Empty Net Goals: Malkin, Ovechkin & Crosby

After watching Malkin & Crosby miss getting an empty net goal on probably about 5 attempts the other night at the Calgary game,   I started to wonder how many empty net points the players in the race for the Art Ross scoring leader trophy had amassed this season.  Apparently the NHL doesn’t keep that statistic among the thousands of oddball statistics they keep.

2010 results:  Empty Net Goals: Ovechkin, Stamkos, Crosby & Sedin – 2010

So I pulled out the calculator and here’s what I came up with:

• Evgeni Malkin:                  3 goals and 2 assists on empty net goals.
• Alexander Ovechkin:        5 goals and 2 assists on empty net goals.
• Sidney Crosby:                 2 goals and 2 assists on empty net goals.

While the Art Ross Trophy race is not affected by empty net goals, the MVP vote should be looking at how many of the players points were derived from emptynetters.   If you take the players total points that they have now and subtract the freebie empty net points, then the race looks like this:

• Evgeni Malkin:                              107 pts – 5 empty net pts. = 102 pts
• Alexander Ovechkin:                    100 pts – 7 empty net pts. =   93 pts
• Sidney Crosby:                              97 pts – 4 empty net pts. =   93 pts

 Just another reason Evgeni Malkin deserves the MVP award.