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Puck Daddy Power Rankings: KHL problems, trade targets and diving in NHL

Puck Daddy Power Rankings: KHL problems, trade targets and diving in NHL

[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. The KHL

Reasonable observers of the hockey universe have known for some time now that the KHL was a gigantic joke of a league, propped up by the worst kind of plutocrats, and in which Russians could feel their particular brand of national pride about luring away one actual good NHL player ever.

Current points leader in the KHL: Alex Radulov, who is an NHL washout. No. 2: Ilya Kovalchuk, who is that aforementioned actual good player. No. 3: Stevie Moses, who is... who?

No, you don't know who Stevie Moses is, unless you saw a lot of middling college hockey teams three or four years ago. Moses's career high in points at the NCAA level was 35 in 37 games for UNH; in the KHL this year he has 28-18-46 in 40 for Jokerit. He also went 2-0-2 in his only eight games at the AHL level several years ago. What I'm saying is the KHL is a Good League.

It's been said that the Russian economy is not so much an actual economy but rather an infrastructure built on the power of the nation's oil exporting business. And now that the oil industry has gone to pot, and the Western sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine have really taken hold, the ruble has collapsed, losing close to 50 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar over the course of 2014. And all of a sudden, lots of teams aren't able to pay their players any more; at least, not in any way resembling their original agreements.

Players who were dumb enough to take their pay in rubles have seen the value of those checks decline sharply, as you might expect, meaning that even if they're getting paid the same number of rubles, they're making potentially hundreds of thousands of actual dollars less per year. That's if they're getting paid at all. A number of teams have been forced to waive or trade players, even good ones, due to financial concerns that threaten their very existence. Three teams or more may be on the verge of bankruptcy.

This week the league's president, Dmitri Chernyshenko, announced that the league moving forward would exist mostly to support the Russian national team (that is, “tell foreign players to take a hike”) and examine just how many teams it should actually have if some can't be financially stable (that is, “fold clubs that are losing money”). There are only 28 teams in the league, and 15 have negative goal differentials, so maybe that's not such a bad idea.

But that has to more or less officially end the idea that this league has ever or would ever pose a real threat to the NHL. They got Ilya Kovalchuk, though. Gotta give 'em a lot of credit.

6. Mike Smith

When Mike Smith signed his six-year, $34 million extension with Arizona two summers ago, it came as a big surprise. “The Coyotes are spending money?” was not an uncommon thing to hear, though one supposes they'd just locked down some, ahem, certainty with regard to their ownership situation.

A lot of people, though, also suggested that this might not be a very good idea. Smith was coming off a .910 season at the time, and while he'd posted .930 in 2011-12, he also went .899 and .900 the two years before that, so this, perhaps portended some bad news.

But he went .915 last season, which was a little better than league average, and only a few points above his career numbers as well. The Coyotes were awful and everything, but that wasn't on Smith. The hope was he could continue to play at something resembling that level. Instead, he's collapsed harder than the ruble.

As of this writing, Smith is an .884 goaltender for the Coyotes, and Devan Dubnyk is presenting the club with a better option. No one is even close to this bad. And Arizona, which probably has another rebuild to go through here, is stuck with him — or at least his contract — until he's 37.

There's no good answer for this club here. They've already bought out Mike Ribeiro, and they continue to lose a ton of money, so you can't imagine ownership is too keen to buy out another guy no matter how competitive both he and his contract are to see which of them can be worse.

But hey, maybe Smith turns it around. That's what Maloney was banking on when he signed the deal, so there's no reason to give up that ship now.

5. Divers

James Neal became the first player ever to be fined by the NHL for diving, but that monetary penalty comes only after a player has been officially warned. So far, 22 players have received such a caution.

Neal won't miss the $2,000, and he probably doesn't care about being publicly labeled a diver after all the headshots he's doled out in his career. But at least the NHL is doing something about this terrible scourge that is ruining the league!

It's great to see the league paying such close attention to it. Really it is. Because nothing makes the game worse than guys pretending to be hurt by innocuous hits or slashes. Divers are on notice, and it's a good thing, too!

(Meanwhile, though, people who are definitively not on notice are guys who hit people in the head when checking them, like Matt Bartkowski. He took a straight-up blindside run at Brian Gionta earlier this week, but got off because he happened to graze Gionta's shoulder first. This “principal point of contact” rule is garbage. And Willie Mitchell taking Kris Letang's helmet and hitting him with it over the weekend? Nothing out of Player Safety for that one either. But at least the divers are getting sorted out.)

4. Trade targets

Speaking of the Bruins, boy oh boy they're looking to trade for just about anyone with a pulse who can play the wing at this point.

That's because they entered last night's game with Nashville 3-5-2 in December with only one regulation win to show for their efforts. In those 10 games, they scored just 25 goals. And allowed 28. Neither are particularly Big Bad Bruins-y and both indicate that this team is missing something, even with the returns of Zdeno Chara and David Krejci to the lineup earlier this month.

So now they've been connected to Taylor Hall (never going to happen), Chris Stewart (shouldn't happen), and TJ Oshie (wouldn't be shocked if it happened) as the media frantically scrambles for the answers that are definitively not in that room.

The problem for Boston is this: Let's say they give up some futures for either Stewart or Oshie. How much does it help? The things the Bruins are supposed to be good at — a decent amount of goals throughout the lineup, huge save percentages and top-of-the-league possession — but have not been this year are not helped by acquiring either of these players. Oshie continues to put up good possession numbers but isn't scoring. Stewart isn't doing either. Neither helps Tuukka Rask get back to being a .920-plus goaltender.

But maybe one of them provides “energy.” Stewart is 6-foot-2, 230 pounds, and plays like he's 5-10 and 190. Oshie can throw his smaller body around, but has been hurt this year, and really kind of looks like he's on the outs with the Blues, in part because of how dreadful he's been in attack.

Put another way: If a team is a contender, why would it trade a guy with Oshie's theoretical pedigree as a physical scoring winger unless it desperately wanted out of that contract? Why would you then want to take on that deal yourself, and probably pay a premium to do so.

Know which wing they ought to trade for? Shawn Thornton.

3. The Sharks

As recently as Nov. 26, the Sharks were sub-.500 (yes I consider 10-10-4 sub-.500), having just lost 2-0 to the Calgary Flames at home. Two idle days later, chances for making the playoffs were at just 22.8 percent.

Since their Nov. 29 game — a 6-4 win over Anaheim — though, they've been basically unstoppable. Their overtime loss to those same Ducks on Monday night brought their run to 9-1-1 in the last 11 games. Prior to last night's games, they had an 80.6 percent chance to make the playoffs. They went from 18th in the league to 10th in that time., and have games in hand on almost everyone in front of them.

Turns out the Sharks, which have been one of the best teams in hockey over the last decade or so and really didn't make any huge changes in the summer, are good. Who could have guessed? Antti Niemi continues to be well above average, Joe Thornton continues to lead the teams very balanced attack (six players with at least 23 points) despite having been stripped of his captaincy.

So weird how that works out. Maybe these guys aren't the biggest losers ever after all.

2. Johnny Gaudreau

You know me, folks. I love watching Johnny Gaudreau play hockey. And lately he's been putting on one hell of a show.

This is from Monday night, when he torched the Kings for a natural hat trick — his first in the NHL — and made Drew Doughty of all people accountable on the last two, which were within the last few minutes of what had been a 3-1 game:

(He was also stopped on a goofy 2-on-0 in OT.)

This has been a kind of remarkable rookie season for Gaudreau, whose work in staking a claim for the Calder Trophy has certainly been overshadowed by that of Filip Forsberg. But after an iffy start to his career (2-4-6 in 11 games in October) he's been lights-out in November and December (8-13-21 in 24). He's only started to get real ice time in the last few weeks, too; for the year he's averaging just 16:35 a game, and that's been against some mediocre-to-good competition.

Forsberg, for his part, is on 12-12-24 in 22 games the last two months, playing with much better linemates and getting more ice time. One gets the feeling that this is a two-horse race for the Rookie of the Year trophy, and the gap between them (currently just five points) is only going to close.

1. Rob Zepp

Probably won't be a better story in hockey this year than Rob Zepp, at age 33, winning his first ever NHL game. Give that man a Masterton.

Even if he did allow three on 28.

(Not ranked this week: John Scott.

Why, exactly, is this guy allowed to continue playing hockey? Tried to kill Loui Eriksson last year, left the bench to fight Tim Jackman in October, then butt-ended Jackman in the face on Monday. And I'm sure his victimizing the same guy twice in two and a half months was a total coincidence. He also is completely terrible at playing hockey.

But you need guys like him to police the game, right? Get lost.)