Hockey

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

By Sam Fels 1989 0

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.

Hockey

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

By Sam Fels 1557 0

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.

Hockey

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

By Sam Fels 1333 0

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.

Hockey

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

By Sam Fels 1142 0

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…

Baseball

Oh My God, It’s Happening: White Sox Sign Yasmani Grandal

By Adam Hess 1938 0

There is no need to bury a lede here: The Chicago White Sox did the damn thing and signed Yasmani Grandal to a 4-year, $73-million deal. I don’t need to tell you this, but it’s obviously a monumental deal for the White Sox in so many ways, and we will get to them all.

Quite frankly, this is a move that I thought made so much sense and was so damn obvious to make, that in reality the Sox would end up balking at it and taking option B or C and ending up with Jason Castro or something of the ilk. I was also nervous that the White Sox were going to think that they ultimately caught lightning in a bottle with James McCann and just ride with him. Instead, Rich Hahn & Co. went out and targeted this guy who is one of the two best catchers in the game, made perfect sense for their roster and pitching staff, and they prioritized signing him and did so early. I almost can’t believe that as I write it.

Let’s talk about all of the ways this is so big, starting with the most important part – on the field. Here are all of the stats that Yasmani Grandal would have been among the top 5 Sox players last season: walks, walk rate, OBP, slugging, OPS, wRC+, fWAR, ISO, wOBA. I could probably keep going, but you get my point. Most of those stats he would have been a top-3 player on the roster and some of them he would’ve led the team. He has been the 12th most valuable player in baseball by fWAR since 2015. Apropos of nothing, he is one slot higher than Manny Machado in those rankings.

Moreover, short of signing Gerrit Cole and/or Anthony Rendon, which we knew was never realistic, signing Grandal is the one move they could’ve made that would help them the most on the field. This guy is one of the best hitting catchers in baseball and his framing ability is one of the best in the game as well, no matter what his 2018 playoff struggles with receiving might trick you into believing. He’s a switch-hitting catcher, high-OBP catcher who brings power and can play 1B or DH as well. He had the 19th highest fWAR among MLB hitters in 2019. He is a stud, and he is a White Sox.

That framing and defense is also going to be near invaluable to this young White Sox pitching staff. Last year James McCann was the worst framing catcher in the American League. So the Sox just went from worst to best in an instant. Moreover, for all of their strengths and lethal stuff, the biggest concern about some of the Sox’ young high-ceiling arms like Michael Kopech and Dylan Cease is lack of control. Now they have one of the premier defensive catchers behind the plate that will help them out if they can keep it close. It also presents as a very attractive shiny toy for any prospective free agent pitchers like Zach Wheeler, who the Sox are also rumored to be interested in.

Riffing off of that last point, the other big aspect of this trade is the splash. The White Sox just signed one of the best players in baseball to a big contract – the biggest in franchise history. They did it on November 21 rather than waiting it out. They were aggressive. They’re showing other teams and other free agents that they are absolutely intent on competing moving forward, and they are to be taken seriously. And the fact that Grandal is one of the best players in baseball and was willing to take their money and buy into their vision, while complimenting their professionalism and process (which might just be typical new signing lip service, but it still could be valuable) lends a lot of legitimacy to this franchise. Other free agents might be looking at the prospect of playing at 3th and Shields a little differently now.

There are a few questions to be asked about what this means moving forward for James McCann and Zach Collins, but I don’t think it’s that complicated. McCann fits best as a backup and platoon type anyway given that he rakes lefties but looks like he is using an actual rake as a bat against righties. Collins was never going to stick behind the plate anyway, and can now move to being a full-time DH considering his best position is hitter, or you can use him as a trade chip for a pitcher (might I suggest one Jon Gray). Use McCann to spell Grandal behind the plate against lefties and let Grandal play first. I think overall, Grandal as your everyday catcher with McCann as backup and Collins as potential fill in is an ideal scenario.

Overall, this is a huge move. I have been saying for months that Grandal would be my number one priority if I was Rick Hahn, and it turned out that Rick agreed with me. AJ talked about this a few weeks ago as well, though he overshot the contract by a lot because he thought the Sox would have to extra-overpay. But in the end, this is a guy that most Sox fans wanted and should have wanted, and in the end the Sox went and got him. They did the damn thing. It’s a good day.

Don’t stop now, boys.

Football

Week #12 – Giants vs. Bears QB Study: Danny Dimes

By Brian Schmitz 2100 0

Ladies and gentlemen, please let me introduce New York Giants quarterback Daniel Jones. Daniel went to The Charlotte Latin School, in Charlotte, NC; which I know first-hand is full of guys named Daniel and Chad and Harper. From Charlotte Latin, Jones went to Dook University. Dook is a place where guys named Daniel and Chad and Harper go to college and meet girls from New Jersey named Piper and Huntington. In an effort to make Daniel Jones more unlikeable, I’d like to let you know that he has a sister named Becca and a brother named Bates.

So, despite an upbringing that would and probably did lend itself to uber-entitlement, Daniel Jones has excelled athletically at every stop in his football career: 3X NCAA Bowl Game MVP, 6th overall pick in NFL Draft, rookie starter in NFL.

With the Giants, Manning took over for potential Hall of Famer Eli Manning during Week 3 and as he has gotten more comfortable, he has continued to put up big numbers for a team that isn’t exactly oozing offensive talent.

Jones’ unspectacular overall numbers don’t paint an accurate picture of the type of year he has had thus far:

Now before you run to the window to bet the Bears at -6, take a look at what Jones has done over his last 3 games:

Are these blown up because of the inferior competition Jones has faced over the last four games? Maybe. Is Jones getting more comfortable in the Giants system and in the NFL in general? Absolutely. Over his last four games, Jones has thrown for 10 TDs and 2 INTs, which means in the five games before that, he threw for five TDs and six INTs. This is what you call, say it with me, T-R-E-N-D-I-N-G!

When you look at the receivers Daniel Jones is throwing to this season, you immediately appreciate the numbers he’s putting up. Tight end Evan Engram is leading the team in receptions, targets, and yards. That’s right; a tight end you’ve probably never heard of is leading an NFL team in most receiving categories. Unfortunately for Jones and the Giants, Engram has yet to practice this week due to a foot injury. Keep an eye on this.

Retread malcontent and noted doughnut thief Golden Tate is fine, just like he’s always been. Tate is averaging 70 receiving yards and about 5.5 catches per game, so he’s not completely useless.

Rookie Darius Slayton has had a very promising first season and is capable of big plays and big games; evident by his 10-catch, 121-yard, 2-TD performance his last time out. Slayton has all but replaced Tate as Jones’ first option on the outside.

WR Sterling Shepard has been a disappointment this season. Shepard started the season as a #1, and was an Eli Manning favorite, but as Slayton continues to get more targets, Shepard has become more of a possession receiver.

Look for otherworldly Saquon Barkley to see more targets out of the backfield this week, similar to his late October performance when he had eight catches for 80 yards. Barkley has at least five targets in every game this season with a high of 10. I believe his number will be closer to 10 than five this week against the Bears because it provides a safety valve for Daniel Jones in regards to both his physical well-being and mental health.

So dickhead, what does all of this nonsense mean come Sunday afternoon?

For the Bears, if Mitch Trubisky is healthy enough to play, then we will get a good chance to compare quarterbacks that are very similar. Mitch has the advantage of experience, and Jones has the disadvantage of going up against one of the best defenses in the NFL, but both guys are top 10 draft picks, who are playing for bad teams in big markets, whose fans think they reached for each player in the draft. I’d be surprised if either guy passes for more than 200 yards and either team scores more than 17 points.

Bears 17 – Giants 13

Football

Week #12 – Giants vs. Bears The Vault: 2006

By Tony Martin 1677 0

Welcome back to THE VAULT: my weekly musings about Bears history, making me the Carrie Bradshaw of the Bears or at least of this website. If you track the metaphor a little bit deeper, you’ll find that Josh Bellamy is my Mr. Big, whereas Dez White had my love slip through his fingers like so many 3rd down passes.

Today’s blog is, like a Sex and the City article, based on a series of vaguely existential questions; questions that make you really stop and think. Questions like:

“Why don’t Bears fans give Dez Clark the amount of respect and reverence for his time in Chicago as they do Greg Olsen?”

“With an understanding of the roster at the time, is Cedric Benson one of the worst Bears draft picks ever?”

“Was Muhsin Muhammad right when he said Chicago is where receivers go to die? Is Mark Bradley dead?”

“What do you think Tommie Harris is doing RIGHT NOW, and is it more or less interesting than whatever Mark Anderson is doing?”

Finally, and most importantly: “Why is it that whenever any national sports broadcast shows the Devin Hester missed field goal return they never use the WBBM call?” Jeff Joniak CLEARLY has the superior play by play call of that score and Tom Thayer’s exuberant ‘NO WAY!’ is so so so good.

These questions are all above my pay grade as a single woman trying to find love in New York City. Speaking of the Big Apple, the 6-2 Giants hosted the 7-1 and eventual Super Bowl-bound Bears on Sunday Night Football.

This of course was back before we were blessed as a nation with Carrie Underwood welcoming us to the “Nasty Showdown” of the week. Instead,m we were listening to Pink singing roughly the same song with a few major exceptions. Pink’s version has the lines: “All right, Sunday night, where are you? Just kickin back from the things that you do”, whereas Carrie Underwood’s version until 2015 starts: “All right Sunday night, where are you? Waiting for the game that bleeds red, white, and blue.”

Look, I know. I know how this is gonna sound, because both my short and long term memory has been ravaged by decades of recreational drug abuse, but hear me out because I fell in a pretty deep rabbit hole here: the Faith Hill 2010 Sunday Night Football theme song is the first one since the song debuted in 2006 with the patriotic lyrics in the first verse, and it ran until Carrie Underwood’s revamped version hit the air in the 2016 season without those lyrics.

As some of you may recall, the NFL and the Department of Defense were essentially selling the military to fans between the years of 2011-2015, where several teams received a combined amount of more than $5 million in taxpayer money to run promotions for the armed forces (1). It also needs to be noted that the NFL didn’t have players on the field during the anthem as standard practice since 2009 (2).

How much money was Carrie Underwood getting paid under the table to change the lyrics to the Sunday Night Football theme to make it coincide with a massive pro-military, nationalistic push deep into the very concept of the National Football League? How deep does this all go? Did Carrie Bradshaw ever feel like this, like an Alex Jones level journalist, exposing the hidden agenda of the deep (NFL) state? How deep does this rabbit hole go? All I’m saying is if you type “Roger Goodell” into an anagram generator, one of the results is “Old Leg Gore Or” and while I’m not trying to convince you that this is all a ploy to fuck my fantasy football team, I’m not denying the presence of old legs Frank Gore has SEVERELY impeded on Devin Singletary in multiple weeks for me this season.

Okay yes I am trying to convince you that the Department of Defense, Carrie Underwood, Faith Hill, Roger Goodell, and the NFL have all formed a secret cabal to screw me out of fantasy football money.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, the Bears won this game. Rex Grossman looked competent, Thomas Jones was excellent as always, and every time the Bears scored they mocked the stupid Giants jump-shot celebration. Look, if you’re gonna pretend to hit a fadeaway jumper, you better be playing for the same city as the guy who made that move iconic. The Giants should’ve stuck to an iconic New York basketball move of their own, like maybe they could pull an Ewing and celebrate by pretending to miss a wide open finger roll at the buzzer in game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals.

REAL JOURNALISM HOURS:
1- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/defense-department-paid-5-4-million-nfl-honor-troops

2- https://www.nbcsports.com/boston/new-england-patriots/nfl-teams-being-field-anthem-relatively-new-practice

Hockey

Your Real NHL Awards A Quarter Of The Way Through

By Sam Fels 1703 0

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.