A new Monday feature, think of it as an interim report for the monthly grades and awards we give out..
Trending Up:
Sidney Crosby: Early in the season Sid was struggling with taking needless "frustration" penalties (slashing or chopping an opponent, hooking someone after the whistle, etc), which saw him pile up 39 penalty minutes in the first 24 games. However, in his last 14 games, Crosby's taken but one minor penalty.
Marc-Andre Fleury: Has a .919 save percentage so far in the month of December, his best of any month in the young season.
Sergei Gonchar: Want a sign the power-play's starting to turn the corner? Sarge has 6 PP assists in the last seven games.
Bill Guerin: The Penguins are 10-0-0 when Guerin scores a goal this season. He's scored goals in four games so far this month.
Trending Down:
Tyler Kennedy: TK scored in his first game back from injury on Nov 28th, but didn't register a point in the next 11 games before being sat down as a healthy scratch last night against Toronto.
Ruslan Fedotenko: Has 1 goal, 0 assists in his last five games and only 8 combined shots in that timeframe. Fedotenko needs to shoot to be effective, and right now he's not getting enough pucks to the net.
Alex Goligoski: Doesn't have a goal since November 3rd, in the past six games only has 1 assist and his shots are down as well (only 4 in that stretch). Has lost PP minutes, so he's going to have to break out this slump the old-fashioned way.
STAT of the DAY:
This didn't fit into a trend, but it's too good not to share....Kris Letang has scored just 6 goals in 111 games of the season before the all-star break (.05 goals per game), that includes this season where he only has one goal. After the all-star break, Letang's got 13 goals in just 63 games (.21 goals/game). There's no all-star game this season due to the Olympics, but how much do you want to bet after the two week break #58 starts filling the net a lot more?