From Dallas scoring 10 times on Buffalo to Tage Thompson recording a five-goal night to penalty-minute shenanigans, will last season's NHL highs get one-upped in 2023-24?
With just a few weeks left before the puck drops for the 2023-24 regular season, this is a good time to look back on some of the most remarkable single-game achievements of last year, as highlighted on the NHL's media site.
Here's how they stand up within a historical context and the chances that somebody is poised to go one better.
Most Goals By One Team: 10
On March 9, 2023, the Dallas Stars delivered a beatdown in Buffalo, crushing the Sabres by a score of 10-4. Eric Comrie endured the entire ordeal in Buffalo's net, facing 49 shots. Nine of the Stars' 10 goals came at even strength.
Dallas was the only team to hit double-digit goals last season. And while it has only happened four times in the last six years, the other three occasions were all in 2021-22:
- Feb. 26, 2022: Toronto 10, Detroit 7
- Mar. 27, 2022: Pittsburgh 11, Detroit 2
- Apr. 29, 2022: Montreal 10, Florida 2
Four teams also logged nine goals in 2022-23. Most memorably, the Seattle Kraken prevailed 9-8 in their see-saw overtime thriller against the Los Angeles Kings on Nov. 29.
If scoring continues to rise in the new season, we should see at least one team get to 10 goals in 2023-24. If it comes in one of those wild back-and-forth affairs? All the better.
Most Shots By One Team: 67
At PNC Arena on Jan. 5, 2023, the Carolina Hurricanes fired 67 shots at Juuse Saros — and lost to the Nashville Predators by a score of 5-3.
The Hurricanes built a 3-2 lead by the midpoint of the second period before Saros shut the door, despite facing 28 shots from Carolina in the third period alone. In the end, the 64-save night established a new Predators franchise record for Saros. And Nashville players blocked 21 additional shot attempts.
That game was the only one that surpassed 60 shots on goal in the 2022-23. It's something that has only happened two other times in the last six seasons — the Calgary Flames fired a franchise-record 62 shots at Elvis Merzlikins in a 6-0 road win over the Columbus Blue Jackets on Jan. 26, 2022, and the Hurricanes also lost 5-3 to the Colorado Avalanche on a 60-shot night on Nov. 2, 2017.
Carolina's 67 shots against Nashville were the most in 32 years. To find a busier goalie, we have to go all the way back to March 21, 1991, at the old Boston Garden, when the Bruins fired 73 shots at Ron Tugnutt as they played the Quebec Nordiques to a 3-3 overtime tie.
Don't expect to see this record bested in the new season.
Most Penalty Minutes By One Team: 88
The Ottawa Senators were the only team to crack 1,000 total penalty minutes last season, finishing with 1,027. And while Pat Maroon led the league with 150 penalty minutes for the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Sens did have two players in the top five: Brady Tkachuk in third place at 126 minutes and Austin Watson tied with Matthew Tkachuk for fourth place at 123.
Matthew's Florida Panthers finished second in total minutes at 998. So it's completely fitting that the Sens logged a league-high 88 minutes in penalties in their 7-2 loss to the Panthers on Apr. 6, 2023 — and Florida finished with the second-most minutes of the year in that same game, at 78.
The first of four fights that night came just 2:56 into the first period when Mark Kastelic tangled with Givani Smith. In the second, Patrick Brown took on Radko Gudas ahead of the main event, when Matthew squared off against Drake Batherson before Brady fought Marc Staal in the same stoppage. Those two earned game misconducts for starting a secondary altercation.
There was more mayhem in the third, including a game misconduct for Ottawa coach D.J. Smith, which doesn't count toward the penalty minute totals. Player-wise, the final tally was four misconducts for Florida and five for Ottawa — which accounts for the 10-minute difference in the final penalty totals. Individually, Florida's Smith led all players with 21 minutes.
We don't see games like this much anymore, but they were once quite commonplace. In the 1991-92 season, the Buffalo Sabres set the all-time record with 2,713 penalty minutes (in 80 games).
Only 13 teams exceeded 1,000 minutes in a year since the 2012-13 season, but interestingly, the 2022-23 Senators and the 2021-22 Predators (1,035 minutes) were the first to do it since Arizona and Anaheim hit the mark in the 2015-16 season. So we seem to be trending back upward.
Ottawa's 88 minutes in one game are the most since the Vancouver Canucks got dinged for 96 in a 6-3 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs that got out of hand in the third period on Nov. 5, 2016.
With 5:08 remaining, Ryan Miller was given the rare double game misconduct as well as two minutes for leaving the crease when he raced to the corner to defend then-rookie defenseman Troy Stecher from big Matt Martin. Eight minutes earlier, normally mild-mannered Jannik Hansen had been tossed with 19 penalty minutes when he instigated a fight with Nazem Kadri following his hit while Daniel Sedin was in the midst of scoring a goal.
Only 10 teams have exceeded 80 minutes in a game since the 2012-13 season, and Ottawa is one of just two in the last five years. Even with team totals on the rise, it would be a surprise to see a team pass 88 penalty minutes in a game in the new season.
Most Goals By One Player: 5
Only six players have scored five goals in a game in this millennium — but those moments have started to occur more frequently.
In the high-flying mid-90s, five-goal games were relatively commonplace. But after Sergei Fedorov scored all five of the Detroit Red Wings' goals in their 5-4 win over the Washington Capitals on Boxing Day 1996, it didn't happen again for more than a decade. On Dec. 20, 2007, Marian Gaborik had five goals and an assist in the Minnesota Wild's 6-3 win over the New York Rangers.
After that, it was Johan Franzen for Detroit in 2011, Patrik Laine for Winnipeg in 2018 and Mika Zibanejad for the Rangers on March 5, 2020.
The calendar year of 2022 became the first since 1994 to see multiple five-goal games. In January, Timo Meier turned the trick with the San Jose Sharks before Buffalo's Tage Thompson followed up against the Columbus Blue Jackets in December.
So — the frequency of five-goal games seems to be on the upswing. And with two six-point games as well last season, Thompson seems especially inclined to score in bunches when he's at the top of his game.
We could definitely see another five-goal game next season, but anything more than that would be a stretch. Only two players have ever scored six goals in a game since the 1967 expansion from the Original Six: Red Berenson of the St. Louis Blues in 1968 and Toronto's Darryl Sittler in 1976.