Carolina’s Sebastian Aho is the NHL Star of the Week, followed by the Rangers’ Panarin and the Devils’ Hughes

The NHL voted the best players of the last week of the year, with Sebastian Aho of Carolina clearly dominating. Artemi Panarin was also honored again, followed by back-row mainstay Luke Hughes of New Jersey.

Aho was the star of the show

Sebastian Aho, the Carolina Hurricanes’ offensive leader, was the overall MVP. He also crossed the 500-point mark in the NHL quite recently. The Finnish chic managed to score an incredible 11 points in 3 games played this week.

In addition, he recorded two four-point nights in a row for the first time in his career, and capped the week with a three-point performance. Overall, he had the best week of his overseas career, recording 2 goals and 9 assists. Thanks to these performances, Carolina won all three games and jumped to fourth place in the Eastern Conference.

Aho jumped very significantly in the league’s scoring. He is currently already in 15th place with 43 points on 15 goals and 28 assists in 35 games played. He can thus boldly think about breaking the 80-point mark again, which he has done so far in 2019 and 2022.

The other honoree is Panarin of the Rangers

New York Rangers’ skilled forward Artemi Panarin was once again among the top three players of the week. This, after maintaining two points per game in three games played. He also became only the fourth player this season to break the 50-point mark.

He is now tied for third in points with Czech player David Pastrňák. However, he has scored one more goal so far. The team from New York, which dominates the whole NHL, is benefiting from it, but we will see if its form will hold and if it will not repeat the failure of last season, when the team was completely burnt out in the playoffs.

The third star of the week from the defensive ranks

Another player who was awarded is the pillar of the New Jersey Devils defence Luke Hughes, who didn’t fare so well before the Christmas holidays. He even had a streak of seven games without a point, often finishing in negative numbers on his +/- rating.

However, after Christmas everything changed and he bought 5 points in three games played. In addition, he recorded an unprecedented streak of 3 games in a row in which he managed to score. The younger brother of the more famous Jack, who also plays for the Devils, has a reason to rejoice and can put the previous poor performances behind him.

Source: NHL