Pucks On The 'Net

From the Elias Sports Bureau:

The Islanders' Nino Niederreiter became the fourth-youngest player to score a goal in the NHL's expansion era when he gave the Isles a 1-0 lead in the first period of their game in Washington. Since the 1967-68 season, the only players to score a goal at a younger age than Niederreiter (who was 18 years, 35 days old as of Wednesday) were Grant Mulvey in 1974 (18 years, 32 days), Jordan Staal in 2006 (18 years, 32 days) and Patrick Marleau in 1997 (18 years, 34 days).

Doug Weight, who at age 39 is old enough to be Nino's father, had the primary assist on Niederreiter's first NHL goal. Over the last 66 seasons, there has been only one bigger age difference between an assister on a player's first career goal and the goal scorer than the 21-year age gap between Weight and Niederreiter. That was the 23-year spread when Hartford's Dave Keon set up Paul MacDermid's first NHL goal (in 1982).

Here's some more interesting stats and facts:

• Alexander Ovechkin played in his 400th NHL game on Wednesday night. He has 273 goals in that time span, the 5th highest total through the first 400 games of any player's career in NHL history. The others: Wayne Gretzky (366 goals), Mario Lemieux (320), Mike Bossy (319) and Brett Hull (312) .
• Ryan Malone's game winning goal against Montreal was his first goal in 20 regular season games, the longest drought of his career.
•  Anders Lindback of the Nashville Predators made his first NHL start on Wednesday, beating the defending Stanley Cup champion Blackhawks in Chicago. That marked the first time a goalie in his first NHL start to beat the defending champions in their own rink since Buffalo's Darren Puppa blanked the Edmonton Oilers on November1st, 1985.