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RALEIGH, N.C. -- Maybe the Carolina Hurricanes are the right team at the right time for Alexander Semin.
For all the question marks and finger pointing that came from Semin's departure from Washington, he has quieted his critics since his arrival in Raleigh.
For the third time is his seven-year NHL career, the Russian sniper is playing at a point-per-game pace. The easy - and accurate - explanation is that Semin has meshed well with Hurricanes captain Eric Staal.
ARLINGTON, Va. -- As the Washington Capitals prepared for a two-game road trip to Carolina and Boston this week, Mike Ribeiro shook his head in disbelief.
Ribeiro leads the Capitals with nine goals, 19 assists and 28 points and entered play Wednesday tied for the NHL lead with 15 power-play points.
"He's been our MVP so far," teammate Troy Brouwer said. "A good surprise, if you can call it a surprise, given the production that he's had over the course of his career. He's been phenomenal."
Ribeiro's current pace would, in fact, produce the best statistical season of his career if played out over an 82-game season, but the veteran of 14 professional seasons doesn't do a double take when discussing his play in 2013.
Remember when Steven Stamkos scored 60 goals last season? In 2012-13, he's actually scoring at an even greater rate.
With his third-period, game-winning goal in the third period of the Tampa Bay Lightning's 3-2 win against the Florida Panthers on Tuesday night, Stamkos became the first player to reach the 20-goal mark this season and he scored it in his 26th game.
On his way to 60 goals in 2011-12, he didn't score his 20th goal until game 32.
PITTSBURGH -- Beau Bennett's superior vision on the ice is a major reason the Pittsburgh Penguins envision such a great future for the 21-year-old rookie forward.
Most NHL scouts will say on-ice vision is a natural instinct that one is born with. But to hear Bennett tell it, it wasn't until his teenage years that he developed that innate ability to see the ice.
Growing up in Southern California, he was far more likely to see the asphalt.
"Roller hockey was my main sport until I was 14 or 15, and then I made the switch over full-time [to ice]," Bennett said. "Roller hockey actually helped me so much with my vision and passing. It's such a passing game; you don't really get many open shots, so usually all the plays you see in roller hockey are tic-tac-toe. You're always trying to find the open man. I think roller hockey helped me translate my pass-first game over to ice."
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- Darryl Sutter often speaks his own language, his sayings dispensed with a unique bluntness that hits home through his farmer's tongue.
Getting him to wax poetic about a player takes patience because his compliments are tossed out like grenades: When they hit the ground it gets everybody's attention. So it was through Sutter-speak that he revealed some explanation of Jeff Carter's fast-drip scoring spree.
"Everybody looks at Jeff just because it's outside speed and all that, but really most of his goals have come from between the dots and that triangle, where the goalie's got to make a pretty good save," Sutter said.
"You look at the goals … he scores goals on his off side. It's sort of like Jarome [Iginla] where he scores goals on his off side. He'll go up top, he'll go low. Where you're not just seeing how he shoots it. And then around the net, he just scores where it's natural. He's [shooting] to score, not just [shooting] to shoot.
"I like that -- when you're getting on guys to score on rebounds and all that instead of just another save. He's a hard guy to defend, I think, because it's not that he's perimeter, it's not like he's inside. It's like those guys that they're just going to compete to score. It's not something you've got to learn. It's something [that comes naturally]."
It wasn't that Rick Nash wasn't off to a sensational start with the New York Rangers; it was that he couldn't finish.
When Nash arrived via trade from the Columbus Blue Jackets in the summer, he was touted as the missing piece, the elite scorer that was sorely lacking from a Rangers club that saw its offense vanish during the 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs. But through seven games this season, Nash had one goal, and it wasn't exactly a difference-making goal either.
Nash's first goal for the Rangers came in his second game, a shorthanded mini-breakaway beauty. But all it did was turn a 5-2 deficit into a 5-3 hole with 5:15 remaining in a game the Rangers would lose 6-3.
Nash's second goal was far more impactful. It broke a 1-1 tie in the third period against the Tampa Bay Lightning and would've been the game-winner if not for a goal by Steven Stamkos in the final seconds of the Rangers' 3-2 win.
ANAHEIM -- Don't bother to bring up the Norris Trophy with Anaheim Ducks defenseman Francois Beauchemin -- or with his coach.
His general manager? Let's just say Bob Murray's temperature rose with the Southern California weather when he overheard pundits mention Beauchemin as a possible Norris candidate.
"We're not even halfway through the season," Murray told NHL.com. "I think it's totally ridiculous for anybody to talk about awards ... that irritates me to hell. It's not fair to the player."
CHICAGO -- Ray Emery came to the Chicago Blackhawks on a tryout offer in training camp before last season.
The way he's playing in net for Chicago right now, during the team's record run to start this season, it's easy to overlook that fact -- not to mention the career-threatening hip injury that nearly ended the 30-year old Emery's hockey career at age 29.
After a somewhat turbulent 2011-12 season with the Blackhawks -- who had the same kind of year as a team -- Emery has bounced back strong to provide Chicago (21-0-3) with a rock-solid second option in net to red-hot starter Corey Crawford.
The way he still plays, so dominating at times and always consistent, it's easy to forget that Marian Hossa is playing his 15th season in the National Hockey League.
Hossa, who turned 34 in January, is in the fourth year of a monster 12-year contract he signed with the Chicago Blackhawks prior to the 2009-10 season -- the year he and the Blackhawks finally won a Stanley Cup.
Sunday afternoon at Detroit's Joe Louis Arena (12:30 p.m. ET, NBC), Hossa will play his 1,000th NHL game. Anybody who's tracked his standout career is probably wondering the same thing as Hossa: Where did the time go?
"When you look back, it looks like it [went fast]," Hossa said Friday night, after helping Chicago defeat the Columbus Blue Jackets 4-3 in overtime to stay unbeaten in regulation after 21 games. "So many years went by so quick. I remember as an 18-year old, jumping in this League [and] all of a sudden I'm 34 with 1,000 games coming up. The time flies."
It passed almost as fast as Hossa, who has burned many a defender during a career that's spanned five teams -- beginning with a seven-game debut in the 1997-98 season for the Ottawa Senators.
DETROIT -- Damien Brunner is acutely aware of what his biggest critics thought about him coming over from Switzerland to play this season for the Detroit Red Wings.
There were some who questioned whether Brunner could adjust to the smaller ice surface of the National Hockey League -- not to mention the intense physical play that's just not as common in places like the Swiss League, where he became a star offensive force.
Others wondered whether the 26-year old would be like Swedish forward Fabian Brunnstrom, a former Red Wings player who struggled with the same adjustment and never matched his European exploits.
Brunner, who's scored 10 goals and added six assists in 21 games, has used the naysayers as motivation.
"For sure, I want to prove that [I belong]," Brunner said after practice Saturday morning. "There were also a lot of guys back home who thought it was going to be tough … so I came over and wanted to prove to all the guys who criticized me that I could do it. But I [did] it for myself too."
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ROUND 1 SOUNDS OF THE GAME
