Who’s Hot: Dallas winger Loui Eriksson has 65 points and only 11 on the power play, hammering home how good he is playing 5-on-5. Who’s Not: Rene Bourque only has four goals in 28 games for the Canadiens and is minus 16. Marquee Matchups: Tuesday: Coyotes in Dallas for Pacific Division lead and No. 3 seed overall. Wednesday: Another instalment of the bitter Hawks-Canucks rivalry with Vancouver at the Madhouse on Madison. Goalies like Oilers’ six-foot-five Devan Dubnyk are taking puck stopping to new heights Could Andy Moog play in today’s NHL? How about Mike Vernon? Both were five-foot-nine and 170 pounds. Grant Fuhr looked as big as a sumo wrestler in net some nights, the way he covered every inch of space, but he was only five-foot-11 and 185. Now? Tall is in, baby. Look up, look way up. “The average height of NHL goalies now is six-foot-two,” said Fred Chabot, the Oilers’ goalie coach, who played at five-foot-10. Tim Thomas in Boston, Jaroslav Halak in St. Louis and Jose Theodore in Florida are small today, and they’re five-foot-11” Jimmy Howard is only six-foot even. Contrast that with Ben Bishop, the NHL’s Hi-Rise at six-foot-seven as he tends net in Ottawa. Or Devan Dubnyk here, at six-foot-five. Or Pekka Rinne at six-foot-five in Nashville. Even the ones you think are average are big. Semyon Varlamov? He’s six-foot-two and 209 pounds, the same as Antti Niemi, who plays at 215 pounds. “When I found out Varlamov was six-two, I said ‘really?’ ’’ said Phoenix goalie coach Sean Burke. Scouts will look at junior or European goalies under six feet, but how closely? Under quick feet, good glove, competes hard, there’s the but ... he’s under-sized. “I don’t know if I’d have been drafted,” said Chris Osgood, who won 401 games and was only five-foot-10 and 180. The question is this: does tall automatically equate to more saves? “There’s an article you should write ... which big ones will make it and which ones won’t?” said Ken Hitchcock, who’s got Halak and Brian Elliott (six-foot-three) and had Bishop knocking on the door until he was traded to the Senators for a second-round draft pick. There is a theory that tall guys have to fall farther to the ice to handle shots along the ice, so pucks can skip under them. That was Bishop’s problem at one time, coming out of college, but Blues’ goalie coach Corey Hirsch worked hard with the giant to spread out. He gets to all the low shots now. Chabot says size counts but they have to have agility to go with the ability, and it doesn’t matter if you’re built like Rinne (“he’s like Gumby in the net,” said Dubnyk) or the Vezina and Conn Smythe winner Thomas, the most unorthodox of today’s goalies who lives for making snow-angels in the crease. “You can’t coach size. You can’t teach size,” said Chabot. “A little guy can’t be bigger. That’s how big he is.” “Doesn’t matter how big a goalie is if he cannot move, though. If he’s six-four and he cannot move around on his feet, he’s not going to be good. Tall goalies also have to play a simple game. They don’t have to challenge a lot because they’re so big,” said Chabot. “The disadvantages? The holes are bigger. The five-hole is bigger. Playing along the post is more difficult, too, because there seem to be holes between them and the post. I’ve seen more and more goalies of that size and that’s a problem. Big goalies giving up goals along the ice? I don’t see that as a problem.”

“Size makes a difference because the forwards have so much freedom around the net. If a big goalie can move, it’s an advantage, for sure. All the screens, all the traffic, if you’re one of the tallest goalies, that helps.” Every day Dubnyk wakes up he’s glad he’s six-foot-five not five-foot-10. He says he doesn’t have any trouble getting down to the ice and back up at his size. “Depends how your body is scaled. I’m six-five but most of my height is in my torso, from my hips up. From my hips to my feet, they’re the same as somebody who is six-one. The height is an advantage but it doesn’t affect how I move around the ice. Now, the higher your hips are off the ice, the harder it is to get down and the harder it is to recover,” said Dubnyk. “I think anybody at this level is quick enough to get to shots on the ice, but you might have to modify your stance a bit, wider, lower to the ice. I don’t think I could play like, say, (Evgeny) Nabokov (six-foot). He has his feet really close together. I know I couldn’t play like Thomas.” To make himself bigger (upper body), he turns his knees inward and stands on the edges of his skates. Dubnyk concurs with Chabot that “there are more holes for tall guys. The bigger goalie moves and the holes under the arm, the five-hole, there’s more room there. That’s why you see big goalies playing deeper in the net; the holes are bigger once you start to move. They’re looking for minimal movement.” “There are times when I’d like to be smaller and closer to the ice, quicker movements, but when I make a shoulder save from a sharp angle sometimes, Khabby (Nikolai Khabibulin, who is six-foot-one) will get on me that it’s not fair,” laughed Dubnyk. Burke, who played at six-foot-four and tutored Ilya Bryzgalov and now Mike Smith (two tall guys too), knows size matters. “It’s like seeing a Chara. It can be an advantage out there,” said Burke. “A bigger guy can look a little awkward, but if you’ve got good feet, that’s the key.” “You go scouting now and if you find a goalie who’s as agile at six-three as a goalie who’s five-11, you’re going with the bigger guy. It’s no different with, say, a quarterback. You get a five-11 quarterback who’s quick and good, but if you have a six-five who is the same, you go with the six-five guy.” Marty Turco (five-foot-11, 184) looked pretty small in net for the Bruins this week when Steve Stamkos whipped his 50th goal past him. Burke, whose boy Brendan (six-foot-three) just turned 17 and plays for the Portland Winterhawks, knows big goalies are intimidating when a shooter is coming down the wing. It really is a psychological thing. “When you see a smaller goalie, I do think the shooter is thinking ‘this puck is going in,’ ’’ said Burke.

Western Conference: Hyperbole is the staple of the sports world, so nobody should be surprised they’re calling Alex Radulov “the best player outside the NHL.” OK, he lit up the Kontinental Hockey League but that’s only a cut above the AHL. How good is he really? He bolted the Nashville Predators when he was 21 for fame and fortune in Ufa, a city of one million 1,500 kilometres from Moscow. He was MVP in that league, with 80 points one year. But will that translate to the NHL if the Predators ever end this soap opera and get the winger back? It would be nice to see him Tuesday night when the Oilers are in Nashville, but nobody knows if or when he could get his release from Salavat. “The one year he was here we played him with (Peter) Forsberg in the playoffs. The next year he played with (Jason) Arnott and those guys and they didn’t treat him very well. I don’t know what happened off the ice but he decided he wanted to make big money right away. But, boy, he’s a dynamic player. He loves to score, loves to go to the net. He gets there because he wants to get there,” said Nashville’s former associate coach Brent Peterson. He acknowledges the KHL isn’t the NHL, but believes scorers can score anywhere. Point-producers are point-producers. Radulov was on the Russian Olympic team in Vancouver in 2010 “He led the KHL in scoring and was MVP twice,” said Peterson. “He had 25 goals for us as a 19-year-old. He was our best scorer then. He had only scratched the surface when he left us.” Radulov, who played junior for Patrick Roy (152 points and 61 goals in 62 league games and 55 in 23 playoff games in 2006) was the MVP in the Memorial Cup that spring. He started the season in Milwaukee in 2006 like all their draft picks but only stayed a few weeks. “He was the only one we ever sent there who dominated the league. We had to bring him up. Had to. He had four goals one night,” said Peterson. “He’s a playmaker too, not just a scorer. He loves hockey, loves to play the game. He wants to be on the ice. Some guys are players but they don’t like to play. They want the money and toys but not to play the game. Rads loves to play,” said Peterson. Would Radulov riding in on a white horse to save the day, upset the chemistry in Nashville? I doubt it. Players want to win. He’ll help them win. “It’s too bad he kind of left us hanging there, but he’s a good player, a great player. Hopefully if he comes back, he plays well and stays a while,” said defenceman Ryan Suter. “There will be a feeling-out process, but when he was here before he was a great guy.” Peterson, like everybody else in Nashville, is in limbo. “We have no idea what’s going on. If he’s coming or not,” said Peterson.

By the numbers: 0: Tim Thomas is a perfect 6-0 in shootouts this season. 1: The Devils lead the league in shootout wins. 28: Games between goals for Danny Briere, until getting one into an empty net against New Jersey. This ’n’ that: Theo Fleury, just in town for a Legends of Hockey game with the city police team at Rexall Place, says his country band with brother Ted will be playing a series of venues in Western Canada in the next little while. “We’re opening for a big name. A really big name,” said Theo, who wouldn’t say who it was. Ash Koley guitarist/keyboard player Phil Deschambault was with the Fleurys in a recording studio recently ... The Predators will have to make due without centre Paul Gaustad (wrist). “He’s been great for us on faceoffs. He can take them from both sides, right or left. He wins about 70 per cent of them,” said Peterson ... The Stars sorely miss Sheldon Souray, out with a charleyhorse the last four games. Souray isn’t the offensive weapon he used to be, but he’s fourth in minutes played (20:20) a night and he’s plus 20. They want to re-sign him. He’s making $1.65 million this year from the Stars and his buyout (two-thirds of $4.5 million Oiler salary) ... The feeling is Canada won’t automatically give their world junior coaching job to either of Don Hay’s assistants — Ryan Huska (Kelowna) or George Burnett (Belleville). They may go in another direction for the worlds in Russia next Christmas ... Injuries to Andy McDonald (separated shoulder, out for three weeks) and concussions to Alex Steen and Matt D’Agostini opened the door for Canadian world junior captain Jaden Schwartz to play and score a goal his first NHL game with the Blues in Tampa … He left Colorado College after two years. Blues’ coach Ken Hitchcock got a scouting report from Hay and it was two thumbs-up for Schwartz, even if he is joining the best team in the NHL. Schwartz may be used to kill penalties to start with ... Ducks’ goalie Jonas Hiller, who stood on his head in a 4-2 (empty-net goal) loss to the Kings on Friday, has started 31 games in a row, every game going back to Jan. 10 when Jeff Deslauriers got a rare start in a 5-2 win over Dallas. Have there been that many must-win games for Anaheim in the last two months? Guess so ... Wild captain Mikko Koivu, who has missed 14 games with a bum shoulder, might get into a few games before the season ends, but he might also need surgery in the off-season. Minnesota forward Pierre-Marc Bouchard has skated in a track suit, but you can forget seeing him until the fall as he rehabs a second concussion. Same story with Guillaume Latendresse. This would be three of the Wild’s top six forwards on the shelf. Little wonder, they can’t score ... Former Oilers’ centre Colin Fraser is the Kings’ Masterton trophy nominee. Getting his hands dirty, often unnoticed, has long been his calling card. He comes by it naturally. As he said this week on the Kings website, his dad worked six days a week in a sawmill in B.C. and now he’s a longshoreman, unloading ships.

Eastern Conference: We keep tossing out Quebec Remparts centre Mikhail Grigorenko as a possible Oilers’ pick in the June draft, but if they are going on need to fill a hole on the back-end, former Everett Silvertips GM Doug Soetaert says it’s a slam-dunk. It has to be Ryan Murray. “I was talking to Steve Yzerman and he told me Murray reminded him of Mark Howe,” said the one-time NHL goalie. Not Scott Niedermayer, as many people think? “No,” said Soetaert. “I’m not just saying this because I had Ryan and I saw him play all the time, but Ryan could play in the NHL right now. For me, he’s better than (Cam) Fowler (when he came into the NHL). I think he’s better than Luke Schenn and Tyler Myers (WHL first-round picks of the Leafs and Sabres). He’s a coach’s dream. At 16, he was playing against 20-year-olds in our league. Makes a great first pass.” Soetaert, who once upon a time played for the Oil Kings with partner Larry Hendrick, was surprisingly let go in early February. He was GM and coach in Kansas City in the IHL for 11 years, joining Everett in 2002 with a one-year detour to be the Flames assistant GM. He’s a good man. He should be working somewhere. This ’n’ that: Ilya Bryzgalov became only the second Flyers goalie to ever record three straight shutouts, and set the club record of 249:33 minutes without giving up a goal until Michael Grabner beat him. The three-straight shutout goalie beside him? Not Bernie Parent or Pelle Lindbergh, who crashed his Porsche into a retaining wall. Instead, it was The Beezer, John Vanbiesbrouck, who also put up three zeros in a row. Bryzgalov, by the way, is taking his run low-key. He didn’t even skate out to acknowledge the Philly faithful after being named first star against Jersey in a 3-0 shutout ... Most players go through a couple of pairs of skates in an NHL season, but Zdeno Chara figures he uses about 12 pair, wearing them out in about three weeks. “With my equipment on, I’m about 270, 280 pounds. That’s a lot of twisting and turning. The skates get wet and break down,” said Chara ... If it’s true that Evgeny Kuznetsov, a slam-dunk to be on the Russian Olympic squad in Sochi in 2014, says he wants to stay in the KHL rather than come to Washington next year, it’s a kick in the head for the Caps, who were counting on Kuznetsov, the captain of the Russian world junior squad, to be a No. 2 centre. “With the uncertainty with the CBA (up on Sept. 15), he feels it’s better if he stays in Russia,” said a KHL source. Betting is he goes to either St. Petersburg where Denis Grebeshkov, Patrick Thoresen and Alexei Semenkov are playing or Ufa to replace Radulov ... Adam Larsson, the second name on the Oilers scouting list after Ryan Nugent-Hopkins last June, has struggled in the last month with the Devils. First he hurt his back when P.K. Subban knocked him into the boards and missed 10 games, then he got benched against the Flyers. “Just a bump in the road. The league is at a different level now,” said Devils’ coach Pete DeBoer, who sat Larsson down to have a chat with Larry Robinson, the assistant coach. The message: less is more, simple plays preferred ... Teams are always looking for quick fixes in trade deadline deals — the Oilers got a great return out of Sergei Samsonov in 2006 when they got him from the Bruins — but usually, there are growing pains. Cody Hodgson is still looking for his first point with the Sabres in nine games and has one shot on net his last three. He only played 11:08 against the Habs this past week. Not the first impression you want to make after a trade. Alex Sulzer, a defensive D-man, has two more points. Zack Kassian hasn’t been a huge factor in Vancouver, either ... Nikita Filatov, who went back to play for Red Army in Moscow this winter after the Blue Jackets said goodbye to their failed first-round pick and he couldn’t crack the Senators after showing little inclination to go to where goals are scored in North America (around the blue paint), just got scratched from a junior team playoff. What a waste of talent. “You have to get a result, just not skate around,” said the junior Red Army coach, as relayed by ace Russian scribe Dmitry Chesnokov.

He Said It: “It’s not the standard boo-yea, boo-yea. The fans come up with different things. They’re ruthless” Jets’ coach Claude Noel after the fans at the MTS Centre started chanting “Crosby’s Better” every time Alex Ovechkin touched the puck Friday. Matty Short Shifts: • Face-offs are overrated. Evgeni Malkin wins 46.9 per cent of his draws, but always seems to have the puck and Steve Stamkos is just 45.7. The puck is always on his stick, too. You’d be surprised how many top-drawer centres are very average in the faceoff circle. They’re not all Jonathan Toews or Joe Thornton • Can the Blackhawks win a playoff round without Toews, who likely has been texting Sidney Crosby on how to deal with a concussion? I can’t see it, although Marian Hossa, their best forward outside of Toews who was an MVP candidate before getting hurt, and Patrick Kane, now playing centre, are picking up the slack. Can Toews make it back before the post-season after skating four days and shutting it down? “Let’s hope so. That would be great,” said coach Joel Quenneville. Wishful thinking? • Hands up, how many people thought Matt Cooke would be in the Lady Byng running this year? The kinder, gentler Cooke has had 15 minors and not one fighting major. Thirty penalty minutes. And he’s got 31 points, 16 goals in Pittsburgh. That’s the same number of goals as Pavel Datsyuk. OK, Datsyuk also has 43 assists. • Could the Minnesota Wild finish with the league’s second-worst record? Everybody talks about the Leafs’ in free fall, how about Minny? Eight losses in their last nine, four times shut out in that span, a measly seven wins in the last 28 games going back to mid January. They’re only five points (68-63) ahead of the Oilers. Will they win three more games? Hawks twice, with the Preds, Canucks, Rangers, Coyotes, Panthers, Flames, Capitals, Kings, Sabres on their dance card? • Not to beat a dead horse, but Crosby (349th in NHL scoring) has more points (17) in his 10 games than Dustin Penner (14) has in 54 games for the Kings. An lamentable season for Penner, who is 394th in scoring. • Tim Thomas has looked bagged and every bit of his soon-to-be 38 years in the Bruins net — maybe because he’s played 133 games the last two years, counting playoffs — but he was back on his game against the Flyers Saturday. Was this a blip on the screen or are the Bruins ready to snap out of their half-season funk? They’re a .500 team the last 2 1/2 months. Patrice Bergeron, the most consistent Boston player this year has a sore knee. He got the shootout winner against Bryzgalov. • Is there a more improved player in the league than Blake Wheeler in Winnipeg? His skating has come in leaps and bounds. When he’s attacking now, teams are in trouble. He’s got 59 points in 69 games Max Pacioretty in Montreal? Same story. Big body who eats up the ice. He’s got 58 points in 69 games. Can Teemu Hartikainen, who looks ungainly now, get his skating to match Wheeler and Pacioretty? If so, the Oilers, who desperately need his size on the wing, could be laughing. Hartikainen, who had seven hits against the Flames Friday, does have a touch around the net.