Faxes from Uncle Dale

Category: Hockey

  • Your Real NHL Standings At The Quarter Mark

    Your Real NHL Standings At The Quarter Mark

    Ok so the quarter mark is a little past but I’m getting to it now so shut up. As a reminder, I like to occasionally take a look at what the NHL standings would look like if they had a standings system that was actually logical. So basically, we’re going to remove overtime results from the equation, and anything that goes beyond 60 minutes is a tie. So this is purely regulation results.  First, your actual NHL standings:

    Atlantic Division GP W L OL PTS
    Boston Bruins 22 14 3 5 33
    Florida Panthers 22 12 5 5 29
    Montreal Canadiens 22 11 6 5 27
    Toronto Maple Leafs 24 10 10 4 24
    Buffalo Sabres 22 10 9 3 23
    Tampa Bay Lightning 19 10 7 2 22
    Ottawa Senators 22 10 11 1 21
    Detroit Red Wings 24 7 14 3 17
    Metropolitan Division GP W L OL PTS
    Washington Capitals 24 16 4 4 36
    New York Islanders 20 16 3 1 33
    Carolina Hurricanes 22 13 8 1 27
    Pittsburgh Penguins 22 11 7 4 26
    Philadelphia Flyers 22 11 7 4 26
    Columbus Blue Jackets 21 9 8 4 22
    New York Rangers 19 9 8 2 20
    New Jersey Devils 20 7 9 4 18
    Central Division GP W L OL PTS
    St. Louis Blues 23 14 4 5 33
    Colorado Avalanche 22 13 7 2 28
    Dallas Stars 23 13 8 2 28
    Winnipeg Jets 23 13 9 1 27
    Chicago Blackhawks 22 9 9 4 22
    Nashville Predators 21 9 9 3 21
    Minnesota Wild 22 9 11 2 20
    Pacific Division GP W L OL PTS
    Edmonton Oilers 24 14 7 3 31
    Arizona Coyotes 23 13 8 2 28
    Vancouver Canucks 23 11 8 4 26
    Vegas Golden Knights 24 11 9 4 26
    Anaheim Ducks 23 10 10 3 23
    San Jose Sharks 23 11 11 1 23
    Calgary Flames 25 10 12 3 23
    Los Angeles Kings 22 9 12 1 19

     

    Ok, now let’s throw out OT.

    Atlantic Division GP W RW L OL T PTS
    Boston Bruins 22 14 14 3 5 5 33
    Florida Panthers 22 12 7 5 5 10 24
    Montreal Canadiens 22 11 8 6 5 8 24
    Toronto Maple Leafs 24 10 7 10 4 7 21
    Buffalo Sabres 22 10 7 9 3 6 20
    Tampa Bay Lightning 19 10 8 7 2 4 20
    Ottawa Senators 22 10 8 11 1 3 19
    Detroit Red Wings 24 7 6 14 3 4 16
    Metropolitan Division GP W RW L OL T PTS
    Washington Capitals 24 16 10 4 4 10 30
    New York Islanders 20 16 10 3 1 7 27
    Pittsburgh Penguins 22 11 8 7 4 7 23
    Carolina Hurricanes 22 13 8 8 1 6 22
    Philadelphia Flyers 22 11 7 7 4 8 22
    New York Rangers 19 9 8 8 2 3 19
    Columbus Blue Jackets 21 9 5 8 4 8 18
    New Jersey Devils 20 7 5 9 4 6 16
    Central Division GP W RW L OL T PTS
    St. Louis Blues 23 14 9 4 5 10 28
    Dallas Stars 23 13 11 8 2 4 26
    Colorado Avalanche 22 13 10 7 2 5 25
    Winnipeg Jets 23 13 7 9 1 7 21
    Chicago Blackhawks 22 9 7 9 4 6 20
    Nashville Predators 21 9 8 9 3 4 20
    Minnesota Wild 22 9 9 11 2 2 20
    Pacific Division GP W RW L OL T PTS
    Edmonton Oilers 24 14 11 7 3 6 28
    Vancouver Canucks 23 11 9 8 4 6 24
    Vegas Golden Knights 24 11 9 9 4 6 24
    Arizona Coyotes 23 13 8 8 2 7 23
    Anaheim Ducks 23 10 9 10 3 4 22
    San Jose Sharks 23 11 8 11 1 4 20
    Calgary Flames 25 10 6 12 3 7 19
    Los Angeles Kings 22 9 6 12 1 4 16

    Over in the WestSo what are some differences? Well, the Bruins are even more the class of the league, and the Panthers are trailing by some distance. The Capitals have an incredible 10 ties in 24 games, and come back to the pack a little more. Carolina and Pittsburgh swap places. Carolina and Philly are your wild card teams in the East.

    Over in the West, the Blues come back to the pack a little, the Stars and Avs swap places, and the Hawks, Preds, and Wild are tied in a group of sadness, having only the Flames and the Kings beat. And the Flames are probably having all their shoestrings removed. The Hawks would be only two points out of a playoff spot though, instead of the current four they are now. Arizona would fall from second to fourth in their division. Arizona and Anaheim would be your wild cards.

    Just some food for thought.

  • Game #22 – And Every Time You Think You Know Just What You’re Doin’, That’s When Your Troubles Exceed – Lightning 4, Hawks 2

    Game #22 – And Every Time You Think You Know Just What You’re Doin’, That’s When Your Troubles Exceed – Lightning 4, Hawks 2

    Box Score

    Natural Stat Trick

    Evolving Hockey

    A ho-hum affair through 40 turned into a small heartbreaker in the last 20. The Hawks gave up three goals against a team that ended up skating 10 forwards from the second period on, which isn’t great, but they kept it interesting. Let’s clean it up.

    – Sue me for leading with Corey Crawford again, but of all the things the Hawks have done consistently well, goaltending is it. The highlight of Crow’s night came on the heels of Slater Koekkoek (more on him later) not doing whatever it is that Jeremy Colliton thinks he can do. After taking a stretch pass from Mathieu Joseph, Anthony Cirelli played catch with Alex Killorn on a 2-on-1 breakaway against Brent Seabrook. Christ on Earth what a horrifying thought. But Crawford managed to stop both of Cirelli’s attempts, which even a slightly lesser goalie would have been beaten on.

    And once again, it’s hard to fault Crow for any of the three goals he was on the ice for. One came against a top-flight power play, and the other two came off bad positioning and turnovers.

    – The next time Coach Kelvin Gemstone wants to inexplicably scratch a forward in favor of seven defensemen, he should scratch Alex Nylander instead of Dominik Kubalik. Unless Kubalik was hurt, refusing to serve A Bit of the Kubbly is bad on its own, given what Kubalik can do on both sides of the puck. But what, exactly, has Alex Nylander done lately, other than scoring two garbage-time goals against a backup goaltender? That’s not a hypothetical, because Nylander’s lackadaisicalness led directly to Tampa’s response goal in the third.

    Following a failed Maatta clear that unfortunately hit the linesman, Nylander floated to the near boards to cover precisely zero skaters. This of course left a huge lane open for Victor Hedman, whose shot redirected off Cirelli and in. We knew that Nylander was a loaf on the defensive side of the puck, so it’s not so much surprising as it is disappointing, following the Seabrook miracle goal as it did. Surely, whatever system Colliton thinks he’s running doesn’t help, but picking your ass on the near boards doesn’t either. So.

    – Piggybacking off that point, this whole playing Slater Fucking Koekkoek for any reason whatsoever horseshit needs to end yesterday. He contributed absolutely nothing positive, which should surprise no one, and was nearly responsible for a Lightning goal late in the second with the Hawks already down. This should be enough to bring your piss to a boil, but it gets even worse, dear reader.

    Remember those two huge saves Crawford made that we talked about earlier? You can blame Fetch for that. With Mathieu Joseph beginning the breakout from the defensive zone, Koekkoek hovers in the neutral zone, then points at Joseph to signal to David Kampf to cover him. Yes, David Kampf, one of the steadiest and most reliable defensive players the Hawks have. While Slater MacArthur was giving his directives, wouldn’t you know it, Joseph fired a pass right by him, leading to two high-quality chances.

    I don’t need Slater Koekkoek on the ice. I especially don’t need him making suggestions to one of the Hawks’s best defensive forwards about how to play defense. And the cherry on top was that he got playing time over Kubalik. I can only imagine that Colliton did this because Koekkoek was drafted by the Lightning and wanted to let him start against his former team, but that’s fucking stupid. Koekkoek was never a stalwart there. He was an afterthought. That’s why he’s here at all. Great work.

    – Olli Maatta even slides slow. He sold out trying to defend Point and Palat’s 2-on-1 following a Kane turnover in the neutral zone and was both too early and too short on the uptake.

    – Patrick Kane did keep his scoring streak alive with an assist on the Hawks’s second goal. He also led the Hawks in ice time with 27+ minutes, because Jeremy Colliton definitely knows what he’s doing and absolutely isn’t out of ideas just 22 games in.

    – Speaking of Colliton knowing what he’s doing, the first period was chock-full of examples of why his defensive system doesn’t work with this team.

    On this play, Palat passes up to Shattenkirk, who drives down the near boards. Palat then picks Dach as Shattenkirk gets around Murphy. Then, de Haan comes out to cover Shattenkirk, despite the fact that Brayden Point was standing right in front of Crawford and also WAS THE GUY DE HAAN WAS COVERING. Why abandon Point there? Is that what he’s supposed to do? If so, is Dach supposed to take Point at that point? What the hell are we doing here?

    Here’s another fun one. Cernak takes a shot from the blue line and misses. Murphy can’t corral the puck behind the net. Conacher picks it up, and Dach and Koekkoek both try to cover him, leaving Joseph wide open in the slot. If this is what the system spits out, then the system sucks. If this is NOT what the system is supposed to spit out, then the Hawks cannot run it, and it should cease immediately.

    – Brent Seabrook’s goal was fun. You rarely want to see Seabrook skating below the goal line, but he banked his shot off McElhinney’s back and in. It was a nice sliver of hope while it lasted.

    They made it interesting at the end. That’s all we really ask.

    Onward.

    Beer du Jour: Jefferson’s and Bell’s Best Brown

    Line of the Night: “I love any kind of bar, but the popup ones are fun, too.” –Foley

  • Game #22 – Lightning vs. Hawks: Gamenight Prickle

    Game #22 – Lightning vs. Hawks: Gamenight Prickle

    Everything to get you ready for tonight’s festival of fun at 1901 West. 

    Preview

    Spotlight: Jon Cooper

    Hedley Lamarr

    I Make A Lot Of Graphs

    Lineups & How They Were Built

  • Game #22 – Lightning vs. Hawks Preview: First World Problems

    Game #22 – Lightning vs. Hawks Preview: First World Problems

    vs.

    RECORDS: Lightning 9-7-2   Hawks 9-8-4

    PUCK DROP: 7:30

    TV: NBCSN Chicago

    THE GUYS WHO DON’T LOOK LIKE XQUISITE: Raw Charge

    It may sound strange to say the Hawks have more points than the Lightning, but that’s the case as the two ’15 Finalists get together again on West Madison. But of course, as we know here, that doesn’t mean the Hawks are better off than the Bolts. The Hawks collected their 22 points in the Cirque de Stupid that is the Central Division and Western Conference as a whole, whereas the Lightning are trying to fight through the gauntlet of the Atlantic. And one of these teams did put up 128 points last year, while the other missed the lowest bar for the playoffs in years by a good distance. And not that much has changed.

    That’s not to say everything is rosy in Tampa. They’re sitting just three points above the Eastern cellar, though only two points out of the last playoff spot. While watching the Lightning, or trying to measure them by various metrics, it’s kind of clear that there’s still a malaise from last spring hanging over and in this team. Nothing they do in the regular season is going to matter to anyone, but sadly with the division they’re in they can’t play the whole regular season like it doesn’t matter. Which is kind of what they’ve been doing. Other than their power play, which has reached that “self aware” level, everything else is just meh. Right in the middle of the league.

    The Lightning still score, as their overall goals-per-game and even-strength goals per game are in the top five. With the king of marksmen like Kucherov and Stamkos and Point and others, they don’t need to dominate possession to get the scoring they need. Which is good, because they aren’t. Their possession and expected goals numbers re firmly middle of the pack. Again, they can get away with that given the talent for long stretches, but it’s not ideal long-term.

    Especially as they may not get the PDO balance at the other end right now. When picking through the rubble of last season’s meltdown in the first round, it was hard not to start with Andrei Vasilevskiy‘s .856 SV%. Anyone can have a bad four games of course, but any big save from Vas in at least Games 1 or 2 could have pivoted that series. The Bolts never got one. That hangover seems to have carried over to this season, where he’s carrying a .906. The Hawks will get the backup tonight, as Curtis McElhinney will take the start.

    And that’s probably the biggest factor for the Bolts to get back on track, because they don’t give up a ton of great chances. They’re not among the league’s best, but comfortably in the top half. If Vas can get back to .915 or better, everything should be fine in Tampa.

    It also might not hurt the Lightning that they’ve only played seven home games so far, and after this one tonight 14 of their next 17 will be in Tampa. You wouldn’t be shocked by a charge up the standings before New Year’s.

    To the Hawks, who could or could not be with Andrew Shaw tonight. He didn’t practice yesterday so they’re going to see how he shows up tonight. If he doesn’t go, the Hawks will dress all seven d-men as they don’t have an extra forward at the moment with Drake Caggiula in a dark room somewhere (my whole life is a dark room…). Every time in the past the Hawks have tried the 7-D look it has gone horribly, and everyone bitches to high heaven about it after. I still think it should be something they try more often and with Boqvist involved, if only to shelter him and Seabrook better. It also provides extra shifts here and there for Kane, Toews, Saad, Dach, DeBrincat, which is a good thing. But what do I know? I’m just a drunk in the rain. Corey Crawford will be your starter.

    The Hawks got embarrassed twice by the Lightning last year, though no scoreline truly reflects it. This was the opponent that put up 30 shots in a period on them at the United Center last time around. Quite simply, the Hawks aren’t built to deal with this kind of skill and speed. And really, neither of those things have changed.

    The difference, albeit small, between what the Hawks saw on Tuesday and what they’ll get tonight is the Lightning defense isn’t as consistently mobile as Carolina’s. Sure, Hedman and Kirk ShattenKevin are, and Sergachev and Cernak are too. But Sergachev can get wayward when under pressure, and whether it’s Schenn or Rutta joining him that can be exploited. So can Ryan McDonagh on the second pairing. Whereas the Hawks couldn’t get behind Carolina’s last line, they can on this one.

    Which means some other d-men besides Connor Murphy have to get the puck out of the zone as quickly as possible to get the defense to back up, which in turn will give everyone more room to breathe. As we saw last year, when the Hawks try their 17-pass breakout, the Lightning’s plus-plus speed at forward and on the forecheck swallows them whole and spits them back out inside out. There just isn’t time for that, at least not until you back them up by proving you can and will stretch the ice.

    It’s a rough part of the schedule, as the Hawks again get one of the better teams in the league, whatever the standings say, before two with the hottest team in the league and then two with maybe the best team in the division. But if you want to go somewhere, you can’t always take the path of least resistance.

  • Game #22 – Lightning vs. Hawks Spotlight: The Coach You Should Want

    Game #22 – Lightning vs. Hawks Spotlight: The Coach You Should Want

    Sometimes your aimless speculation turns into reality. You should probably just accept the good fortune that makes you look prescient instead of questioning the randomness of the fates.

    Yesterday, Mike Babcock was fired, which started a flicker that could turn into a full out flame of wondering and soon rumors that he could find his way to Chicago. If the Hawks were to fall on their face at any point this season and miss the playoffs by a huge margin, Jeremy Colliton‘s position would certainly be awkward if not untenable. Babcock’s name has cache, would command respect immediately from the main vets in the room (three of whom have played for him at the Olympic level), and at least provide a floor of professionalism and structure.

    It would also be the wrong move.

    We broke down why it would be on the podcast, so let’s shift the focus. We’ve had a lot of fun with Jon Cooper around here (a lot of fun), but what that doesn’t change is that he’s a very good coach. Perhaps the leader in the “Not A Moron” category in our binary system of rating coaches around the league.

    The Lightning have never finished with less than 94 points under his watch, now in its 7th season. The one year they missed the playoffs, Steven Stamkos played just 17 games, Ben Bishop was hurt as well and Andrei Vasilevskiy was making his first foray into being a starter. And they still gathered 94 points. He was the captain on the ship that gobbled up 128 points last year.

    Moreover, Cooper has been able to integrate and develop a wave of young talent to turn the Lightning into a power. First it was the Triplets of Tyler Johnson, Nikita Kucherov, and Ondrej Palat, with the middle guy there becoming an MVP. Of late it’s been Brayden Point and Yanni Gourde and Mikhail Sergachev and Eric Cernak. He knows how to put people in the places they will have the best chance of succeeding. And he plays an up-tempo, get up the ice style that meshes with what the NHL is these days.

    Mike Babcock does none of these things.

    However, Babs’s name will carry more weight because of the trophy cabinet, a mark Cooper has yet to make. Two conference finals, a Final appearance, and all were lost to modern dynasties by the tightest of margins (yes, it’s a stretch to call the Caps that, but their decade-spanning stay atop their division certainly makes them one of the teams of the era). No other coach around is matching that aside from Mike Sullivan in Pittsburgh of late, aside from one Joel Quenneville.

    Which you might think would make it pure fantasy that Cooper could even get fired, let alone come to Chicago. But is it? Along with that record-breaking season last year comes the weight of the embarrassing first-round collapse. And as the malaise from that has carried over into this season, one wonders how much the pressure is already ramping up. The enduring image of Cooper at the moment are his exclamations of “This is our chance!” during Game 4 in Columbus last year when an offsides challenge had canceled out a Jackets goal.

    Really? You had the greatest team of the modern era, or at least the best regular season, and this is what you need to get past a team 35 points behind you in the standings? Clearly, it wasn’t their chance.

    Cooper has to wear that, though there isn’t anything a coach is going to do about a goalie who puts up an .856 SV% over four games. Still, the Lightning seemed to freeze in the headlights after a Game 1 loss.

    Which isn’t fair, because Cooper has playoff success on his resume, which means he’s instilled a confidence and fight in his team before. Couldn’t it just be an anomaly?

    Still, this Lightning team is now as Cup-or-bust as it gets. And sitting second-last in the Atlantic probably isn’t what the front office had in mind when they basically held the line on personnel this summer (as they should have). Could they get itchy? Could they conclude something broke last spring and only a new voice will snap the players over that hurdle? Not so outlandish, is it?

    Should it happen, the Hawks should be all over Cooper. Maybe he doesn’t carry the cache of Babcock, but you know what? He’s the better coach. If you’re a Hawks fan hoping for a seismic change behind the bench, this is the one you want.

  • Game #22 – Lightning vs. Hawks: Hedley Lamarr’s Muggers, Buggerers, Bushwhackers

    Game #22 – Lightning vs. Hawks: Hedley Lamarr’s Muggers, Buggerers, Bushwhackers

    Pat Maroon – A fine fourth liner, and yet he’ll get to wear the label of “the final ingredient” because he happened to be on the Blues last year and from St. Louis. Oh sure, he scored the goal that beat the Stars, a team that took the Blues to seven games even though they couldn’t actually score. And after their first round debacle, the Lightning felt they were missing something, which actually was a goalie who didn’t spend all four games sneezing bending himself into a pretzel but they thought was some goof on the fourth line. What happens if the Bolts go out early again? Does Maroon lose his magic?

    Cedric Paquette – Remember when this dingleberry couldn’t wait to suck up all the press about how he was the ultimate pest in Game 3 of the ’15 Final because he had one good game? Yeah, well, Toews ate his heart the rest of the series and the Lightning scored two more goals. Never heard from him again.

    Kirk ShattenKevin – Because the Hawks could have had him for the same song the Bolts got him, and they needed his mobility more than Tampa did. But that would take actual vision, and not clogging up your blue line with multi-year deals for the likes of Olli Maatta.

  • Game #22 – Lightning vs. Hawks: I Make A Lot Of Graphs

    Game #22 – Lightning vs. Hawks: I Make A Lot Of Graphs

  • Game #22 – Lightning vs. Hawks: Lineups & How They Were Built

    Game #22 – Lightning vs. Hawks: Lineups & How They Were Built

    Lightning

    Notes: Kucherov suffered a concussion on Tuesday against St. Louis (go figure), so he’s out tonight which shifts Stamkos to the top line wing and Johnson back to center…The Hawks will get a look at the backup tonight in McElhinney…Jan Rutta might replace Schenn in the lineup on the third pairing, which…Yeehah!…Hedman has eight points in his last five games…Point hasn’t scored in November…

    Hawks

    Notes: Shaw is a gametime decision. If he doesn’t go the Hawks will dress seven d-men, which has been just short of a disaster every time they’ve tried it, and also causes mass bitching from Seabrook and Keith…Toews has strung three good games together, and if Point is left to Kampf he might get an easier matchup tonight…Dach finished the last game with Kane and DeBrincat, see if they go back to that if things aren’t clicking again…

  • Live From The Five Hole – Soldier’s Requiem

    Live From The Five Hole – Soldier’s Requiem

    Rose, Sam, and I discuss the recent “streak”, as well as the viability of a recently dismissed head coach. No subscription required, audio after the jump.

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  • Your Real NHL Awards A Quarter Of The Way Through

    Your Real NHL Awards A Quarter Of The Way Through

    I like to do this at the watermarks of the season. If you’re new, and some of you shockingly are, I take an analytic look where I can on where the major hardware should go, but sometimes won’t, at this point in the season. For the most part, it sticks to where you think it would go anyway, but sometimes it diverges. Anyway, to it…

    Hart Trophy – Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl Split It

    This would certainly drive the hockey world mad, and you’ll have more than enough saying that Draisaitl’s stats and success are merely based on playing with McDavid. And I could probably accept that, and if they just wanted to hand it to McDavid I wouldn’t complain. McDavid is almost certainly going to wind up like Mike Trout, where he wins three or four of these and then when he retires we realize he probably should have won eight or nine and there was no good reason he didn’t.

    Either way, the Oilers suck to high heaven and yet are comfortably in first in the Pacific because of these two. They are both leading the NHL in scoring at 44 and 43 points. No one else on their team has more than 17. Along with their linemate James Neal, they have 43 goals. The rest of the team has 33. If you were to go totally rudimentary on this, the rest of the team is getting slightly beyond one goal per game. These two are accounting for over two.

    Norris Trophy – John Carlson

    Believe me, this seemed way too obvious for me but it’s hard to make a case for anyone else. And he’s already going to win it, given the buzz his point total at this point has generated. When you’re a defenseman and you’re on pace for 124 points, people tend to take notice.

    So I looked for a metric way to get beyond Carlson, but he’s ahead of the team-rate in Coris and expected goals. The argument that will be brought out by someone is that he doesn’t play great defense. But the Caps are scoring 50% more goals when he’s on the ice than they give up, and the whole point of the fucking sport is to score more goals than the other team. Carlson is helping the Caps do that more than anyone.

    You could make a small case for Dougie Hamilton, as his possession numbers are better. But beyond that, his argument would be the same one for Carlson. Kris Letang has actually been magnificent for the strangely dominant-at-evens Penguins, but as always he’s been ouchy and isn’t scoring enough.

    If there were a Rod Langway Award–for best defensive defenseman–and he had been healthy, I could make a serious case for Connor Murphy here. No, seriously, I can. Murph has the second best relative Corsi-against rate in the league, and the second-best expected goals-against rate. While the Hawks remain The War Rig at the end of Fury Road defensively overall, they’re actually somewhat stout when Murphy is on the ice. No d-man has improved his team’s defense more than Murphy. It won’t get him any hardware, and it’ll probably only get him traded in the offseason as the Hawks continue to cower in fear of Seabrook and need to find room for Boqvist, Mitchell, et al, but everyone should know just how good Murphy has been.

    Vezina – Robin Lehner

    Fuck you, let’s go with the hometown vote. While Kuemper and Greiss have better SV%, they’re playing behind better defensive teams. So is every other goalie on the planet, essentially. Those two also have bigger differences when it comes to expected save percentages and expected goals and such, but Lehner has had to have great games while still giving up three or four to keep it from being 10. We know what Trotz systems do for goalies. We probably know what Colliton systems do for then too, and it ain’t the same. Lehner has had to perform miracles to keep the Hawks on the periphery of they playoff chase. And I’ll be goddamned if I’m handing anything to Darcy Goddamn Kuemper.

    Calder – Cale Makar

    This one isn’t even close. Makar is blowing away the rookie scoring race from the blue line, and he has a +7 relative xG%. While the Avs have gone without Mikko Rantanen and Gabriel ThreeYaksAndADog for a good portion of the season, they’re still hanging around the top of the conference with games in hand on everyone because of Makar and MacKinnon. He’s been everything as advertised, and is probably the best hope for a non-truly evil team to come out of the West this year.

    Selke – J.T. Miller

    Most voters would light themselves on fire before they give this award to a winger, which is why Marian Hossa doesn’t have the three he should, but if you dig deep on the metrics it’s pretty clear. Miller sits atop the rankings when it comes to attempts and expected goals against relative to his team, and in both cases it’s by some margin. Oh, and because morons care about this, he’s been taking Elias Pettersson‘s draws for the most part and is clipping in at a 59% win rate. So there.