from Ryan Dixon of Sportsnet,

It’s the Age of Auston; the era of Crosby and the Connors; Kuch and Mac; Quinn and Cale.

And on the weekend that the Pittsburgh Penguins paid tribute to one of the game’s all-time greats, it’s impossible to deny these golden offensive days for hockey.

Until a very short time ago, the achievements of Jaromir Jagr and his ilk seemed like they were from a different sport. Seventy-goal seasons, 130-point campaigns; it almost seemed like a baby boomer’s exaggerated tale of the league they watched.

We just lifted No. 68 into the PPG Paints Arena rafters Sunday night and the entire weekend helped drive home the fact that seasons like the ones Jagr and his contemporaries used to put up are truly attainable again.

Auston Matthews netted his second consecutive hat trick and sixth three-goal game of the year on Saturday in Toronto’s trouncing of the Anaheim Ducks. It’s starting to feel inevitable that the 26-year-old American will give us our first 70-goal season since 1992-93 and if I told you he was going to bury 75, you’d probably nod along in I-could-see-it fashion.

The top two guys in the Art Ross chase — Nikita Kucherov and Nathan MacKinnon, the latter scoring in his team’s 4-3 win over Arizona on Sunday — are both on pace to hit 130 points. The league hasn’t seen two 130-point guys in the same campaign since Jagr and Mario Lemieux did it as teammates in 1995-96. Connor McDavid — No. 3 in the scoring race after his assist against the Stars on Saturday night — basically needs to play at a 130-point pace the rest of the year to hit that number, too. In his past 33 contests, he’s playing at a 160-point clip.

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