Evgeni Malkin scores goal No. 400

With his third period empty net goal against the Calgary Flames tonight, Evgeni Malkin reached the 400 goal mark for his career, becoming the fourth player in Penguins franchise history to reach the milestone. Malkin joins Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby, and Jaromir Jagr as the only players to score 400 career goals in a Penguins uniform.

With the tally, Malkin sits 39 goals behind Jagr for third most in franchise history, and remains 51 goals behind teammate Sidney Crosby for second all time. Malkin has quite a hill to climb if he wants to catch Mario Lemieux, however. Lemieux currently hold the top spot in franchise history with 690 goals.

Malkin has battled injury this year, only appearing in his 21st game of the 2019-20 season but has found a lot of success on a line with Jake Guentzel and Bryan Rust. The red hot Rust was the one who made the smart but easy pass over for Malkin to have the similarly easy finish into the unguarded cage to help the Pens seal the win away and help Malkin to the milestone.

This point was also career point No. 1,031 all-time for Malkin who tonight also passed former Penguin Alex Kovalev to take over fourth place among all Russian born players in the NHL. It won’t take too much longer for Malkin to move up on that list, as third place Alex Mogilny retired with 1,032 points. Sergei Fedorov (1,179) and Alex Ovechkin (1,244) are the higher Russians on the ledger.

But for tonight, the big news was 400.