What do you need to know about the weekend's big stories? Scott Burnside gives us his take on the biggest and best.

Brandon Dubinsky and the Columbus Blue Jackets are on a roll. Patrick McDermott/NHLI via Getty Images

Love for the Jackets: Isn't it time we started to give the Columbus Blue Jackets and head coach John Tortorella some well-deserved love? Tortorella took a lot of heat, along with the rest of Team USA, for the team's lifeless performance at the World Cup of Hockey. But after losing their first two games of the regular season, the Blue Jackets have gone 10-2-2, including Sunday's 3-2 win over the defending Presidents' Trophy-winning Washington Capitals. That win marks four in a row for a team that leads the NHL in power-play efficiency (they scored one with the man advantage Sunday) and is second in goals scored per game. With a sterling 7-2-2 record at home, it means the accursed Columbus Civil War cannon is going off like crazy at Nationwide Arena. Sunday's win wrapped up a weekend that also saw them knock off the red-hot New York Rangers on Friday night. The Blue Jackets are for real.

Good time to score: In the end, it wasn't so much the goals -- although Connor McDavid was no doubt pleased to see three on the official score sheet for his first-ever NHL hat trick -- but rather the result. Of course, for the Edmonton Oilers' captain and most important player, McDavid's performance and the Oilers' success are pretty much inexorably linked. And so it was that McDavid's three goals in Saturday's 5-2 win over the disappointing Dallas Stars did break an unusually long goal-less drought (10 games), but it also helped halt an ugly skid that had seen the Oilers lose five straight and go 2-7-1 after a 7-1-0 start. The win moved the Oilers, at least temporarily, back into a tie with the Anaheim Ducks for the top spot in the Pacific Division. The key now for McDavid, second in the league with 22 points, and the Oilers is to prove this wasn't an aberration but the norm, as they host the Chicago Blackhawks and then visit the Colorado Avalanche and Arizona Coyotes in what should be two winnable road games later this week.

Caution for Cunningham: Finally, warm thoughts and wishes go out to Craig Cunningham, the captain of the Tucson Roadrunners of the American Hockey League, and his family. The 26-year-old collapsed on the ice shortly before a game between the Roadrunners and the Manitoba Moose in Tucson Saturday, and he was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where he remains. The Arizona Daily Star reported Cunningham appeared to convulse on the ice and was attended to by medical staff from both teams and firefighters who were on the ice as part of a pregame ceremony. The game was postponed and will be rescheduled. Officials with the Roadrunners' parent club, the Arizona Coyotes, describe the situation as both very serious and fluid as of Sunday evening. Cunningham is a native of Trail, British Columbia, and was drafted 70th overall by the Boston Bruins in 2010. He'd been with the Coyotes' organization the past couple of seasons and played 29 games with the big club over the past two seasons. Cunningham, who had 13 points in 11 games for the Roadrunners this season, is described as a hard worker and was extremely well-liked in the Coyotes' room.