Edinburgh 5, Helsinki 3 – The Edinburgh Capitals made a 2-point move up the standings and a major move in their lineup Thursday. After handing the reeling Jokerit their 13th loss in the last 16 games thanks to 5 points from John Tavares, Edinburgh added a superstar to the lineup in a trade with Madrid. First the game: Helsinki seemed to get off to a good start, with a 2-1 first period lead, but Tavares managed to lead Edinburgh into a tie and then the lead – 4-3 with 11 minutes left to play. On the powerplay in the final minutes thanks to a Dan Winnik penalty, Helsinki decided to pull their goalie to give themselves a 2-man advantage and the move backfired. Tony Martensson scored into an empty net for his second goal of the game and 13th of the season. Tavares scored 3 goals and is now one behind Zurich’s Ilya Kovalchuk in the league goal-scoring race. Helsinki’s second defense pairing of Daniel Fernholm and Carlo Colaiacovo had an excellent game. Both had a goal and an assist, Fernholm was plus 3 with 4 hits and Colaiacovo was plus 2 with 2 blocked shots. Now for the trade: Edinburgh is firmly in the playoff picture as they sit in fourth place in the Northern Conference, but GM Marc Peninou has his sights on loftier goals. With 26 games to play in the regular season, Edinburgh sits in 7th overall, just 8 points behind league-leading Berlin. Twelfth-place Madrid made a deal with Peninou Thursday that called for 8 moving vans. The biggest names in the deal are Rick Nash and Derek Stepan. Going to Edinburgh are winger Rick Nash (age 30, 48 points in 56 games), defenseman Braydon Coburn (29, 15 pts. in 56 GP);  defenseman Fedor Tyutin (31, 12 pts. in 56 GP); and Patrick O’Sullivan (29, 2 pts. in 10 GP). Madrid receives center Derek Stepan (24, 43 pts. in 56 GP); winger Chris Stewart (27, 34 pts. in 52 GP); winger Dan Winnik (29, 14 pts. in 54 GP); and defenseman Francois Beauchemin (34, no games played this season).

For Edinburgh, Nash will undoubtedly team with Tavares and Jamie Benn on the top line. It will be one of the most feared lines in hockey. Nash has been traded three times now. His best performance came last season when he scored 47 goals in Madrid with Joe Pavelski as his center. Before that, he played in Stockholm and before that in Belfast with Sidney Crosby. But if Nash, Tavares and Benn do too much fighting among themselves for goals, coach Randy Carlyle still has all-star Olivier Roland available on the right wing. Carlyle’s biggest decision in the short-term will be who to call up to complete the other three lines. The trade sent three forwards to Madrid and two the other way, so there has to be one hole.  O’Sullivan, Alexei Ponikarovsky and Casey Cizikas are all candidates for promotion. On the blueline, the arrival of Coburn and Tyutin have Adam Larsson and Ryan Whitney wondering about the rest of their season. Coburn is definitely going to reduce the ice time for some Caps defenseman and Tyutin’s experience could land him a spot on the third pairing. Salaries will play a part in how Peninou decides who plays and who sits and we’ll all know for sure on Saturday, when the Capitals play in Gothenburg, which is one of the 6 teams ahead of Edinburgh at the moment.

For Madrid, the trade adds future stability in one of the best young forwards in the league, as well as an immediate dose of toughness. The defensive holes left by the departure of Coburn and Tyutin will be filled by two players who were sitting the bench this season. Beauchemin played regularly for the three previous seasons in Edinburgh and can still be counted on to score more than 30 points, deliver 170 hits and block 75 shots a season. He’s definitely no consolation prize and should help the team in the playoffs. The other hole is the chance 21-year-old Jonas Brodin has been waiting for. Royals front office staff has high hopes for the youngster but they haven’t been able to give him EURO-level ice time until now. He’s a great skater, a cool character and smart. Up front, Stepan, Stewart and Winnik have been penciled in on different lines, so that mixes up the forwards’ chemistry entirely. Stepan has many years ahead of him with Gabriel Landeskog on his left. Currently, R.J. Umberger plays the right wing on that line.

Prague 5, Munich 0 – The Siamese Cats benefitted from too many Munich penalties Thursday. They were able to keep the pressure on Dire Wolf goalie Robert Kristan and keep the pressure off Ryan Miller in their own net. Miller made 21 saves to record his first shutout of the year and the 7th of his career. Goal scoring in the game came from five different players and the assists were almost all by different guys. Only Ryan Getzlaf had a multi-point game. It was a well-balanced, team effort by Prague. The best plus-minus players for them were Andrej Sekera and Torey Krug at plus 2. Munich is in 8th place in the Southern Conference, 5 points ahead of Frankfurt, but they have played 3 more games than the Inferno have.

Geneva 7, Frankfurt 4 – Geneva hurt the Inferno’s struggle to make up ground on Munich when the Generals erased a 3-0 Frankfurt lead and scored 7 times in the last 27 minutes of the game. Sergei Kostitsyn started the comeback with his 10th of the season and Riley Sheahan tallied twice, his 4th and 5th of the year. He also had an assist and was one of six Geneva players who had multi-point games. For Frankfurt, Joe Thornton was dangerous. Noted mainly for his passing ability, Jumbo Joe scored two goals, both of them shorthanded. He also assisted on Alexander Steen’s 13th goal of the year.

Berlin 5, Zurich 1 – The Smurfs won a weird game. Zurich took 12 penalties and were shorthanded for more than a third of the game, but they still outshot Berlin 36-30 … and yet they lost by a wide margin. Logan Couture scored twice at even strength and Matt Read did the same in the second period to make it 3-0. Loui Eriksson added two powerplay goals to his totals and he now has 28 goals this season. Couture is one behind him. Meanwhile, Jimmy Howard was solid as a rock in the Smurf goal, allowing just one puck past him. Zurich’s best performer was defenseman Janne Niskala, who was plus 1 with an assist, 3 hits and 4 blocked shots.

Dublin 5, St. Petersburg 1 – The visitors from Ireland took advantage of a rarely-vacant St. Petersburg penalty box to build a 2-0 lead after a period and a 5-0 lead after two. The Irish powerplay was 3 for 13. Jonathan Bernier narrowly missed a shutout for the Irish, as Erik Johnson scored inside the last 2 minutes of play. Dublin Ryan Kesler led everyone in scoring with 3 points (1 goal and 2 assists). He now has 77 points to lead the league in scoring and he’s 5 points better than the next best player. Antti Niemi started for the second time in two nights from Petrograd, but he didn’t finish the game. Miikka Kiprusoff replaced him to face the last 14 Dublin shots and he stopped all of them.

Minsk 3, Gothenburg 2 – Former Hussar Zach Parise scored to tie the game for Gothenburg, but in overtime, his old linemate Nicklas Backstrom scored to give Minsk the additional point. It was Backstrom’s second goal of the game and 28th of the season. Milan Lucic assisted on both goals. In front of their home fans, Minsk controlled the majority of the game, outshooting Gothenburg 43-27. And they had 14 shots blocked by Devil players – 3 each by Marc-Eduoard Vlasic, Chris Kelly and Eric Staal.