Fleury shuts-out Oilers & ties record - Letang for the Norris?
The Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Edmonton Oilers 2-0 last night in a rather uneventful game on the whole apart from the two goals. Fleury earnt his 7th shut-out in just 41 games this season which means he is earning a shut-out on average every 6 games, there or thereabouts. The Penguins have played 51 games so far this season which means that if Fleury plays at the same rate as he currently is he'll finish the season with 66 games and 10 shut-outs. If that happens he'll join the company of 30 who have had seasons with 10 or more shut-outs but also be the first Penguins goalie to do so. He won't be the first player in Pittsburgh to do it though as it has happened twice before with the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1928-29 & 1927-28 seasons courtesy of Joe Miller and Roy Worters. The stats from the above are from Hockey Reference as ever.
Playing just in front of Fleury has been Kris Letang and I think you have to make a serious contention for him to be in the Norris running with the way he has played this season. It is even more impressive when you remember that just over a year ago he had a stroke. The fact he has been able to come back and play better than he was then is remarkable. But the numbers don't lie. The top 5 in points for defenceman are Giordana, Letang, Shattenkirk, Burns and Yandle. In points they have 43, 40, 40, 37 and 26 however Letang has the highest PPG.
Looking deeper we can see that Letang has the best CF% at 57% with the nearest to him being Shattenkirk at 53.7CF%. The worst is Giordano at 48% but Calgary are a rebuilding team so that isn't much of a surprise. Another stat which is an indication of a good defenceman is the number of takeaways. The reason being is that the higher it is tends to mean they're stripping the opposition of the puck a lot of. Letang is third in this list with 24 behind Giordano on 25 and Burns on 34. However, Burns has the highest giveaways out of the 5 at 69 which means he is the most likely to give the puck to the opposition. Letang is 4th on this with 33 just ahead of Shattenkirk on 31.
Back to last nights game and the most dominant line was that of Arcobello-Malkin-Hornqvist which accounted for 11 of the Penguins 26 shots tonight. Another player who had a good game was David Perron who scored against his former club with a redirected bouncing puck off his ankle with 0.5 seconds left in the second period. Perron has been excellent since joining the Penguins and in the 13 games he has been with the Penguins he has scored 7 goals and 3 assists for 10 points. A season pace of 63 points.
The Penguins play a back-to-back against the Flames and Canucks yet and with such a tight division race at the moment every point will count.
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