It seems that the more you doubt the Ottawa Senators, the peskier they get.

Ottawa won its fourth game in a row on Thursday, moving its record to 20-11-3.

The team is second only to Montreal, which was served a taste of its own medicine in a loss to Minnesota, in the Atlantic Division.

That minus-1 goal differential (buoyed by a 3-1 record in shootouts) doesn’t look promising, but nearly halfway through the NHL season, the Senators are starting to look like a playoff team.

Here are five things we learned on Thursday.

Jagr’s ass-ist moves him past Messier

By now you probably know that Jaromir Jagr moved past Mark Messier for second on the NHL’s all-time scoring list.

Point No. 1,888 wasn’t very pretty.

“I thought I was going to score a goal or make a beautiful assist, but it hit my ass,” said Jagr during a mid-game celebration, but it was the result of decades of building a lower body hefty enough to shield even the strongest defender.

Jagr told Sportsnet’s Kristina Rutherford that he used to do thousands of squats a day as a young boy, and even admitted to having trouble finding jeans that fit his large posterior.

So what better way to become the highest scoring non-alien in league history then with a deflection off his butt?

It was Jagr’s night, but his team, the Florida Panthers had a game to play as well.

They lost to the Boston Bruins, and dropped to 3-4-3 in their last 10 games.

Blue Jackets win 11th straight

If the Columbus Blue Jackets were to have a hated rival, it would probably be the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The teams met in one of the Columbus’ two playoff series, and Brandon Dubinsky has a bit of a history with Sidney Crosby.

On Monday, the Blue Jackets hosted the defending champs in the latest iteration of Game That Proves They’re For Real™.

Columbus actually trailed 1-0 when Crosby tipped a puck to himself and then scored, before storming back for a convincing 7-1 win at home.

Cam Atkinson tied the game with his league-leading 16th power-play point. The Blue Jackets are now clicking at a 27 per cent success rate with the man advantage.

John Tortorella has found a unit with five skaters who seem to know just where to be once set up.

Check out this chart which maps shooting locations for each player on the power play.

It was a two-goal game heading into the third period, but three goals in 51 seconds put Pittsburgh away and ended Matt Murray‘s night.

As mentioned on the Fox Sports Ohio broadcast, the Blue Jackets have outscored their opponents 26-8 in the third period of their last 17 games, and 19-4 in the third since December.

The fans are starting to notice.

Columbus’ win moved them into a tie with Chicago for first place in the NHL, with four games in hand over the Blackhawks.

Take that, Colorado

The last time the Toronto Maple Leafs faced the Colorado Avalanche, Semyon Varlamov made 51 saves to steal a win.

The Leafs entered the Pepsi Center on Monday more than due for some goals, and sure enough they potted six in a blowout.

It’s cliche to say that everything went right for a team, but in this case, it’s tough to argue otherwise.

Auston Matthews remained hot, scoring his 10th goal his past 13 games, Frederik Andersen made 38 saves for his first shutout as a Leaf, Matt Martin did what he was brought in to do, and Frederik Gauthier scored his first career NHL goal.

Gauthier, a first-round pick of the Dave Nonis regime, is not likely to develop into a big-time scorer, but if he can handle himself defensively he could earn himself a spot as a bottom-six forward on the next contending Leafs team.

A special night for the Leafs indeed.

Winnipeg’s Nordic kids come through

Coming off a 4-1 loss in Vancouver, and down 1-0 late in the second to those same Canucks on Monday, the Winnipeg Jets needed a spark.

Patrik Laine provided one, rifling home his 19th goal of the season. It is very fun to watch him shoot pucks, and it seems Mike Modano feels the same way.

Laine also delivered a big hit to Vancouver’s Henrik Sedin (who was playing in his 1,200th NHL game) earlier in the period.

The star of the night wasn’t Laine however, but rather Nikolaj Ehlers, who scored twice in the third.

Here’s how he described his second goal of the night, a power-play marker:

Ehlers went 15 games without a goal not long ago, but he seems to be finding his shooting stroke of late.

The Dane has five goals in his past six games.

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Devils and Flyers don’t like each other

The New Jersey Devils and Philadelphia Flyers went at it in a battle of teams trending in opposite directions.

The Devils had dropped 12 of 15, while the Flyers had won 11 of their last 13 games.

Guess who won?

Cory Schneider only had to make 16 saves in what might have been the easiest shutout of his career. (He had a 15-save shutout against Buffalo in 2013, but at least there he had to work overtime.)

The game got heated in the first period when Brandon Manning temporarily knocked New Jersey’s Sergey Kalinin out of the game with a neutral-zone collision.

Violent scrums seemed to form after each ensuing whistle, capped off with Michael Cammalleri‘s period-ending fight against Nick Cousins.

The teams combined for 46 penalty minutes in the first period alone.