The player you see scoring is Zemgus Girgensons, and he is currently in the news because he is leading the fan vote for the 2015 NHL All-Star Game. You read that correctly, and much of that is due to his home country of Latvia turning out and voting. This brings out several things about Girgensons: he is the Buffalo Sabres' second leading scorer with 14 points (which isn't saying much, since the leader, Tyler Ennis, has 16) and he leads the team in the +/- category at +6. The second part is big, considering that he is only one of three Sabres on the right side of that statistic (the other two are Nikita Zadorov and Brian Flynn). He earns the most ice time of all forwards and is routinely put up against the opposing team's forwards, which is no small task for a guy that is only two and a half years removed from playing junior in Dubuque of the USHL and made the direct jump to the pros (he started in the AHL after being drafted in 2012). He also played for Latvia in the 2014 Olympics and had a good showing there.
Buffalo is still undergoing a rebuild, and while it is still fairly early, Girgensons is one of the bright spots for a team that is much closer to winning the Connor McDavid/Jack Eichel sweepstakes than they are the Stanley Cup at this point.
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