The Islanders, fast McDavid and tanking Avalanche (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.)

10. Sticking to sports

Many blessings to nice, kind Mika Zibanejad. No one should have to deal with this. Anyone who tells him or anyone else to stick to sports on this issue is beneath contempt.

9. The Islanders maybe?

I can’t tell if the Islanders are winners or losers for maybe getting tossed out of their rink, but it seems like the answer is losers because it’s the Islanders we’re talking about and they have nowhere else to go in the New York City area that’s not in Nassau or at MSG.

Maybe they can move in with the Devils? And hey, if they both play at the same time they can come close to selling out the building. Not a bad idea. Something to try, for sure.

8. The fastest skater controversy

Let’s start with the acknowledgement that Dylan Larkin holding the record because he got to accelerate through half the neutral zone is BS.

It is. Connor McDavid is the actual fastest skater in the history of the National Hockey League, which I guess doesn’t really matter or anything. But like, you can’t imagine really caring about this, right? There actually seem to be people who think it’s worth caring about and it seems to me those people are disturbed.

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I guess they can take solace in the fact that future first-line forward and savior of the Red Wings franchise Dylan Larkin has 18 points this year. McDavid had 15 points in seven games earlier this year. So that’s something for the W column for your old friend Connor McDavid, who maybe has nothing else going for him.

But y’know what? The only dumb thing about all this is that they still don’t bring all the guys who are actually the fastest skaters in the league, hardest shooters, etc. I wanna see McDavid race Andreas Anathasiou. From a standstill, with a little acceleration already, doesn’t matter. I just wanna see that happen instead of worrying about all this.

Seems like it would be cool. I have lots of good ideas for how to improve All-Star weekend. Another is to not let guys make it just because no one on their bad team is actually worth considering. Give me a call and I’ll tell you all about it.

7. The hockey media I thought I knew

I would have bet a billion dollars coming out of Wayne freaking Gretzky winning the All-Star Game as a coach that we’d get a “Someone should hire Gretzky to coach again” take from someone, somewhere. I didn’t see one! It seemed impossible but here we are.

It’s not that…. no, they couldn’t…….. is the hockey media actually not as dumb as they’ve given everybody ample reason to think they are? No, I won’t accept it!

6. Nolympics

I honestly understand the NHL’s reluctance to participate in an Olympics in South Korea. How can you not?

Shut down the league for a few weeks so you can have a bunch of games played at 5 a.m. Eastern at the absolute latest? Have all those players risk injury? Pay through the nose for insurance and security if the IOC won’t play ball? Pass.

From a business standpoint it’s a very bad idea and any smart businessperson would recognize this immediately. And for all the wishing that won’t make it so, the NHL remains a money-making operation.

With that having been said, the idea that the NHL will skip the Olympics in 2018 but then go back in 2022 seems very dumb. Obviously there’s the big difference between the market opportunity in Korea versus China, in terms of growing the sport internationally. If you can trick even some of the nearly 1.4 billion Chinese people into liking this dumb league then by all means you do it.

But just like, hell man, go to PyeongChang. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s true of so much other stuff the NHL says it has to do that you might as well throw this on the pile. This thing everyone (except the owners) likes? That shouldn’t be the line in the sand.

5. The Vigneault extension

On the one hand it’s one of those “don’t lose your coach if you don’t think there’s a better one out there” things. Alain Vigneault is better than most coaches in hockey. It’s not his fault the Rangers’ blue line is very, very bad. He’s making the best of a bad situation, and the Rangers are in a playoff spot right now despite the fact that Henrik Lundqvist has been truly awful this year.

To make him the third-highest-paid coach in the league, I mean, good for him, right? It’s not my money and it doesn’t affect the cap or the team’s ability to spend. The Rangers print money. So whatever. Maybe that’s just the market now and most coaches are about to get extremely paid. Sure, fine. But Vigenault being the second or third guy through the door marked “Huge Money” is very funny to me for some reason.

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Especially because when they miss the playoffs next season and the one after, he’s probably gonna get fired.

4. Trading Matt Duchene?

Oh yeah that’s a thing they were gonna do. Remember that? It was nice to forget about those swirling rumors over the long All-Star weekend.

Now they’re probably going to come back. And then he won’t get traded because this is the NHL and no interesting trades are allowed to happen except on either the draft or the day before free agency.

3. The Greiss extension

Three years, $3.33 million against the cap? Seemed maybe a little high but probably about right at first blush. But then I went to his Hockey Reference page and my man has a .926 save percentage over the past two seasons with the Islanders.

And ignoring that bad 2014-15 with Pittsburgh (.908) you notice, “Oh, he was also .920 in 2013-14.”

So it turns out: That’s not a bad price to pay at all for a goaltender who has a .922 save percentage over the last four seasons. Especially because a .922 save percentage over the last four seasons puts him…. tied for third in the league among all goalies with at least 6,000 minutes over that stretch? And that he’s one of only 11 goalies to play that many minutes and simultaneously deliver at least a .920 save percentage? And he’s tied with Braden Holtby (2015-16 Vezina) and Tuukka Rask (2013-14 Vezina)? And trails only Carey Price (2014-15 Vezina) and Cam Talbot (no respect)?

Good lord. Why would he agree to that contract? He’s way better than that! Few acknowledge this.

2. The Avalanche tank

You never want to see a player go down for the season with an injury. But Semyon Varlamov getting shelved for the remainder might not be a bad thing for the Avs. Yeah, he’s only .898 this year (terrible), but he’s a good enough goalie that you could have expected he’d pull out of that tailspin.

To the point about Greiss being sneakily one of the best goalies in the league, Varlamov was .921 in more than 10,000 minutes (facing more than 5,500 shots!) from 2013-16. He could have plausibly gone .920 down the stretch and pulled Colorado out of last place in the league. I mean, probably not, but maybe.

So with him out, the remainder of their season turns on Calvin Pickard (.906 this year, with only 59 games played in his career) figuring things out. Doubt it happens. That’s a guaranteed dead-last finish. Especially if they trade a Duchene or Landeskog or Iginla or really anyone another team would want. Love to get a number one pick.

1. The All-Star Game

Turns out 3-on-3 hockey is very good, my friends. I love to see it.

(Not ranked this week: The guy who wrote that thing about black players not deserving to be in the All-Star Game.

All-Star Game MVP Wayne Simmonds says what’s up.)

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

(All statistics via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)