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Toews' back, winning Blue Jackets and surprising Bruins (Puck Daddy Countdown)

GLENDALE, AZ - DECEMBER 03: Boone Jenner #38 of the Columbus Blue Jackets celebrates with teammates David Savard #58 and Jack Johnson #7 after his first period goal against the Arizona Coyotes at Gila River Arena on December 3, 2016 in Glendale, Arizona. (Photo by Norm Hall/NHLI via Getty Images)
Boone Jenner of the Columbus Blue Jackets celebrates with teammates David Savard and Jack Johnson after his goal against the Arizona Coyotes at Gila River Arena on December 3, 2016, in Glendale, Arizona. (Getty Images)

(In which Ryan Lambert takes a look at some of the biggest issues and stories in the NHL, and counts them down.)

7. The concussion spotter hubbub

I can say with 100,000 percent certainty that if like Mark Letestu or whoever ended up bouncing his head off the ice and getting pulled from the game, we wouldn’t have to sit through this nonsense “WHAT ARE THESE SPOTTERS EVEN DOING” stuff from the Canadian hockey media this week.

6. Putting the John in John Gibson

Folks,

Okay, so listen, John Gibson can’t come in to bail out Jonathan Bernier from getting Montoya’d because he has diarrhea. Fair enough. It happens. Not a lot or anything, but it happens.

But for Randy Carlyle to say, “Well folks, I couldn’t play him… because he had diarrhea!” is just about the funniest thing in the entire world.

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Imagine if that happened at your job. “Hey boss, I’m calling out sick because I have the flu,” okay cool.

“Hey, where’s [insert your name here for ultimate immersion!]?” “Oh [your gender here, even though gender is a construct!] had to stay home because if he’s more than five feet from a toilet he’s going to make an awful mess.”

Damn man. Carlyle could have said, “He unfortunately wasn’t feeling too good and wasn’t able to play today.” But instead he said John Gibson will be the Diarrhea Boy all season.

5. Jonathan Toews’s mystery back injury!!!

Yo for real, all we know at this point is that Jonathan Toews has a back injury and hasn’t really been skating much for the past few weeks. Looked like he was gonna be out a little while, but “a little” has stretched into “a lot.” Chicago keeps winning without him, but honestly how much longer can that last?

Back injuries are no joke, man. It’s better to be cautious with one in November and December than end up having it come back to bite you in February, March, or even April. Don’t wanna run into any Eric Daze stuff here.

4. Hold on this says the Blue Jackets are both winning AND playing well? You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?

You could write off a lot of the Blue Jackets’ earlier successes this season, because they were a heavily negative possession team getting PDO to go their way like crazy. But at this point, their CF number is approaching 51 percent, which puts them pretty comfortably above water.

Sure, a lot of that is because they played Calgary, Florida, Colorado, and Arizona (twice) in the past two weeks. That’ll help anyone’s shot attempt numbers. But you gotta say: They’re still winning, right?

And yeah, they’re still PDOing the crap out of everybody. Their 10.2 shooting percentage is second in the league, and their .927 save percentage is third. The winning at this clip won’t last. But they’re just a point behind Pittsburgh and banking a lot of points through early December is never gonna be a bad thing.

But just remember all that PDO stuff in like March and April when they’re on another one of those classic late-season PDO-crash losing streaks.

3. The Bruins.. wait really? The Bruins? Okay, the Bruins then.

Meanwhile, the Boston Bruins — another team everyone figured was gonna be a playoff no-show — are pretty comfortably the third-best team in the Atlantic right now and seem to be picking up steam after a just-okay start. They’ve gotten points out of their past five games (three of which, to be fair, went to OT or a shootout), but everything seems to be coming together for them.

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Most notably: They lead the league in score-adjusted CF%. Don’t think anyone saw that twist coming. Tuukka Rask back to normal? Sure. He’s great. Bergeron and Marchand crushing the competition? Alright no kidding. David Pastrnak growing into a dominant partner? Perfectly plausible.

The rest of the team being this good? Nope. Total surprise.

2. The Leafs? Okay now I know you’re messing with me. They what? Ah heck, alright the Leafs too then.

You know what, people don’t like to think about it too much, but the only reason the Leafs were bad last year is that they didn’t have either shooting or goaltending talent. Got ’em Auston Matthews so they sure as hell aren’t complaining, but it was clear they were maybe three or four guys away from being playoff-competitive.

In addition to Matthews, adding Mitch Marner, Willy Nylander, semi-competent goaltending, and some maturation from their existing young defenders seems to have brought them back to being competent in all aspects of the game.

Their record doesn’t necessarily reflect that yet, of course, because they had a pretty rough start (2-5-3 in October). But they’re 8-4-2 since the start of November, and have points in four of their last five. I’m not saying they’re going to maintain that 105-point pace for the rest of the season, but man, look at those young, fun Leafs go.

1. Boston University

The release of all these World Junior rosters this week means World Junior is right around the corner. And that is fun and exciting. Particularly so for Boston University.

They have seven — seven! — guys on the USA team, and another on Canada. They’d have one on Sweden too, but Jacob Forsbacka Karlsson is two months too old. The best part of the USA roster, though, is that it includes an entire line of Terriers (Clayton Keller, Jordan Greenway, and Patrick Harper), a D pairing (Chad Krys and Charlie McAvoy), and a goalie (Jake Oettinger), plus an extra forward (Kieffer Bellows).

So in theory, six BU guys could be on the ice with the US down a goal late in the game — god forbid! — only to pull Oettinger and put in another BU forward instead. That is wild.

Also, Dante Fabbro is the kid on the Canadian roster but he might not make the team because they hate college kids in Canada and everyone knows that about them.

(Not ranked this week: Unattractive attractions.

The St. Louis Public Library is hosting an exhibit of cool Blues stuff for the team’s 50th anniversary. Too bad no Blues fans know how to read.)

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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