> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.keeganthecaniac.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Mark Jankowski Has Six Goals in Six Games. That's Not About Jankowski. - URL: https://www.keeganthecaniac.com/mark-jankowski-has-six-goals-in-six-games-thats-not-about-jankowski/ - Published: 2026-10-18T14:41:49.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-18T14:41:49.000Z - Author: Keegan Seven straight. 3-2 in Winnipeg on a Saturday afternoon, Ehlers gets the winner on the power play against his old team, Kochetkov goes to 5-0\. Calgary tonight. All good. I keep coming back to is Jankowski. He scored again. Power play, second period, wrist shot through traffic off a feed from Stankoven. That's six straight games with a goal and six on the season in nine games. Last year he had 11\. In 68 games. He's halfway to last year's total before Halloween. ## Sign up for Keegan The Caniac Hurricanes takes and stories written for Caniacs, by a Caniac. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. Nobody saw this coming, and I'd argue nobody should have, because Mark Jankowski didn't change. He's the same guy. Big, smart, reliable, not a shooter. What changed is where he's standing. When Staal went down a week ago, Jankowski moved into his spot between Martinook and Ehlers. The response from most of the fanbase, me included, was somewhere between "okay" and "well, we'll see." He was supposed to be the hold-the-fort guy. Instead he's scored in every game since. Here's what I think is going on. The Carolina system doesn't ask the third-line center to create anything. It asks him to be in a specific place when the puck gets there. Forecheck, win it back, get to the slot, shoot. Staal did that for a decade and scored 15 to 20 a year doing it without ever being a scorer. Now Jankowski is in those same spots and the pucks are finding him, because that's where the pucks go in this system. The spot scores. Whoever's standing in it gets the credit. That's not a knock on him. You still have to finish, and he's finishing. But it tells you something about how this team is built that you can swap the captain for a 32-year-old depth guy and the goal production from that spot goes up, not down. Try that with any other team's third line. And it wasn't just him yesterday. Nadeau picked up his first NHL point on that same Jankowski goal, a secondary assist on the power play. Three games into his recall and he's already contributing on special teams. Unger Sorum was in the lineup too. Kotkaniemi tied it with a tip on a Gostisbehere point shot. Ghost had two assists and is quietly running the power play like it's 2023 again. Two power play goals, one kill, 37 shots to their 23\. We didn't get our first shot until five and a half minutes in and still outshot them by 14\. That's a team that gets better as the game goes along, which is the whole Brind'Amour thing. Jets captain Adam Lowry said afterward that we stick to our game and that's why we're champions. Hard to argue. So what does the Jankowski streak actually mean? Not that he's a 40-goal guy now. He's not. Enjoy it while it's going. What it means is that the Staal hole everybody was worried about is, at least for now, not a hole. And when Staal comes back in December, Jankowski slides back down to the fourth line having proven he can do more, which is a nice problem to have. That's the pattern with this team. A guy goes out, somebody you didn't think about steps in, and the system makes him look better than his contract. It's been happening for years and I still find it a little hard to believe every time. Calgary tonight to finish the back-to-back. Two more points and we come home 8-1-1 with three regulars out. I'll take it. Go Canes.