Pittsburgh Penguins blue liner Kris Letang set an NHL record for most assists by a defenseman in a single period when he recorded 5 assists in his team’s 7-0 win over the New York Islanders on Wednesday.
When all was said and done, Letang finished with 6 assists on the night, becoming the first Penguins player (regardless of position) to record 5 or more points in a single period. The flurry came in the 2nd period, when Pittsburgh poured in 6 goals to take a stranglehold of the game against their Metropolitan Division foes.
“That’s an unbelievable feat when you think about it,” Pittsburgh coach Mike Sullivan told reporters after the game. “Especially in today’s game when the parity in the league is so high. Against a good team like the Islanders, it’s not an easy thing to do. Couldn’t be happier for him, obviously he’s an elite player for us.”
With the game knotted up at zeroes through the first frame, the floodgates opened at the 6:44 mark of the period when Rickard Rakell scored to give his team the lead. Assisted by Jake Guetnzel and Marcus Pettersson, it would be the only tally on the night where Letang didn’t have a hand in the action.
With 16 of the last 20 contests between the Pens and Isles having been decided by 1 goal, Pittsburgh made sure there was little doubt as to who would earn the victory last night. Goals from Guentzel (2), Malkin (2), Radim Zohorna, and Valterri Puustinen sealed the deal, while Tristan Jarry recorded his NHL leading 4th shutout of the season on the other end of the ice.
“It was just a very poorly played second period of hockey,” Islanders coach Lane Lambert said afterwards. “Every time we turned around the puck was in our net.”
Indeed it was a long night for both Islander net minders as Ilya Sorokin gave up 6 goals on 25 shots faced (.760 SV%), before being replaced by Semyon Varlamov to start the third period. With the game’s result no longer in question, Varlamov stopped 6 of 7 shots in mop up duty to get his team to the showers early.
Also sprinkled in on Letang’s record setting night was the fact that with his 484th career goal, Evgeni Malkin officially passed Sergei Fedorov for 2nd place on the all-time scoring list of Russian born players. Needless to say, that’s likely to be as high as he’ll climb on that list in his career, as he currently sits 344 goals behind his fellow countryman Alexander Ovechkin.
Pittsburgh is next in action vs. the St. Louis Blues on December 30th, before the Isles return to town for a rematch on New Year’s Eve.
-Kyle Skinner
Twitter: @JKyleSkinner
Photo: Michael Miller. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.