Puck Daddy Power Rankings: Bland Sidney Crosby, Pierre McGuire’s coaching
8. RFAs with big-money dreams
Ryan Ellis is, at this point, an outlier.
The Preds defenseman recently got five years for $12.5 million out of his team. And while only guaranteeing yourself $2.5 million per on average isn’t great for an RFA who was once a first-round draft pick, you’d have to say he cleaned up in this economy.
Everyone else who hadn’t signed to this point has fallen into line in the last several days, and almost all of them have taken sharp discounts. Torey Krug and Reilly Smith in Boston both only got $1.4 million for one year. Cody Eakin only got two years at $1.9 million per. Jaden Schwartz did a little better at two years and $2.35 million AAV. Pretty cheap for all four of them, all things considered, but it does set the table for them to cash in when their deals are up, either at the arbitration table or because they clearly agreed to the current deals with the understanding they’d be able to really get paid next summer (which is clearly the case with the two Bruins).
That doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room for Ryan Johansen — who, to be fair, is better than all these guys — to argue he should get whatever money he still thinks he should get above the Blue Jackets’ initial offer of $3 million per for the next two years. Or at least it didn’t for a little while, before something bad happened to Boone Jenner.
7. When Irish Beanpots are smiling
Last week, Boston mayor Marty Walsh was in Belfast to do… something. While there, he talked with representatives of the Belfast Giants and said something to the effect of, “Wouldn’t it be nice if our iconic college hockey tournament, which is played every February in a sold-out TD Garden, went to your fine city in 2016?” To which everyone in Boston collectively said, “Uhhhhh… no it would be bad???”
Walsh quickly walked that insane assertion back, saying he only meant a Beanpot-like tournament. A tournament like the Beanpot, you see. Not the actual Beanpot, guys. Come on. Don’t take things out of context. A tournament like the Beanpot but not the Beanpot everyone likes. No no, never that.
Everyone saw that for the BS backtracking it was, of course. The Beanpot will never leave Boston. It will continue to be three bad and boring games played prior to an occasionally good and exciting one, played in Boston, in perpetuity. They’ll be playing the Beanpot long after humanity has ceased to exist, thousands of years in the future. Northeastern and Harvard still won’t have won one since 1993.
(And on that note, please keep in mind that college hockey is back this weekend and I am screaming and crying for how happy I am. If you are near a college hockey rink, you owe it to yourself to make an appearance at a few games at least this winter. Hell, buy season tickets.)
6. The Hurricanes’ chances
The reality for the Carolina Hurricanes was that in a best-case scenario — in terms of their final position in the standings — they would finish somewhere in the 18-20 range, instead of being in the bottom five.
Then Jordan Staal broke his leg. I’ve seen more than a few articles in the last few days that said, “How will the Hurricanes replace this guy,” and the answer is that they obviously will not. Let’s face facts here: He’s their No. 1 center at this point, with all due respect to Eric, and is going to be actually impossible to replace.
The ‘Canes center depth in the best of times is, shall we say, wanting. The Staals, then Jay McClement (who’s not good), Elias Lindholm (who’s super-young), with your last two options being Brad Malone and Riley Nash. Maybe you mix Victor Rask, whose production in the AHL last year decent but not great. Yikes.
Even if Anton Khudobin finally “wins” the starting job that should already comfortably be his from Cam Ward on Day 1 of the season, he’d have to stand on his head for 82 games for this team to threaten breaking into the 20-22 range. They’re going to be dreadful.
5. Having a problem
People like to badmouth preseason hockey. They love it. And with some good reason: Preseason hockey features two things above all else. If you’re not drawn in by bad players trying to do non-hockey things to make good impressions, you might like hilariously bad defending and goaltending. That’s what you can expect.
And yet here I am watching these games online and on the NHL Network every chance I get. I’ve seriously watched at least a dozen games in the last two weeks. I get mad when the NHL Network doesn’t have a 10 o’clock game. And before that I was watching rookie games steaming on team sites. When the regular season starts my life is going to be ruined.
4. Locking up those core guys early
The Avalanche made two very questionable contracts on Monday, signing Brad Stuart (who hasn’t played a single regular-season second for the Avs) and Cody McLeod (who is just bad) to new contracts.
In the case of McLeod, the $1.33 million AAV isn’t so bad (unless you want to be a stickler and say that paying him anything to be on your NHL team is a misuse of assets). He gets run over in possession despite playing Downy-soft competition, and getting decently easy zone starts. So of course the Avs gave him three years. Of course they did. The fact of the matter is you can find actual hockey players to take McLeod’s minutes just about anywhere — the AHL, Europe, junior, a bus station — and do better with them. So tying him to your roster for his age-30, 31, and 32 seasons seems terribly misguided.
Meanwhile, Brad Stuart may be a “steady presence” or whatever on the blue line in the preseason, but you really shouldn’t use that as a basis for giving him two more years on a 35-plus contract. Especially at $3.6 million with a modified no-trade. There should have been no hurry at all to re-up this guy, who’s going downhill faster than a lot of defensemen his age usually do.
Just baffling moves from Joe Sakic here. It’s a good thing they got Greg Sherman outta there. Can’t have a bad decision-maker like him giving out contracts.
There is good news here, though. Because of everything Sakic did for the Avs during his career, he can give out two or three of these awful contracts every year and still be beloved and unfireable.. Actually, that’s only good news for Sakic.
3. Zach Parise’s hockey strategy views
In case you thought the analytics thing was a little overblown this summer, here’s Zach Parise on the efficacy of carry-in zone entries:
“I read a study this summer that showed shots generated off carrying the puck in as opposed to dumping it in, and it’s like 4-to-1. It’s not even close. I just found it so interesting because everyone’s like, ‘Forecheck, forecheck, forecheck. I get it, but you dump the puck, you have to get it back. All you’re doing is giving the puck away. I mean, it’s so hard to get it, why would you give it away?”
Hey, attaway Zach. Remember the days when troll reporters would ask players, “What do you think of corsi or whatever?” and most would say, “They’re stupid. Who cares?” Well now, Zach Parise is reading studies on zone entries in the offseason and saying his team should stop dumping the puck in most situations. What a guy.
2. Sid Crosby’s blandness
The ability of the greatest player in the world to say absolutely nothing is well-known at this point, but the lengths to which he’s gone in recent weeks has frankly been astonishing, even by his own high standards.
One of the few times he ever really shows emotion is when he’s dealing with a player he genuinely doesn’t like. Steve Downie used to be able to count himself among that elite group, but now that he’s on the Penguins, all has apparently been forgotten:
“He’s on your team now, and he has a job to do. He had a job to do when he played for other teams. I think everybody understands that.”
I mean, that’s pretty vanilla even by Crosby standards, but let’s see if we can top it. We can, you say?
So Bob McKenzie has what is supposed to be a pretty great book coming out within the next few weeks, and Crosby gave him a quote for the book jacket. It is amazing:
“Bob McKenzie has been around the game for a long time. His knowledge and insight comes from passion and experience. His behind-the-scenes stories will be of interest to all hockey fans.”
Just remarkable. Let’s fisk this and see exactly how little Crosby says. All three sentences are pretty much just statement of fact: Bob McKenzie has been around a long time, check. He knows a lot about the game because he cares about it, check. He knows a lot of interesting stuff fans do not.
There is almost no way Crosby read this book or ever will. And yet he gave a blurb because someone asked him to. It’s like that thing in David Foster Wallace’s profile of Roger Federer where some guy asks Federer for a signed ball or something for a sick kid and Federer “doesn’t pretend to care more than he does.” Someone asked Crosby for a quote about Bob McKenzie’s book, Sid provided it. Nothing fake in his answer, but not a shred of anything interesting either.
Sidney Crosby is not only the Roger Federer of hockey, he’s also the Roger Federer of saying nothing.
1. The Pierre McGuire School of Coaching
For those that missed it, Pierre McGuire said that any coach who would use analytics to evaluate a player after a game “should be terminated on the spot.” Which is hilarious, because as Greg said the other day, they’ve literally been doing it for years. McGuire even said that he did it when he was a coach.
Which, I mean, I guess that explains a lot about why Pierre McGuire failed as a coach in this league. Literally any excuse I have to re-read and share the Hartford Courant’s leeeeeeeegendary takedown of his time behind the Whalers bench is one I will seize on. So please read that and enrich your day greatly.
If only there were a way to quantify who is a monster in this league and the name of Ryan Callahan’s bantam coach. Then McGuire would be all-in on analytics.
(Not ranked this week: The Blue Jackets.
Well Columbus seemed poised to go into the season without Ryan Johansen, their No. 1 center, if that was what they needed to do. Wouldn’t be comfortable, but they could bear it. Probably. Maybe.
But then Nathan Horton came up with another injury — and boy doesn’t that contract look awful at this point? — because that’s what Nathan Horton does. Which, okay, that’s two-thirds of your top line, but Horton’s not, like, world-beating. You can get along without him. And you still have to make your point to Johansen.
But then down goes Boone Jenner. That’s the entire top line either on the shelf or out of camp. And now things are dicey. Because, look, you can go without an entire top line for about one game, if that, without it starting to really wear on your ability to be competitive. The Blue Jackets want desperately to be competitive, though, because of how good they were last year and how much they’d like to seize on the positive feeling about the club in their local market.
And so now, maybe, Johansen might get what he wanted all along: Bigger money than he probably deserves, at least in the marketplace as it’s currently constituted. That is, unless Jarmo Kekalainen sticks to his guns, even if it’s to the detriment of his team.
This has quickly gone from a kind of tedious if important contract situation to a fascinating drama. What happens next is going to be hugely important for the club. It’s Kekalainen’s first huge test, and if he makes a misstep it will probably be catastrophic, one way or the other.)
