Jets’ Laine keeping elite company
November scoring binge conjures up comparisons to countryman Selanne
It was during the second intermission in St. Louis on Saturday night when the Jets’ Mathieu Perreault leaned over to Patrik Laine to remind him of something.
Laine had scored four goals in the first two periods, matching the four Perreault scored in one game during his first season in Winnipeg.
“Who’s the last guy who did that?” Perreault asked Laine.
The Finn was unimpressed, apparently.
“Yeah, I’ll top that,” Laine fired back.
“And he actually did,” Perreault recalled on Monday. “It was nice to see. He’s a special player.”
Laine was named the NHL’s first star of the week on Monday after burying his fifth goal in that third period, his 11th in four games.
“I thought I had a pretty good week, so I was kind of waiting for that,” a deadpanning Laine said of the recognition. “Well, not really.”
It appears Laine will remain his low-key self, even as he puts himself higher and higher in the conversation of the most deadly snipers in hockey history.
On the weekend, he became just the third player in NHL history to post a fivegoal game before his 21st birthday, joining Wayne Gretzky and, wait for it, Don Murdoch.
Two Winnipeg Jets scored five in a game before him, both, like Laine, on the road: Alexei Zhamnov in 1995 and Willy Lindstrom in 1982.
“I’ve seen a couple of news stories about who has scored five goals before,” Laine said. “Yeah, I’m in some good company. But I don’t pay attention to those things much.”
Here’s one he was suddenly paying attention to. Laine’s 16 goals in November are the most in one calendar month since Mario Lemieux scored 17 in December, nearly 22 years ago.
The record holder in this department: a fellow Finn who also plied his trade with the Jets.
“Oh, Teemu has it?” Laine said, perking up for a moment at the thought of Selanne’s record of 20 goals in one month, back in 1993. “Might as well leave it to him.” On second thought. “No, he has so many records, so I might as well try to break it,” Laine said of his countryman who was known as the Finnish Flash. “Do you guys actually know how many games we have left this month? Two? OK, so just five in two games. No pressure at all. I didn’t know that. But fun fact.”
Since we’re into fun facts, here’s another.
Just four players in the NHL’s modern era (post-1944) have matched Laine’s sizzling pace of late: 11 goals in his last four games.
The last to do it was Lemieux 26 years ago. The Magnificent One did it twice. The others are Alexander Mogilny, Rick Tocchet and Wayne Gretzky.
I suppose we should get used to Laine rubbing shoulders with the all-time greats.
The funny thing about all this Laine love?
It wasn’t long ago the hockey world was wondering what was wrong with Saint Patrik.
He was handling the puck like it was a live grenade, he couldn’t clear it out of his own zone, and he certainly couldn’t be relied on to actually strip anyone of it.
With three goals in the Jets’ first dozen games, all on the power play, No. 29 was a onetrick pony, closer to being a liability than he was a star of the week.
This was pre-Helsinki, when he admitted he just wasn’t feeling it.
“Obviously now, I’m feeling it,” he said. “That was kind of the turning point for me. After that it’s been pretty good.”
You may recall Selanne’s comment during the Helsinki trip, comparing Laine’s struggles to a bottle of Heinz ketchup. Once it comes, Selanne predicted, it’ll fly out.
Laine has since emptied that bottle and cracked open another. Asked to explain what makes it flow, the 20-year-old couldn’t. But he took a shot at describing the feeling.
“When it’s not going in, it just feels like somebody always gets a piece of it,” Laine said. “Goalie gets a piece of it. Somebody gets there in time to block it, or whatever ... but when it’s going in, it feels like every time you’re touching the puck there’s a lot of time, and you just try to rip it and somehow it goes in.
“Obviously last game was one of those games.”
Teammates could tell it was going to be one of those games.
“You can see it,” Perreault said. “Early in the season when he wasn’t scoring as much, I don’t think he was as involved as much in the forecheck as he’s been. Last game, some of his goals came from hard forechecking — he’s in the corner, battling for pucks, and it pops out and he scores.
“He was questioning himself, why he wasn’t scoring, and maybe it’s because he wasn’t putting in the work that he’s doing now to get those chances.”
Even the best set of hands needs to work.
“It’s never just going to come to you easy,” Perreault said. “It never has for anyone, ever, in this league.”
It just looks easy, sometimes.
Playing with Kyle Connor and Bryan Little, Laine says he sensed pretty early Saturday might be a big day.
“Right after the first goal,” he said. “It’s easier when you score right away. You’re kind of feeling it. You think you might get a few more. After the second goal on the power play, I felt like there was a lot of time, still, so I might just get one more. And then I got three more after that.”
With the day off on Sunday, Laine celebrated his big week with “a few bowls of Smarties ice cream.” he said.