hockey” San Jose Sharks lost to the rebuilding Rangers 3-2 in OT.  Hmmm.