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NHL Three Stars: Ducks snap skid; Flames, Sens keep winning; Bouma ejected for kneeing

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NHL Three Stars: Ducks snap skid; Flames, Sens keep winning; Bouma ejected for kneeing

No. 1 Star: Andrew Hammond, Ottawa Senators

The netminder improved to 9-0-1 on the season in the Senators 2-1 victory over the visiting Islanders. There was a scary moment midway through the second when the one they call The Hamburgular took a Johnny Boychuk blast right off the noggin. It broke his mask, but he was fine, more or less.

 

No. 2 Star: Sean Monahan, Calgary Flames

The Flames just keep winning. Friday night they put the beat down on the lowly Toronto Maple Leafs. Monahan had 3-points in 20:39 TOI and was a plus-3 in the 6-3 victory. Of his 2 goals, the second was scored while the Flames were short-handed:

No. 3 Star: John Gibson, Anaheim Ducks

If it weren't for Gibson, the Ducks wouldn't have snapped their current losing skid. Anaheim's wunderkind in net made 32 saves - include a 16 shot onslaught by Minnesota in the first - to drag the Ducks to a 2-1 win. With half a minute left on the clock, he made the save of the game against Nino Niederreiter.

Honorable Mention: Matt Beleskey returned to the Ducks lineup after missing 12 games with an upper-body injury. Jakob Silverberg and Ryan Kesler each nabbed 2-points in the win ... Dallas was 3-for-6 on the power play against Washington in the 4-2 victory. Kari Lehtonen faced only 20 shots from the Capitals, 7 of which came on the usually lethal power play. Vern Fiddler and Ales Hemskey both recorded 2-point games. In the loss, Curtis Glencross scores a beauty:

... Matt Puempel and Kyle Turris scored the goals for Ottawa in the second period. The Senators moved within 5-points of the Boston Bruins for the final Wild Card slot; both teams have 15 games left in their respective regular seasons ... Columbus lost the lead twice to Edmonton before being down a goal themselves. Scott Hartnell tied the game for the Jackets with 3:37 to go. CBJ's Alexander Wennberg assisted on the Hartnell tying goal and scored the only goal in the shoot-out:

Did You Know: Ryan Getzlaf played his 700th NHL game on Friday. Time flies...

Dishonorable Mention: Washington's Braden Holtby was pulled after giving up 4 goals on 22 shots in 33:54 TOI. He was replaced by Justin Peters. The Caps held a 'players only' meeting after the game ... If this whole hockey thing doesn't work out for Devan Dubnyk, he can try his hand at acting:

... Calgary's Lance Bouma received 20 penalty minutes in around one minute on the ice. He was given 5 minutes for fighting Toronto's Zach Sill after Bouma kneed Brandon Kozun. For the kneeing, Bouma received a 5 minute major penalty and a 10 minute misconduct that ended his night. Here's the kneeing play. Supplementary discipline coming?

As only the Leafs can make happen, they fell victim to two short handed goals against during the 5 minute major penalty against Calgary ... Despite taking the victory, Sergei Bobrovsky was less than stellar against the Oilers as evidenced by this terrible goal. Say it's a terrible bounce all you want, but that's a bad goal to give up.

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Jen Neale is a staff writer for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow her on Twitter!