Lightning Round: Alex Killorn named third star of the week in NHL

Alex Killorn was named the NHL’s third star of the week after scoring four goals and six points in three games in the last week of October. Killer followed that hot run of games with another goal last night in the Bolts 3-2 win over the Washington Capitals.

Killorn scored in last night’s win, but it was a multi-point night for his linemate Anthony Cirelli, who had a goal and an assist but played a key role in all three of the Lightning’s goals. Here is the recap from Matt on the night. [Raw Charge]

“Nevertheless, Tampa Bay overcame an early deficit to secure their fifth win of the season, and second over the Washington Capitals, to give themselves a proper winning streak of three games. Goals from Alex Killorn, Anthony Cirelli, and Brayden Point provided the offense while Andrei Vasilevskiy made a bevy of impressive saves to keep Washington’s goal scorers to Brett Leason and Conor Sheary.”

Andrei Vasilevskiy was really strong in what ended up being his 300th career start. As of right now, Vasilevskiy has 195 career wins in those 300 career starts. The NHL PR tweeted that only Ken Dryden had more wins in his first 300 starts with 196, but that tweet was taken down (presumably because it said Vasy only had 194 wins). I’d like to see official confirmation on that today, I tried to look at the stats but couldn’t get the cutoff.

Two Russian superstars, Ilya Kovalchuk and Sergei Gonchar were at the Bolts vs. Caps game to scout talent for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Matt was actually sitting right behind them in the rink.

Boris Katchouk got banged up in practice on Sunday so he continued to sit out in place of Alex Barre-Boulet. Gabriel Dumont was called up in the morning as a precaution in case the team needed a healthy forward somewhere else in the lineup. In a corresponding move, Fredrik Claesson was sent back to the Syracuse Crunch. Jan Rutta is also day-to-day with an injury and is the seventh defenseman on the cap sheet.

The Lightning have a couple players who are sorta injured but whom they don’t want to put on IR or LTIR that will force them out for a week, so despite all their cap room, they were really tight on roster spots. I’m sure that if they needed someone they would’ve gotten an emergency recall or just put someone on IR for the roster spot, but it didn’t come to that so all good.

In league news, the NHLPA executive board, which consists of one representative from each of the 32 teams, is having a vote on whether to open an “independent investigation be commenced by outside legal counsel in order to review the NHLPA’s response to the Kyle Beach matter,” according to the press release.

Commissioner Gary Bettman also spoke to the media and was rightly put on blast for pretty much everything he said. One of those things included saying the NHL had officially ended the Akim Aliu investigation. The league has not implemented any of the procedures promised over a year ago and stopped responding to Aliu’s representatives, ie. the person tweeting below.

Adam Fox has a new contract extension in the Seth Jones stratosphere. The only difference: Fox won the Norris last year and Jones is still one of the worst 20 minute a night guys in the league. And yet one of them is on Team USA and the other is only on their long list.

Lastly, Cole Caufield was demoted to the AHL by the Canadiens and the memes for it were good.