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yahoo-puck-daddy-blog · 8 years ago

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Conspiracies, Milbury on Subban and Kovalchuk's return (Puck Daddy Countdown)

LOS ANGELES, CA – JANUARY 29: P.K. Subban #76 of the Nashville Predators poses for a portrait prior to the 2017 Honda NHL All-Star Game at Staples Center on January 29, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)

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

8. It’s time for some Game 3-ry!

Who could have known that the “Alex Ovechkin tried to kill Ron Hainsey with a polonium-laced flubbed one-timer” would have been only the tip of the iceberg?

Yeah, like the “I’m With Her” crew who can’t stop tweeting about or devoting their nightly MSNBC shows to Russian involvement in the U.S. election, Pittsburgh sports writers seem to have gone off the deep end with their hate of Ovechkin.

Who knows how deep the rabbit hole goes? Rob Rossi, a writer for Upgruv (pron. “oop-gruv”) suggests that Ovechkin, not content with putting Hainsey on the shelf, also conspired with Matt Niskanen, Barry Trotz, the saucer people and the reverse vampires to try to murder Sidney Crosby as well. And wouldn’t you know it, it worked!!!!!!!!

Like Rossi, Pittsburgh homers I mean reporters including Josh Yohe and Kevin Gorman have reason to believe may be a boogeyman or boogeymen at work, and yinz are blind if yinz can’t see it.

What sort of Kompromat Ovechkin may have on Niskanen, who used to be Crosby’s teammate for pete’s sake, has on these guys to make them focus in on playing a physical game against Crosby we may never know. Maybe it was video of how bad Niskanen was on the man advantage in the first two games (a.k.a. The PP Tape) but until we get some more concrete evidence, we just can’t be sure.

Certainly, now that Crosby is potentially out for the series in what was absolutely not in any way an unfortunate accident that results from one guy trying very hard to dispossess arguably the best player in the world of the puck, in a prime scoring area, and another being in the same general area for the unfortunate aftermath.

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And certainly certainly, a guy like Rossi would never have written apologia on behalf of Nice Guy Matt Cooke a year after he effectively ended Marc Savard’s career and tried to do the same to Ryan McDonagh. No, absolutely not.��

7. The Selke ceiling

Speaking of poor Sid Crosby, NBC had a really great video package at the beginning of Monday’s Game 3 in which it showed how good Crosby is at literally everything to do with hockey. And it got me thinking: Crosby really ought to have a Selke on his shelf by now, right?

Like, he’s probably going to have to wait a few more years since he’s still scoring by the bucketload, but if you’re going to tell me he’s not one of the four or five best defensive players alive, that says to me you’re not paying a lot of attention to this sport.

And yet, the highest he’s ever finished in Selke voting was last season, when he ended up seventh. My theory: It’s because he had only 85 points in 80 games. Which for him is incredibly bad, the lowest points-per-game of his career.

The thing with the Selke is that there is now, seemingly, a ceiling for how many points you can score before you were too good offensively to have been considered good defensively. Which is dumb as hell, of course. But people don’t want to accept that you can be elite at both ends of the ice.

I looked it up and the median Selke winner in the cap era had 27 goals and 70 points. And those were the heyday of Crosby and Malkin going off and racking up 100-plus points, so by comparison he must have been doing something to have fallen behind the pack. Also, you have to be a center, but you already knew that.

So who’s the guy, statistically, who’s most likely to win the Selke this year? Kesler’s closest to both those numbers, and given how bad the media wanted to name him MVP of the series for matching up against Connor McDavid (and only kinda getting caved in), I bet his 22-36-58 goes a long way.

Then again, he’s up against three-time winner Patrice Bergeron, so that has to come into the discussion as well. And Bergeron will probably win for lack of a better option.

But seriously, Crosby.

6. That Zaitsev contract

It’s not very good. I don’t get the seven years. I don’t get the $4.5 million. Statistically he scans like a No. 4/5 defenseman who got thrown into a bigger role than he actually earned, and the fact that he’ll be 26 in October doesn’t portend good things for the second half of this contract.

As much as the Leafs have earned a rep for making smart moves, they still give out some dumb contracts. And yeah, maybe they’re trying to goad Las Vegas into taking a youngish D who’s signed relatively cheap and for term, but why would you risk that?

I dunno, I just feel like Babcock has his blindspots and defenders like Zaitsev is very firmly within that blindspot. Maybe if, one day, he starts getting used as an expensive-but-good No. 4/5 instead of a not-good-enough No. 2, things work out okay. But right now? Pass.

5. Walkin’ it back

Mike Milbury’s comments about P.K. Subban dancing in pre-games drew a lot of ire, and understandably so. Mike Milbury is a loudmouth clod that every hockey fan who has to suffer through his NBC diatribes cannot stand. P.K. Subban is a mostly beloved guy who should be a huge star in this league, except they have a problem with his, uhh, let’s call it “pizzazz.”

So when Milbury got a chance to walk all that back with Joe Rexrode, would you believe he actually said even more dumbass stuff?

“The game is supposed to be fun and I’m glad that P.K. Subban is part of the game,” Milbury said, lyingly. “I’m glad he’s a personality. I think it’s wonderful that he has that kind of approach. At the risk of repeating myself, the only question was, does that distracting kind of behavior impact anyone else? I’m just asking the question.”

Well jeez Mike, you’re one of these “all that matters are wins” people, right? Well check the goddamn record. If his dancing were a problem or a distraction or anything else, we might have heard about it by now. But everyone likes Subban except old white clowns (to use Milbury’s word) no one can stand or wants to see on TV or ever hear from. I wonder why that is.

Interestingly, Milbury had nothing to say about the Rangers doing this that same weekend:

I’m not sure the Rangers know what sport they’re playing today pic.twitter.com/USeOwLwxf6

— Pete Blackburn (@PeteBlackburn) April 29, 2017

A coincidence, I’m very sure.

4. Shopping Drouin

Rumors have been swirling for a little while now that the Tampa Bay Lightning might use this good season from embattled young star-in-the-making Jonathan Drouin as leverage to acquire someone who helps them more immediately — perhaps on the blue line.

That would make a lot of sense and be a boon to a Lightning team that needed a little defensive help last night. But man, if you can trade Drouin for someone who can, like, make sure half the team doesn’t spend 35-plus games on the LTIR, that would help even more.

3. The expansion-draft-slash-awards show

Oh man, this is going to make the NHL Awards watchable. Maybe. Hopefully.

But honestly, as a guy who has to write about the NHL Awards every year, if it saves me from watching even one more torturous “comedy” “sketch,” this will all have been worth it.

2. Ilya Kovalchuk coming back

Saw the rumors where Ilya Kovalchuk is considering a return to the NHL and teams are interested.

Why wouldn’t they be? He had 78 points in 60 KHL games last season, placing him second in the league in scoring. That’s about the kind of production, more or less, that Alex Radulov had before he came back to the NHL and was a super-useful player for the Canadiens.

If Radulov is seen as proof of concept here, then the suitors will line up.

HOWEVER! There’s a big difference here: Radulov spent this season as a 30-year-old. And Kovalchuk just turned 34. One wonders, then, what kind of money or term Kovalchuk wants, and how long he’s going to be worth that contract, whatever it is.

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Teams should absolutely be interested. Kovalchuk’s game isn’t exactly predicated on getting up and down the ice quickly, and it’s hard to imagine he’s got the kind of miles on his body that most 34-year-olds do (thanks to the KHL’s larger rinks, less hitting and shot-blocking, etc. as well as his own playing style) but still, 34 is old as hell.

1. This year’s draft lottery

As someone who was delighted every time the stupid Oilers won another draft lottery, the fact that Vegas is picking sixth and the top three goes New Jersey, Philly, Dallas is — to me — delightful beyond words. At least, y’know, since the Oilers couldn’t win it again.

(Not ranked this week: The thinking behind the Kucherov controversy.

A true highlight of every summer is when Eastern European players go back to their home countries and give too-honest-for-North-Americans interviews about the past season.

It’s nice that they do it because it’s nice to have that unfiltered thinking out there, but I really don’t get why they do it, since all it does is lead local beat writers to basically beg them to walk back those comments. Like that ages-old Alex Semin interview on Puck Daddy where he said he didn’t think Crosby was that good, all it does is lead to PR nightmares for NHL teams and probably gets guys good and yelled at. So it’s just strange these things continue.

Blessings to the players for doing it, but if it were me I wouldn’t want to field the extra six phone calls such an interview leads to.)

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

(All statistics via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)