{"id":544082,"date":"2026-04-06T17:31:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T17:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/544082\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T17:31:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T17:31:11","slug":"rakell-leads-3-stars-of-the-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/544082\/","title":{"rendered":"Rakell leads 3 Stars of the Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2013 Pittsburgh Penguins right wing Rickard Rakell<\/a>, New Jersey Devils center Jack Hughes<\/a> and St. Louis Blues center Robert Thomas<\/a>\u00a0have been named\u00a0the NHL\u2019s \u201cThree Stars\u201d presented by GEICO for the week ending April 5.<\/p>\n

FIRST STAR \u2013 RICKARD RAKELL, RW, PITTSBURGH PENGUINS<\/p>\n

Rakell, who scored in each of his five appearances, led the NHL with seven goals (7-1\u20148) to lift the Penguins (40-22-16, 96 points) to a 4-1-0 week and back into second place in the Metropolitan Division as they seek their first playoff berth since 2021-22. He found the back of the net twice in an 8-3 win over the New York Islanders March 30. Rakell then scored once in both a 5-1 victory against the Detroit Red Wings March 31 and a 6-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning April 2. He capped the week with four points over back-to-back games versus the Florida Panthers, notching 1-1\u20142 in a 9-4 triumph April 4 and two goals, including his 34th career game-winner, in a 5-2 victory April 5. The 32-year-old Rakell, who has compiled 24-24\u201448 through 57 overall contests this season, has nearly doubled his 2025-26 total with points in 16 of his last 17 outings dating to March 7 (13-10\u201423). His current five-game goal streak is one shy of his career high, set from Dec. 21, 2017 \u2013 Jan. 2, 2018 (7-3\u201410 in 6 GP w\/ ANA).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2013 Pittsburgh Penguins right wing Rickard Rakell, New Jersey Devils center Jack Hughes and St. Louis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5113],"tags":[5,4,118,1469,100,5216],"class_list":{"0":"post-544082","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-penguins","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-penguins","11":"tag-pittsburgh","12":"tag-pittsburgh-penguins","13":"tag-pittsburghpenguins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116358957412192018","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544082","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=544082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}