Friday, December 12, 2008

Around the Atlantic Division

All news from Yahoo! Sports...

New Jersey Devils - The Devils are on a roll. They have won three straight after beating Pittsburgh on Wednesday night and have won eight of their last nine, and Scott Clemmensen has been doing his best Brodeur impersonation.

New York Islanders - Rick DiPietro resumed skating with full equipment earlier this week, and reportedly is targeting a Christmas return to the lineup following Halloween surgery on his left knee. DiPietro, who is awaiting medical clearance to return to practice with his teammates, has undergone surgeries on both knees and both hips in the past 18 months. He has appeared in just three games this season, going 0-2 with a 3.91 GAA, but he’s in the third year of a mammoth 15-year contract.

Philadelphia Flyers - Flyers goaltender Marty Biron has put up great stats of late (7-1-3 in his last 11 starts with a 2.51 GAA and .917 save percentage), but a closer look at the Flyers’ masked man’s most recent numbers will tell you that he’s allowed three or more goals in each of his last seven starts and has been allowing one bad goal a game. Biron has been careless while playing the puck lately. Instead of opting for clean and risk-free exchanges with his defensemen behind the net, he’s been trying to shoot the puck along the boards to forwards and having those passes intercepted.

Pittsburgh Penguins - The Penguins hadn’t had two players score hat tricks in the same regular-season game since April 9, 1993, when Mario Lemieux and Joe Mullen pulled it off against the New York Rangers. But last night Petr Sykora and Pascal Dupuis each had hat tricks in a 9-2 drubbing of the Islanders. The hat tricks by Sykora and Dupuis were more impressive because neither had before scored a hat trick. In fact, Sykora had gone an NHL-record 38 two-goal games without finishing the deal.

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