Another multi-point game for Marner, a revenge game that falls flat, and a night the Senators would probably rather forget. Here are three things we learned in the NHL on Friday night.
Marner in elite company
Mitch Marner was in the holiday spirit Friday in the Toronto Maple Leafs‘ first game back from Christmas break, gifting teammate John Tavares a pair of assists to help Toronto to a 4-2 win. The victory snapped Columbus’s win streak at five and gave the Maple Leafs five straight wins of their own. Those two helpers brought Marner up to 40 on the season already, still less than halfway through the 2018-19 campaign. (For comparison, Marner wrapped up his 77-game rookie campaign with 42 assists and tallied 47 in 82 games last season.)
Per NHL Public Relations, Marner is the first Maple Leaf to start his career with 40 or more assists in three consecutive seasons. He’s in some pretty elite company — Nicklas Backstrom, Patrick Kane, Evgeni Malkin, Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby are the only other active players to have done so.
Marner’s chemistry with Tavares is well-documented, but if you’re among those wanting to see Marner lace ’em up beside Auston Matthews, Friday likely fueled that fire. No. 16 also scored a goal Friday night, his seventh in the past six games, which was assisted by none other than No. 34.
Marner, 21, ranks fourth in the NHL in assists and fifth in points (53). He now has seven games with three or more points this season, and 17 multi-point games.
Florida falls flat in anticipated grudge match
Remember back in the pre-season, when Max Domi earned himself a suspension for surprising Aaron Ekblad with a nose-breaking sucker punch? Ekblad vowed at the time that “scores will be settled at a later date,” and, well, that later date arrived on Friday when the two sides faced off for the first time since that incident.
But if you were expecting sparks between the opponents, you’d be a little disappointed as the Panthers came out with a generally flat effort in a game that didn’t feature much emotion. The Panthers had an opportunity to spoil Montreal’s U.S. road trip success, especially with Carey Price out, but instead gave up two quick first-period goals in the first few minutes of play.
Ekblad did end up dropping the gloves in the final minutes of the losing effort, but not against Domi. After being upended by Phillip Danault, Ekblad went after the Canadiens centre.
Surely that was not the revenge Ekblad and Co. were looking for.
Senators fall apart vs. Islanders
Friday’s matchup in New York between the Ottawa Senators and New York Islanders started out well enough for the visitors, as Ottawa had a 2-0 lead into the second period. The Senators even looked like they’d be able to recover from a bad blunder by Mike McKenna that led to an easy Islanders goal, and appeared ready to rally after losing defenceman Thomas Chabot with an upper-body injury shortly after.
But then, things unraveled. With the score at 3-1, Ottawa gave up five unanswered goals — four in the third period — to suffer their third straight loss.
They didn’t go down without a fight — or rather three fights, as things got heated with a trio of scuffles in the final minute of play. We’ll see if that late-game emotion sparks anything when Ottawa visits the Washington Capitals Saturday night for Part Two of their back-to-back.
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