The last five games for Evan Fournier have seen his play on the ice and in the NHL grow dramatically. Fournier has been a revelation for any team that has him on their roster. A dynamic scoring threat, he has been a vital part of every Chicago team that has scored goals, and has been among the best in the league since the start of the season.
Fournier has made that last five games look like the most exciting, exciting, and exciting he has ever been. He has scored one goal in each game, and has a goal and two assists in every game since the start of the year. He has been on fire and has scored a ton of goals for the Blackhawks this season, with nine in the last five games, including two over the weekend.
He has been on fire lately, and if it wasn’t for the Chicago team being so far ahead of the rest of the league in the standings this season, Fournier might have scored eight goals in the last five games for Chicago. I’m not saying he will, but the fact that he has scored goals in Chicago’s last five games for the first time in his career definitely points to that possibility.
Fournier scored a goal in Vancouver on Sunday, then scored again in Chicago on Tuesday, and now looks quite good at the age of 22. There are a number of players that have come out of nowhere to be able to score in the NHL this season (Fournier, Sidney Crosby) but none have done it more than Fournier.
Fournier had a goal and an assist in Sunday’s game against Colorado, but he is also now tied with Crosby for third place on the all-time list for goals by a defenseman with at least 500 games played. Fournier has scored at least 40 goals in his last five games. If Fournier continues at this pace, he will become just the third defenseman ever to score 450 or more goals.
Fournier has scored 40 or more goals in each of his last five games. And he has scored 40 or more goals in each of his last five seasons. So, he is just as good as Crosby and has better numbers than Crosby. Crosby is the only other defenseman who has ever been able to score 40 or more goals in his career since the lockout. But Crosby is in the midst of a career year.
Fournier is on pace to be the second-leading scorer in NHL history. He’s currently the only hockey player to score 40 or more goals in three consecutive seasons. Now, that might not mean much. But it’s a pretty big deal.
But Fournier is no slouch. He has a career point-per-game average of 3.17. That is the best of any NHL player since Sidney Crosby. That is not an easy feat. But Fournier has been a much better player than Crosby this year. His point total is the highest of any NHL player. The only other player to average more points per game than Fournier is Adam Oates.
And while Fournier has been playing with a broken hand, it seems that the last game he played was in the 2010 post-season when he lost his hand in a game in which he was injured. We know that he had a goal in the game and that he was scoring because of the injury.
We’re not sure if that was a goal, but it was a nice touch. We also have to remember that Crosby’s broken hand was in a game when he was injured. Maybe he needed the goal to tell the other team to stay in their own zone.