Three-time Stanley Cup champion Kris Letang added to his sparkling resume on Tuesday night against the Colorado Avalanche, joining exclusive company when he hit the 800-point plateau.<\/p>\n
Thanks to his first-period assist, Letang became just the 21st blueliner in NHL history to reach that prestigious number.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for the Penguins, Letang\u2019s milestone was one of the lone positives during a disappointing setback. Trailing 1-0, Tommy Novak cycled the puck from low to high along the near boards to Letang, who promptly passed the puck across the width of the zone to his defense partner, Sam Girard. Seconds later, Girard hit the high forward, Egor Chinakhov, who fired a one-time missile from long range over the right pad of Colorado netminder Scott Wedgewood to briefly tie the score at 1-1.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is an incredible milestone,\u201d head coach Dan Muse said. \u201cI\u2019m disappointed that we couldn\u2019t get a win here today on the day that he gets it, because it\u2019s obviously a big one. It\u2019s a special one for him. It\u2019s well deserved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Letang\u2019s 800th point was the headliner on the goal, but ironically, it wasn\u2019t the lone milestone. Playing against his former team, Girard\u2019s helper was the 200th assist of his career. Chinakhov set a new personal high with his 17th goal.<\/p>\n
By netting his 800th point, Letang joined teammate Erik Karlsson, Tampa Bay\u2019s Victor Hedman and Colorado\u2019s Brent Burns as the fourth active blueliner to hit that mark. Looking at the 800-point club from a historical perspective, of the 17 retired blueliners to reach that lofty total, 15 have gone on to be elected into the Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n
Spending his career skating in the shadows of fellow Penguins\u2019 franchise pillars Sidney\u00a0Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, Letang\u2019s march up the all-time leaderboards and single-franchise lists has sometimes gone underappreciated. But what he has accomplished from the back end is every bit as impressive and historic.<\/p>\n
Letang became just the ninth defenseman to hit 800 points with a single franchise. He and Hedman are the only active rearguards to accomplish the feat. Each of the seven retirees that lay claim to that achievement are enshrined in the Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see the preparation that he puts in all the time,\u201d Muse said. \u201cJust the dedication to this game, to this team, to this organization. You see why he\u2019s been doing this for so long. \u2026 Because I\u2019ve now been around around it for a full season, I hope that nobody takes for granted what these guys are doing just because you\u2019re seeing it all the time; you\u2019re seeing a new milestone by one of them it feels like every few weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Tanger to come in now and hit that milestone, it\u2019s another really big one. It\u2019s a credit to what he\u2019s been doing for all of these years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Continuing the Penguins’ run of individual star-power since Mario Lemieux\u2019s debut in 1984, Letang became the fourth defenseman to reach the 800-point mark while wearing a Penguins sweater. Prior to Monday, Karlsson was the most recent back in his debut season in black and gold. Hall of Famers Paul Coffey and Larry Murphy also donned the flightless bird when they notched their 800th points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three-time Stanley Cup champion Kris Letang added to his sparkling resume on Tuesday night against the Colorado Avalanche,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5116],"tags":[193,192,144,5277,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-521385","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-colorado-avalanche","8":"tag-avalanche","9":"tag-colorado","10":"tag-colorado-avalanche","11":"tag-coloradoavalanche","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116287891758692973","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}