It's probably true that when you saw the St. Louis Blues and Nashville Predators on the schedule tonight you may not have looked at the standings to know that first place was on the line.
NHL scores: Stars shut out Kings while Blues upend Predators
Elsewhere, the Canadiens humbled the Bruins and the Sharks took out the Lightning.
Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
Such was the case and neither the Blues nor Predators let us down as they played perhaps the most fun game of the night - a 4-3 Blues win at home.
T.J. Oshie returned to the lineup after missing time with a concussion and promptly scored the first goal of the night. Carl Gunnarsson and Vladimir Tarasenko also scored and Paul Stastny got what was the game-winner with 5:54 to play.
Nashville got goals from Shea Weber, Roman Josi, and Filip Forsberg. By the way, Forsberg is now tied for sixth in the NHL in scoring with Flames defenseman Mark Giordano with 20 points, four points behind Sidney Crosby for the league lead.
Elsewhere, the Dallas Stars won their second straight and did it impressively with a 2-0 shutout against the Los Angeles Kings. Kari Lehtonen stopped 27 shots to earn the shutout and Ryan Garbutt and Jason Spezza each scored their third goal of the season.
If you wanted to read about the Montreal Canadiens 5-1 win against the Boston Bruins, we've got you all covered here.
All the NHL scores
Jets 3, Hurricanes 1
Canadiens 5, Bruins 1
Blues 4, Predators 3
Flames 5, Coyotes 3
Stars 2, Kings 0
3 Things We Learned
1. It's time to start feeling bad for Sabres goalies. Jhonas Enroth gave up five goals against Minnesota and the sixth goal, an empty-netter, was one of the few shots he didn't face. The Wild had 78 shot attempts against the Sabres and led to coach Ted Nolan having this to say afterward:
Ted Nolan: "...it's kind of sad to watch team after team after team go through us in the defensive zone like we don’t know what we’re doing"
— Michael Russo (@Russostrib) November 14, 2014 You kind of feel bad for Ted Nolan now too.
2. The Ottawa Senators won a thrilling game in overtime... That they probably shouldn't have let get to overtime in the first place. The Senators had a 3-0 lead after the first period and watched the Oilers slowly pick away at it. At least Mike Hoffman was there to save the Sens skin in overtime with his second goal of the game.
3. The Flames just keep on keepin' on don't they? A 5-3 win against Arizona looks good on them and even better when you see everyone who had a hand in it. Paul Byron scored twice, Mark Giordano had a goal and so did David Jones and Sean Monahan. It might be a motley crew, but Bob Hartley is getting the absolute best out of his team once again.
Impact Moment
Kari Lehtonen earned his 28th career shutout in a 2-0 win against the Kings. He did that because he was able to do stuff like this:
Stat of the Night
Bet you thought there wasn't anything special about the Wild-Sabres game aside from Nino Niederreiter getting his first hat trick, right? Wrong! The first 10 minutes of the first period was frantic and featured this neat tidbit with goals from Ryan Carter, Niederreiter, and Zemgus Girgensons.
The three goals scored by the teams in 17 seconds is a franchise record. Previous record was 18 seconds (2/1/76 at California).
— Sabres PR (@SabresPR) November 14, 2014 Post to Post
Ottawa Senators GM Bryan Murray is battling Stage 4 colon cancer
Why yes, there were fisticuffs in the Canadiens-Bruins game including this one between... Matt Fraser and Nathan Beaulieu? What?
Check out the hats falling on Nino Niederreiter! Now come up with your own weather-related El Niño pun.
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