The brightest domestic foreign players reached the playoffs

NHL

Alexander Ovechkin became the top sniper of the NHL regular season for the fifth time. Only the legendary Bobby Hull and Phil Esposito have won the Maurice Richar Trophy more often.
Photo: Reuters

The NHL regular season, which ended this weekend, brought almost all the clubs for which the brightest Russian foreign players play to the playoffs, and brought one of them another prestigious individual award. Washington Capitals leader Alexander Ovechkin became the best sniper of the championship.

Alexander Ovechkin won the third sniper race in a row and the fifth in his career. The current one is with an overwhelming advantage: having scored 53 goals, he is ten goals ahead of Steven Stamkos of the Tampa Bay Lightning. Thus, Ovechkin earned another individual prize to add to his already rich collection - the Maurice Richard Trophy, named after the legendary Montreal Canadiens forward of the post-war years. By the way, Richard himself also has five victories in the fight for the title of best sniper in the league, as, by the way, do two hockey players who are considered the kings of the NHL of all time - Gordie Howe and Wayne Gretzky. And more often than Ovechkin, only Bobby Hull and Phil Esposito finished at the top of the sniper list - seven and six times. And it seems that the Russian’s chances of getting ahead of both are by no means theoretical.

Alexander Ovechkin also competed for the goalscoring prize - the Art Ross Trophy, which was even a little more prestigious. But it was not possible to reach him - with 81 points, Ovechkin closed the top four. And the name of the person who headed it is a sensation, and not such a tiny one.

Dallas Stars forward Nigel Benn was somehow not particularly associated with scoring feats until this season - rather a hard-working forward. And even a couple of weeks ago it was difficult to believe that, despite the “explosion” during this season, he would break through to the top: Benn was well behind the leaders. But his ending was phenomenal. In the final five matches of the championship, Benn earned 13 points for performance, in the very last one - yesterday against the Nashville Predators, in which Dallas prevailed with a score of 4: 1 - he added a hat trick with an assist.

In addition to Alexander Ovechkin, several other Russian hockey players distinguished themselves in terms of individual statistics in the regular season. Vladimir Tarasenko from the St. Louis Blues was able to get into the top ten scorers (see table), and Evgeni Malkin from the Pittsburgh Penguins and Pavel Datsyuk from the Detroit Red Wings found themselves outside of it, apparently solely because -due to injuries, they played fewer matches than their competitors. Well, it’s impossible not to pay attention to the achievement of young forward Nikita Kucherov from the Tampa Bay Lightning. The plus/minus indicator (the difference between goals scored and goals conceded in those moments when a hockey player was on the ice, not counting the game in unequal lineups) illustrates usefulness no worse than points for performance. So Kucherov’s score is +38, and he shared first place with Montrealer Max Pacioretty.

The head coach of the Russian national team, Oleg Znark, would probably like to see some of these players left out of the playoffs. The World Championships start in the Czech Republic on May 1. There, the Russian team will have to defend the championship title they won a year ago, and the cool foreign players from the NHL, of course, will not interfere with it. But it so happened that almost all the clubs for which the brightest of them play broke into the Stanley Cup - either confidently, or “on the flag”, like Pittsburgh, which gave up in the spring, and filtered into the Eastern eight only thanks to a win on the last day - 2:0 - Buffalo Sabers. So, of those who can be called stars without a stretch, the only one available for the national team right now is Columbus Blue Jackets goalkeeper Sergei Bobrovsky.

However, it is too early to panic about the shortage of NHL workers. In fact, the first round of the playoffs will end before the opening of the world championship. And one of the frontmen of the Russian corps in the NHL will definitely be released. For example, in this round the bracket brought together Tampa Bay and Detroit, that is, Kucherov and Datsyuk.

Alexey Dospehov

Scorers table

	AND	G	P	ABOUT
1. Jamie Benn (Dallas)	82	35	52	87
2. John Tavares (New York Islanders)	82	38	48	86
3. Sidney Crosby (Pittsburgh)	77	28	56	84
4. Alexander Ovechkin (Washington)	81	53	28	81
5. Jakub Voracek (Philadelphia)	82	22	59	81
6. Nicklas Backstrom (Washington)	82	18	60	78
7. Tyler Seguin (Dallas)	71	37	40	77
8. Jiri Hudler (Calgary)	78	31	45	76
9. Daniel Sedin (Vancouver)	82	20	56	76
10. Vladimir Tarasenko (St. Louis)	77	37	36	73
18. Evgeni Malkin (Pittsburgh)	69	28	42	70
26. Pavel Datsyuk (Detroit)	63	26	39	65
28. Nikita Kucherov (Tampa Bay)	82	28	36	64

NHL Regular Championship

"Philadelphia" - "Ottawa" 1:3. “Washington” – “New York Rangers” 2:4 ( Ovechkin , 1+0; Galiev (both “Washington”), 1+0). "Winnipeg" - "Calgary" 5:1. “Los Angeles” – “San Jose” 4:1. “St. Louis” – “Minnesota” 4:2 ( Tarasenko (“St. Louis”), 1+1). "Buffalo" - "Pittsburgh" 0:2. "Toronto" - "Montreal" 3:4 (shootout; Markov ("Montreal"), 0+1). “Florida” – “New Jersey” 3:2 ( Kulikov (“Florida”), 0+1). "New York Islanders" - "Columbus" 4:5 (shootout; Kulemin , 1+1 - Anisimov , 0+1). "Carolina" - "Detroit" 0:2. "Tampa Bay" - "Boston" 3:2 (shootout; Nesterov ("Tampa Bay"), 1+0). "Dallas" - "Nashville" 4:1. “Colorado” – “Chicago” 3:2 ( Varlamov (“Colorado”) stopped 28 shots out of 30). "Arizona" - "Anaheim" 1:2. “Vancouver” – “Edmonton” 6:5 (overtime; Yakupov (“Edmonton”), 1+0).

Final standings

Eastern Conference

	IN	BY	P	Sh	ABOUT
1. New York Rangers	53	7	22	252:192	113
2. Montreal	50	10	22	221:189	110
3. Tampa Bay	50	8	24	262:211	108
4. Washington	45	eleven	26	242:203	101
5. New York Islanders	47	7	28	252:230	101
6. Detroit	43	14	25	235:221	100
7. Ottawa	43	13	26	238:215	99
8. Pittsburgh	43	12	27	221:210	98
9. Boston	41	14	27	213:211	96
10. Florida	38	15	29	206:223	91
11. Columbus	42	5	35	236:250	89
12. Philadelphia	33	18	31	215:234	84
13. New Jersey	32	14	36	181:216	78
14. Caroline	thirty	eleven	41	188:226	71
15. Toronto	thirty	8	44	211:262	68
16. Buffalo	23	8	51	161:274	54

In the first round of the playoffs there are: New York - Pittsburgh, Montreal - Ottawa, Tampa Bay - Detroit, Washington - New York Islanders .

Western Conference

	IN	BY	P	Sh	ABOUT
1. Anaheim	51	7	24	236:226	109
2. St. Louis	51	7	24	248:201	109
3. Nashville	47	10	25	232:208	104
4. Chicago	48	6	28	229:189	102
5. Vancouver	48	5	29	242:222	101
6. Minnesota	46	8	28	231:201	100
7. Winnipeg	43	13	26	230:210	99
8. Calgary	45	7	thirty	241:216	97
9. Los Angeles	40	15	27	220:205	95
10. Dallas	41	10	31	261:260	92
11. Colorado	39	12	31	219:227	90
12. San Jose	40	9	33	228:232	89
13. Edmonton	24	14	44	198:283	62
14. Arizona	24	8	50	170:272	56

In the first round of the playoffs there are: Anaheim - Winnipeg, St. Louis - Minnesota, Nashville - Chicago, Vancouver - Calgary. The teams listed first in pairs will have home-court advantage.

Russia has preserved all the best