It's been a pretty busy couple of weeks in the world of hockey, and Nike Bauer has been right in the middle of it.
Let's start out with the NHL Stars of the month for December. Tim Thomas of the Boston Bruins was a co-recipient of the NHL's first star of the month for his tremendous play during Boston's historic start to their season. Thomas went 7-0-0 with a 2.40 goals-against average and a .922 save percentage to go along with a shutout. Five of his seven wins during the month came on the road and for the season Thomas is now 16-4-3 with a 2.13 goals-against average and a .932 save percentage. Just unbelievable numbers for the fifth year netminder.
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The second star of the month was Jeff Carter of the Philadelphia Flyers. Carter was tied for the most points in the month with 21, by scoring 11 goals and picking up 10 assists. During the Flyers 14 games last month, Carter scored goals in nine of those contests and now has 27 on the season which is tied for the league lead. He also had a career-best +5 rating in a 7-1 victory against Washington.
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Switching gears now to the 57th NHL All-Star game that will take place the weekend of January 24th up in Montreal. Fan voting for the starters ended last week and NBH will be represented in the starting lineup by Evgeni Malkin, Patrick Kane, and Scott Niedermayer.
Malkin currently leads the league in scoring with 60 points. He finished with over 1.5 million fan votes. For the season, Malkin has 15 goals and 45 assists.
Kane led all Western Conference players with over 900,000 fan votes. The second year winger leads the Blackhawks in points with 16 goals and 25 assists for a total of 41 points.
Scott Niedermayer will be making his fifth appearance in the All-Star game. He has five goals and 17 assists this season and has helped the Ducks pull into second place in the Pacific Conference.

Last, but certainly not least, NBH would like to congratulate Team Canada's World Junior team for winning their fifth straight World Junior Hockey Championship on Monday night.
Team Canada defeated Sweden 5-1 in the gold medal match to tie a Canadian record with five straight championships. Canada went undefeated in this year's tournament and has now won an amazing 29 of their last 30 games during the WJHC.
Team Canada will be looking for a record sixth straight next year when the event will take place in Saskatoon and Regina.
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Posted By: Luke Ventura