Puck Daddy Power Rankings: Hooray, the NHL is back
[Author's note: Power rankings are usually three things: Bad, wrong, and boring. You typically know just as well as the authors which teams won what games against who and what it all means, so our moving the Red Wings up four spots or whatever really doesn't tell you anything you didn't know. Who's hot, who's not, who cares? For this reason, we're doing a power ranking of things that are usually not teams. You'll see what I mean.]
7. An understanding of the goalie market
One of the things that is constantly amazing in the NHL is the total lack of comprehension in the goaltender market. The reason behind this seems to be that there's a genuine amount of mystery about what makes goaltenders great; the position is, at an organizational level, inherently misunderstood.
Which is why so many goaltenders are dramatically overpaid, particularly following short bursts of respectable performance (this is the Marc-Andre Fleury corollary). General managers and Hockey People in general usually know a good goalie when they see it, because it's so obvious. But they can also be very easily tricked into thinking the same of mediocre or even bad goaltenders.
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Case in point: A recent ESPN poll of “five general managers, four head coaches, three goalie coaches, two assistant general managers, and one goal scorer.”
Henrik Lundqvist was No. 1 as you'd expect. He's probably the best goalie in the NHL over the last five or six years by a decent enough margin to not be debatable. No. 2 is where things get dicey; by no measure over the past several years — apart from “Winning A Cup Twice” is Jonathan Quick the second-best goalie in the league. I'm going to stop short of calling him Chris Osgood 2014, but the fact is that every league-average goaltender could win behind these Kings. They are that good. Quick hasn't been a bystander
Most of the rest of the list is pretty decent. Hard to understand, say, Semyon Varlamov after one good season ever being considered the No. 6 goalie in the league, or Ryan Miller somehow still being in the top 10, or Mike Smith in the top half of the league. Marc-Andre Fleury at 15, and Steve Mason at 19? Pass.
But here's where it gets baffling: Someone other than Ondrej Pavelec is dead last. It is, instead, Ben Scrivens.
A real NHL goalie coach on Pavelec: “He has talent, there are just pieces that are missing. The whole package isn't complete yet. You can see there's really good talent. At times, you go, 'It looks like this goalie can be a stud,' but he doesn't always have the ability to keep it at that level. I think he can get there at some point.”
Dude's 27. How many more .90-something trips around the parking lot do you think he gets before we can just say, “He can't get there?” One? Two? How long do you get to be a project? It's insanity. And it's also why the worst goalie in the league is making $3.9 million against the cap for another three years. People see what they want to see in goalies. Even if the stats are constantly pulling the curtain back.
6. Thinking the Bruins were progressive
Another illusion unsmashed: The lingering need for “enforcers” in the NHL. While most of the league spent the summer giving guys who get more PIM than time on ice in a season directions to their AHL affiliate, a few teams stood steadfastly by their dying dream of a more punchful NHL.
Weirdly, it turns out that the Bruins were among them. You remember the Bruins' stated stance on this, right? Let Shawn Thornton go. Weepy “he's as important to this organization as Bobby Orr” eulogies in the Boston media. Handwringing about what The Rats are doing to This Game. Peter Chiarelli saying, “I think there’s a trend, rightly or wrongly, toward it lessening. ... I believe there’s still a reason for fighting existing. But it’s trending down. The game is changing to reflect this trend. You have to adapt.”
Adapting, it turns out, is something the Bruins haven't done. Their finalized roster came out yesterday, and a name most fans around the league probably hadn't heard of — Bobby Robins — was on it. Unless you're a particularly diehard minor-league or mid-2000s college hockey fan, Robins is someone you likely haven't come across, and that's because, at almost 33 years old, he will get into his first-ever NHL game later tonight.
He is, essentially, being given Thornton's enforcer role. Because in 280 career AHL games, he has 831 penalty minutes. And 460 more in the ECHL (142 games), 178 more in Austria (34), 79 more in England (43 games), and four more in Slovenia (four games). Between the regular-, pre-, and postseason in the AHL over the last three years, he's been in nearly 90 fights. He would also prefer that you call him a power forward, but his career high in the AHL is 14 points, so let's not go nuts.
That Chiarelli quote from June? Compare and contrast with the one from yesterday, “The speed of that trend [away from fighting] and when that actually happens, I don't know. It may be past my time. It's a hard game to play and you need those players that can finish checks and fend for themselves.”
How much do you want a bet when Chiarelli went to make the final cuts, team president Cam Neely gave him the scary Sea Bass stare until he acquiesced to keeping that one guy who's going to get seven minutes a night?
Useful players on your roster? The Bruins figure they have enough of those at the top of the lineup. And besides, what lessons were they supposed to take from their fourth line getting dominated by Danny Briere? That they shouldn't employ an enforcer? Puhleeze.
5. Trading defensemen
The Robins decision was, in fact, a wonderful capper to what was almost a Peak Chiarelli long weekend. Over-reliance on a player who can't contribute at the NHL level? Check. Trading an extremely useful player because he painted himself into a corner cap-wise? Check.
The decision to trade Johnny Boychuk wasn't much of a decision at all, of course. Chiarelli had to do it. But boy if it wasn't his own doing at the same time. The Bruins are in cap jail because he went for broke last year, hoping for another Stanley Cup with Jarome Iginla would get everyone to forget that the team is paying nearly $5 million in cap overage penalties. But they didn't, and this would have been a Big Deal with or without the honeymoon period. And all those awful contracts at the bottom of the roster — for Kevan Miller and Gregory Campbell and Daniel Paille and Chris Kelly, who make a combined $6.7 million — don't help.
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Meanwhile, in Chicago, the problem was really in the middle of the roster. Bryan Bickell for $4 million? Corey Crawford for $6 million? Patrick Sharp for $5.9 million? All these guys were probably not as attractive, trade bait-wise, as Nick Leddy, but here we are.
And of course the Islanders, a smartly managed team operating under some kind of budget, are the beneficiaries. They're still a mile under the cap (okay, $4.8 million or so), and that flexibility allows them to scavenge for scraps from over-taxed teams who can't make their rosters work. Now they have a very good defense, pretty much from Nos. 1-7 with which to work. Travis Hamonic, Johnny Boychuk, Nick Leddy, Calvin de Haan, Lubomir Visnovsky, and then a mix of Matt Carkner, Griffin Reinhart, and Matt Carkner in the 6-8 slots (with the acknowledgement that de Haan, Visnovsky, and Carkner start the year on IR).
I think most teams take that blue line when everyone's healthy, though. That's pretty competitive.
4. Buying the Coyotes
Speaking of the Islanders, the guy that tried to buy them then started to sue Charles Wang when he couldn't, might end up just owning the Coyotes instead. This would be the 53rd Coyotes owner in the last two seasons, if I'm counting right, and what your ol' pal Andrew Barroway is willing to pay for a 51 percent share in the team is crazy.
You'll remember the current owners bought the club altogether for $170 million. They're reportedly selling Barroway his 51 percent for a cool $155.6 million or so, because the franchise is currently valued at, get this, $305 million.
Why is the club, which reportedly lost $24 million this past season alone, worth nearly 80 percent more now than it was a year ago? Oh, I don't know. Probably has something to do with all those Seattle and Quebec rumors and the team's opt-out clause that kicks in if it loses $50 million over five years. Maybe that. Maybe. Who's to say?
I'd figure a team that does one or two more seasons at most in Glendale then hightails it for a more lucrative locale probably is worth $300 million. That makes a lot of sense. In Arizona? Ehhhh.
3. Johnny Gaudreau
The idea of rookie Johnny Gaudreau making the big club in Calgary seemed a fait accompli basically from the second he signed last spring. With 80 points in 40 NCAA games last year, often playing against grown men as old as 25 or 26, it was clear that his offensive game was ready for the NHL.
Then, in the preseason, he basically backed all positive feeling about his game with plays like this:
And it's like, look, that escape against a decent NHLer in Mathieu Perreault is one thing. He shook off both Perreault and Matt Halischuk like they weren't there, and that's impressive for a 20-year-old rookie, even if it is preseason, but the vision to see Josh Jooris in that scoring position, and open up his body, and potentially get himself drilled by Jacob Trouba, to give himself the forehand pass option instead of going cross-ice or taking a weak shot himself is what separates him from typical rookies. The creativity is off the charts.
The question was — and, one supposes — will continue to be his size. He's generously listed at 5-foot-9 and 150 pounds, and the thinking is that some big defenseman is going to demolish him the second he comes across the blue line in some moment of absentmindedness, as though Gaudreau a) hasn't been hearing that his whole competitive career, and b) doesn't have superior vision to avoid just such a situation.
Now, with that out of the way, it's still not going to be a cakewalk for him to get to the Calder conversation. Brian Burke essentially said line-matching killed his production on the road, which is a problem in the regular season if it's a problem in exhibitions. Even if that were true, which I'm not sure it is, the fact that he put 19 shots on goal (tied for fifth in the league) all by himself over six games while getting just 12:36 per night is a pretty good starting point.
2. Fish sticks
Further speaking of the Islanders, this is another of their great ideas.
Now, I know, this is one of the most despised jersey in the league's history, and I don't categorically disagree with that. It's too busy, for one thing, and the worst mix of the worst impulses of the worst mid-1990s graphic design stooges the sports world had on offer. And the Islanders, being the Islanders, signed off. How could they not have?
With that having been said, the idea of the jersey/fisherman isn't terrible, and were it not for the nightmarish mix of mid-90s sports-jersey colors and trends — TEAL! WAVES FOR SOME REASON! THE GOOFIEST TYPEFACE IMAGINABLE! — this could have been a less-despised offering.
The good news, at least, is that it's not as bad as the team's thirds last year. It can't be.
1. Hockey season
I've basically cleared my schedule for the next eight months. I am lying on the flood and screaming.
(Not ranked this week: Not-hockey season.
Smell ya later.)
