Erik Karlsson, moral quandaries and nutty spearing (Wednesday Countdown)

(Ed. Note: The column formerly known as the Puck Daddy Power Rankings.)

8. Putting good players on the fourth line

The first thing I saw when I visited your favorite internet destination — the Puck Daddy blog at Yahoo! Sports — on Tuesday morning was the headline “Brandon Saad is a fourth-liner in Columbus right now.” And I said to myself, “Typical Torts.”

Is Saad having a rough season? Not really, but let's play along. Not playing with Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane and Marian Hossa and Duncan Keith every night will have that effect on you.

You go out and trade for, then extend a guy who played with players of that quality, then stick him with Ryan Johansen and Nick Foligno and you're like “Huh, he's not scoring 80 points a game, that's so weird!” He only has 16 points in his first 27 games, including the aforementioned stint on the fourth line. What's 16 points in 27 games work out to for a season-long pace? About 49. What's Saad's career high? It's 52. Yeah, he stinks now!

Is he a fourth-liner? No, obviously not. This is a team that employs Gregory Campbell in 2015, for some reason, and he's not even a fourth-liner, so maybe talent evaluation is just a little bit off in Columbus (in furtherance of that point: The David Savard extension).

But this is hardly new, or unique to Columbus. Take for example the recent issues in Philadelphia that saw Dave Hakstol demote Jake Voracek to playing fourth-line minutes up until recently. Voracek is having more problems than Saad this year, but the amount that playing with Chris VandeVelde instead of Claude Giroux is helping him earn that massive new contract is zero.

I understand the urge to make guys realize that they're not playing to the standard you've set for them, but if your standard is unrealistic, then moving them down the lineup sheet, taking their power play time, and not utilizing their demonstrated talents to their fullest potential not only hurts the player's production, but the team's chances as well.

Not that winning is going to be all that important in either Columbus or Philly this year, given that the teams are both hot garbage. But playing your big-money players in low-leverage minutes with no-talent players makes the garbage even hotter.

That's not something anyone should have to explain.

7. David Poile

Ah yes, moral outrage about the All-Star voting process from the guy who re-signed a mediocre center with a high PDO in the midst of a sexual assault civil suit. Hmm, yes. That really rings true and has a lot of credibility behind it.

Gotta protect the sanctity of the ASG, which has changed formats more times in the last two decades than a local rock radio station, at all costs. Especially when you're more than willing to look the other way on stuff like this.

6. Expansion dreams

You're not gonna believe this, but the league isn't exactly losing its mind over the idea of letting Las Vegas and (maybe) Quebec come into the league if all they have to do is cut each team a check for like $17 million.

A lot of teams in the league want to know more about the expansion draft process before they commit to anything, and rightly so. There's a lot of planning that goes into putting together the list of guys you're going to leave unprotected. Not everyone has seven bad contracts they'd be more than happy to get rid of, like Columbus or Philadelphia. So there's a lot of strategizing involved, and teams are starting to work on contingency plans in case an expansion draft is in the offing over the next offseason or two.

However, there might be some opportunity for wiggle room that allows GMs to poison the well, so to speak. One GM told Craig Custance he might take a swing at signing a mediocre veteran goalie or two that would meet minimum qualifications to protect players he actually cares about. Another indicated he might sign guys to longer extensions than he'd like just to just in case the other team takes the bait.

Either way, there's a lot to think about here logistically, and it's not something that's going to be cleared up overnight. The league, teams, and NHLPA have a lot to figure out in the next year and a half or so, if expansion is going to happen. But in the meantime you might see GMs starting to give out no-movement clauses like Darryl Sutter did in Calgary.

5. The Canucks

They picked up a “big” W on Monday behind a Radim Vrbata hat trick, but it was against the Sabres so kinda also who cares.

But even with that slight ray of hope, this is a patently rotten team that doesn't have a lot of hope for the future. At least in Calgary or Edmonton you say, “Well sure they suck now, but two or three years from now? Look out.” With Vancouver, you look two or three years down the road and see no Sedins, no Vrbata, no Miller (that might actually be a good thing, except who replaces him? Jacob Markstrom?). At that point, is Brandon Sutter or Jannik Hansen your best outfield player? Is that not at all worrisome?

And hey, even with the “Calgary and Edmonton are clearly worse” thing going on, do you really look at those games as guaranteed wins if you're the Canucks? Vancouver is currently just 1-0-2 against their Canadian rivals in the Pacific Division, meaning that while they haven't lost in regulation, they've given four points of a possible six. That's bananas.

The stands are pretty empty most nights this season. They have to trot out the West Coast Express just to say, “Remember when you liked this team, with the guy who paralyzed someone?” This team stinks and will continue to do so for some time to come. The coach hasn't done a good job, but he was given an awful roster to work with. Maybe the owner steps in and cleans house for, what, the second time in two years? That might be the best Canucks fans can hope for at this point. And that's no good.

4. Spearing

It's epidemic in this league. Because even if you spear someone in the nuts, you get off easy. A $5,000 fine and off ya go. Based on his ice time, Brandon Prust makes $5,000 in a little more than two minutes on the ice. That's like three shifts worth of work. So of course it was worth it.

The reason guys can skate around spearing people with impunity, it turns out, is that the NHL Department of Player Safety was explicitly given the order to only fine someone for a spear. Which is insane, but then again this is the NHL so of course it's insane.

Frankly, given this revelation, it's kind of amazing that Brad Marchand isn't speared in the balls 82 times a year. It's kind of amazing that this isn't once per game, league-wide, quite frankly.

3. Coaches being questioned

It started in Minnesota, when Ryan Suter was like, “God damn do I wish Mike Yeo would stop saddling me with Jonas Brodin.” His exact words were, “I don't know what they're thinking.”

Suter later said he shouldn't have said it publicly, but that doesn't mean he didn't think it and didn't want to say it. And probably he's right, because Brodin has regressed badly this season (and last, to a lesser extent) while Jared Spurgeon looks like he could win the Norris if things keep going his way. Now, Suter was talking about it more in the context of being paired with a right-shot defenseman rather than a lefty, but either way you'd rather play with Spurgeon than Brodin any day of the week.

Then yesterday, Jim Rutherford had a whole lot to say about the way Mike Johnston has been using Daniel Sprong, a super-talented rookie who might be able to kickstart the Penguins' not-good offense. Sprong hasn't played since mid-November, and Rutherford doesn't seem all that happy. Why it's almost like Johnston, who was a fine junior coach, is in over his head at the NHL level. Hmm.

Frankly, both of these coaches have done a lot that can be criticized, but so can their GMs. Rutherford's more complicit in the Penguins' offensive ineptitude than Johnston, in fact. Just sayin', y'know? As long as criticism is being leveled here.

2. The salary cap

There wasn't much movement in the salary cap this summer, and GMs spent wisely as a result. Next year, it could go up as much as $3 million, in no small part because they're playing three outdoor games.

And you know what that means? We're going to find out pretty quickly that no one learned any lessons at all.

1. Erik Karlsson

We need to take a second to talk about how good Karlsson has been for a truly rotten team this season.

Patrick Kane is getting plenty of attention — and rightly so — for his point streak that seems to be setting records every single night at this point. Most people would have him as their MVP candidate, and there's a pretty good argument to be made in his favor.

But consider Karlsson.

Have a look at the overall NHL scoring race as of Tuesday morning. There's Kane way up at the top. Then there's Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn tied for second. And fourth? Oh hey it's a defenseman from a bad team. That's pretty amazing, right?

He's also playing more than 27.5 minutes per night. That's tied for second-most in the league with Drew Doughty, about 45 seconds behind Ryan Suter. That's also really good!

But he's so bad defensively!!! Except he's a guy who plays like 42 percent of his team's 5-on-5 minutes, and he has a corsi-for share of 50.77 percent. That doesn't sound like a particularly good number, and especially not one that lends itself to MVP talk. But consider that his team CF% when he's off the ice is 42.6 percent, and you tell me he doesn't have significantly more value to his club than anyone at this admittedly early point in the season.

On the chart below, you'd want him to be above 42 percent for the “good” stuff like chances, attempts, and shots for, and below it for “bad” stuff like all the things against the Senators. You can see that, apart from goals, he is dominant in everything. And also he's on the ice for close to 60 percent of all of the goals the Senators score.

So, as of right now, Karlsson for Hart.

(Not ranked this week: Ruining a good thing.

It is really awesome that there will be a pro women's hockey game at the Winter Classic. It is decidedly not awesome that all USA Hockey players on the Boston Pride's roster will be barred from participating because the national team is making them skip it.

Hilary Knight is one of the great women's hockey players in the world, but won't be participating because USA Hockey is making her stick around for the last day of training camp for the World Championships.

I wonder what would grow women's hockey more. Knight and her teammates half-assing their way through the final day of camp, or playing a game in front of tens of thousands of people — assuredly the largest crowd to ever watch a women's game — on national television?

Yeah, tough call, but they were gonna do some passing drills on that last day of camp so you can't miss it at all.)

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All statistics via War On Ice unless otherwise noted.)

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