Jets' Patrik Laine named NHL's 1st star of the week after 11-goal burst
Finnish sniper scored 5 goals, one for every shot he took, on Saturday
The Winnipeg Jets' superstar sniper Patrik Laine has been named the NHL's first star of the week.
From Nov. 19-24, the 20-year-old sophomore tallied two hat tricks and a total of 11 goals.
Las Vegas Knights goalie Marc-Andre Fleury was named the second star and Tampa Bay Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov is the third star.
Fleury stopped 81 of the 83 shots he faced last week, including back-to-back shutouts Nov. 23-24. He leads the NHL with five shutouts this season, putting him at an elite level. Only 10 goaltenders since the 1967-68 season have collected as many through their team's opening 25 games.
Kucherov shared the NHL lead with seven assists last week and recorded consecutive three-point performances versus Florida on Nov. 21 and Chicago on Nov. 23.
Laine started the week with a hat trick against Vancouver, then followed that up two days later with a pair against Calgary, then another two days later against Minnesota.
The very next day he capped the week with a five-goal game for the ages against St. Louis.
This season so far he has 22 points in 22 games (19 goals, three assists).
The five-goal game, in which he scored on every shot he took, set a franchise record and was the first quintuple in the NHL since Johan Franzen's on Feb. 2, 2011.
Laine joins Don Murdoch and Wayne Gretzky as the lone players in NHL history to record five goals in a game before their 21st birthday.
His 16 goals in November are the most in a calendar month in the Winnipeg Jets/Atlanta Thrashers franchise history and the most by an NHL player in any calendar month since 1996-97.