NHL Three Stars: Stellar Standouts in Colorado, Detroit and Florida

Detroit Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin led the NHL in points this past week, but what about huge bargain performances in Florida and Colorado?

This is THN.com’s NHL three stars of the week, a regular feature in which we look at the past seven days of NHL games and pick out three individual players who’ve had the highest impact in that span. Here we go:

The Panthers got their season back on track this week, and the 28-year-old Reinhart helped power them to two wins in three games (2-1-0) by generating a league-best five goals and six points in three games. He now has six goals and eight points in five games this year, and in terms of his financial value, it couldn’t happen at a better time, as he’s slated to be a UFA next summer.

Unfortunately for Florida GM Bill Zito, the better Reinhart plays, the more he prices himself out of the market for the Panthers. Reinhart currently has a salary cap hit of $6.5 million per PuckPedia, but if he continues to produce at a pace that’s going to push him past his career highs of 33 goals and 82 points (both set in the 2021-22 campaign), Reinhart will have no shortage of UFA suitors.

And given that Florida has only 11 NHL players under contract for next season and cap space of just $23.1 million – somewhere around $27.6 million if the cap ceiling rises as expected – they probably can’t afford to retain Reinhart’s services without losing others. But for now, the Panthers will be enjoying the benefits of his elite performance.

For years, Larkin has been the best player on bad Red Wings teams. But this season, the 27-year-old is the best player on a good-so-far Wings squad. 

This week, he posted a league-best five assists and seven points in only three games – and that included a two-assist, three-point game Saturday in Detroit’s 5-2 road win over Ottawa. That performance lifted the Wings to a 4-1-1 record (second-best in the Atlantic Division, behind the 4-0-0 Boston Bruins), and it increased Larkin’s individual numbers to seven assists and nine points in five games.

Detroit’s offense has been the biggest factor in their strong start to the year, with the Wings amassing 24 goals-for – the second-best total in the league behind Carolina (28) and tied with Vegas (24) – and more importantly, putting up a four-game win streak. In each game of that streak so far, Detroit won by at least two goals. That’s impressive, and to be mentioned in the same category as the upper-tier Hurricanes and Golden Knights is an excellent harbinger of what could be coming this season.

With Larkin leading the way, the Wings might finally be a legitimate playoff threat once again. They don’t need him to be an Art Ross Trophy finalist – they just need his above-average all-round game more nights than not, and that’s what Larkin has been able to provide early this year.

With a 5-0-0 record thus far this season, the Avalanche is the class of the Central Division, and Georgiev is the class of the goaltending position. 

The 27-year-old put up a 3-0-0 record, 1.67 goals-against average, .940 save percentage and one shutout this week. Incredibly, those individual totals are slightly worse than his totals so far this season: in five games, Georgiev has a 5-0-0 mark, a .943 SP and a 1.58 GAA. He’s given the Avs an advantage in every game and helped them beat bona fide playoff contenders Los Angeles, Seattle and Carolina. Avalanche brass couldn’t ask for more from him.

The way things are headed, Georgiev is proving to be one of the NHL’s biggest bargains at a $3.4-million cap hit for this season and the next. The Avs have demonstrated a willingness to walk away from their goalies when contract demands go past a red-line point for Colorado GM Chris MacFarland and his boss, Joe Sakic. Just ask Darcy Kuemper. But the challenge for MacFarland will be to keep Georgiev in the fold for the long term.

It’s going to be a delicate process, and the conclusion of it likely won’t happen soon, but one way or another, the Avalanche have to figure out a way to reward Georgiev’s solid play while at the same time hanging on to as much cap space as they possibly can. Georgiev’s numbers probably will drop back closer to his career totals (including an SP in the .910 to .918 range and a GAA in the 2.52 to 2.91 range), but as it currently stands, he’s the bar-setter for all his NHL counterparts between the pipes.