Henrik Lundqvist, Maple Leafs and NHL All-Star voting (Puck Daddy Countdown)
(In which Ryan Lambert takes a look at some of the biggest issues and stories in the NHL, and counts them down.)
6. Doubting Henrik Lundqvist, Part 2
Boy, isn’t it so so crazy that even after they kept playing Antti Raanta because Lundqvist had two bad games in three appearances, it turns out the guy is still really one of the absolute best goalies ever to play the game?
Wow, fresh off what was effectively a string of healthy scratches, the three goals he gave up on 90 shots is really good. Not that he’s a .967 goalie but this is generally what he’s going to give you over a handful of games, reliably.
Even after getting cleaned out by Cody Eakin — one of the dirtier plays I can remember to be honest, because Eakin straight-up ran the goalie there — he went from a shutout to a 31-of-32 performance two days later. It’s very probable, let alone possible, that whatever was wrong with him (nothing) is now in the rearview mirror and Lundqvist is back to being basically unstoppable.
On the other hand, maybe skeptics who thought there was something wrong (which there wasn’t) can say, “Well the benching lit a fire under his ass.” And maybe they’re even right. Maybe he is more motivated now. But he doesn’t need to be super-motivated to be great. The number of three-game stretches in which Lundqvist has gone .967 has to be significant.
So yeah, jeez, turns out there’s not a goaltending controversy on Broadway. Who would have guessed?
5. That Erik Gudbranson trade
Alright, so Jared McCann isn’t exactly tearing it up for the Florida Panthers or anything, but as far as Florida was concerned they were just happy to be getting out from under Erik Gudbranson’s big ol’ contract and pending free agent status. That was how they won the trade.
Vancouver thought it won the trade because they thought Gudbranson was a good and valuable player. Turns out he isn’t. Anyone who’s watched Canucks games with any sort of a critical eye can tell you Gudbranson has been among the team’s worst defenders by a pretty decent margin. The team is better at everything when he’s off the ice.
And now he’s hurt and out indefinitely. Will they re-sign him this summer? Not if they’re smart. Are they smart? Well, interesting question. Tough to say. Probably not. But maybe. And regardless, Gudbranson is a guy everyone likes because he’s big and physical, which is basically the opposite of what Vancouver needs going forward. Especially because they already have guys like that who are better than Gudbranson. Including — oh gosh — Luca Sbisa.
Not that it’s necessarily a guy’s fault for getting hurt or anything, but if this doesn’t cement the “Vancouver lost that trade badly” argument, what will? Another bottom-three finish?
Just kidding, that was happening regardless.
4. The Leafs
Okay so Toronto continues to struggle getting points. They’re pretty close to the bottom of the conference. As many might have suspected, they just don’t have the high-end ability yet, or the depth, to be meaningfully competitive.
They’re a solid if not overwhelming CF team that PDO suggests has been a bit unlucky so far this season, but we know from experience that teams without a lot of skill throughout the lineup will underperform their PDO a bit. This makes perfect sense. The Leafs have gamebreaking talent, but not enough of it to break games on a regular basis.
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Do the Leafs have points in five of their last eight games? Sure they do. But only two of those games were wins, and one was in OT. So there’s a lot of coin-flipping going on in which they’re coming up on the losing end. It happens, but also if the Leafs just muddle through the season and end up with a top-10 pick, that’s not the worst thing that ever happened to them, is it?
And hey, at least they’re fun. Matthews and Marner and Nylander and Kadri and Rielly and Gardiner are strong building blocks, and Freddy Andersen is always going to be at least passable in net.
So another season like this won’t kill ’em, especially as they continue working toward getting out from under the previous regime’s mistakes. The most mind-boggling stat in the league this season might well be that Toronto is sitting on about $10.25 million in dead cap space from guys they’ve either buried in the minors (Brooks Laich, Milan Michalek, and Colin Greening cost $8.3 million combined), traded away (another $1.2 million in retained salary for Phil Kessel), or bought out ($1.33 million for Tim Gleason and minus-$650,000 for Jared Cowen, plus amnesty-buyout Mikhail Grabovski).
Once they don’t have to deal with that significant handicap, this team could get better in a hurry.
But for now, not so much.
3. Making Florida Great Again
Just when you thought everything to do with the Panthers couldn’t get weirder, Vinnie Viola gets nominated to be the damn Secretary of the Army, which sounds like a made-up title but is apparently very real?
The fact that it came just days after the whole “Dale Tallon is back in charge!”-slash-“No he’s not!”-slash-“Well he sort of is but he’s not really and it’s kinda complicated so maybe take ‘er easy Dregs.”-slash-“The media just really like Tallon because he will tell them anything they want to know and that’s why we’re having this whole thing right now in the first place.” thing? Man, that’s wild. The good news is the next time the Panthers fire the coach they can send him home with a military escort and not a cab.
And in Vegas, you know Bill Foley is fuming about this whole thing. He wants to be the league’s designated Army Guy!!!!
2. All-Star voting
Hey it looks like fans are mostly getting this one right. No cute “Let’s vote in this bad player” (though that can be fun) and no “Let’s vote in this local player” (because no one in LA watches the Kings). So you just get the straight “Here are the best players in the division.”
A Crosby/Ovechkin/Kessel top-three in the Metro makes plenty of sense, as does Price/Jagr/Weber in the Atlantic (well, mostly). Subban/Kane/Laine and McDavid/Burns/Gaudreau out west? Hell yeah, except Kane. Nuts to that guy, even if he’s clearly a good player.
I think it’s all great. Just guys who deserve it. What a concept. Let’s keep that going forever.
1. Whatever Popeye elbow is
Is it that thing where your forearms get comically big and your friend keeps trying to get you to buy him hamburgers?
(Not ranked this week: The ice in Carolina.
Boy, if that doesn’t get the French Canadian media to start making up “the team is moving to Quebec ASAP” rumors again, nothing will.)
Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.
(All statistics via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)
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