Yahoo Sports 
John Scott, Capitals and Canadian dollar panic (Puck Daddy Countdown)
(Ed. Note: The column formerly known as the Puck Daddy Power Rankings. Ryan Lambert takes a look at some of the biggest issues and stories in the NHL, and counts them down.)
7. The loonie
That sound you heard last week was the permanent breaking of any reasonable hope for a decent-sized increase in the cap ceiling next season.
Back in December, the NHL projected a cap of $73 million for next year. Since then, the Canadian dollar has dropped from about 74 cents US to about 68 cents as I write this. That's a sizable decline, and some economists seeing it going even farther than that. Things could even approach the levels of the Canadian dollar collapse that led Winnipeg and Quebec to flee to the U.S. (Not that any team is likely to do that any time soon these days, but that's the level at which we are now operating.)
And if that's the case, $73 million — an increase of just $1.6 million from last year — is very unlikely to happen naturally. The NHLPA could vote to use its 5 percent escalator again, but these guys are getting squeezed very, very hard on escrow these days, and it's not unfeasible that they just say, “No thanks.”
That, of course, negatively impacts two parties more so than any others.
First and foremost is the group of UFAs that are about to hit the market. These guys are likely looking for raises in almost every case, and a lot of them might not find any. The high-end guys are going to get paid regardless, but perhaps not as much as they otherwise might have. The middle-tier guys will almost certainly have to settle. And more will face the growing issue of going into camps without contracts and taking short-term deals for shorter money after that.
The other group is capped-out teams with important guys to re-sign. All the issues for players will extend to those clubs as well, because they just won't have the flexibility they counted on a few years ago when planning their long-term team-building strategies.
Chicago has gone through this a few times in recent years — the price of success, one supposes — but there are plenty of not-great teams near the cap ceiling who may likewise find themselves in the position Chicago and Boston faced a few years ago: Trading valuable players to teams with cap space in exchange for middling prospects and draft picks. Because they have no other choice.
But hey, that's gonna create parity, right? The NHL loves parity.
6. The whole John Scott thing
This whole thing is very, very typical of the NHL.
A fun cool thing happened that everyone thought was perfectly nice. So of course it had to be put to an end in the silliest way imaginable. You couldn't write a believable script in which a league may or may not have orchestrated a trade to get a player like Scott out of a joke All-Star write-in campaign he already won. The whole deleting votes for Rory Fitzpatrick thing was conspiratorial but proven well enough to just be accepted as fact. This is a step beyond that.
They let him win, but then they pulled a bunch of strings behind the scenes to keep him from actually going. Let everyone have a good ol' laugh, but then kick them square in the teeth with it, just because you don't want to “embarrass” anyone (like the sponsors, would be my guess). Okay, sure. That makes sense.
And then, after a weekend of everyone saying what a bunch of idiots they are, the NHL goes, “Hmm well actually we're gonna let him be the All-Star captain after all.”
Like, what did they think was going to happen? The must have thought if he gets traded, all the internet creeps who voted for him say, “Well what can ya do I guess?” Yeah good read on that play.
Imagine if, just once, the NHL was out in front of fan sentiment on literally any issue ever. The good news is that four days is about a year faster than their usual turnaround time on realizing they blew it.
As an aside: Imagine, too, being Jarred Tinordi, and told you were traded for John Scott. And then you learn later that you were little more than a pawn in All-Star Game politics for some reason? That's got to be the most devastating news of your career.
As a further aside: I do love the idea that Scott only accepted the All-Star captaincy after initially not wanting it because he figured it would be a good eff-you to the league that suspended him three times in the last two seasons, costing him about $78,000. If that's true, that's the best.
5. The implications of the whole John Scott thing
This also means that no Coyotes will be in the All-Star Game — no one cares, shouldn't have traded him then, etc. — and that everyone will be trying to get him a hat trick in the games themselves. Both those things are either neutral or good, depending on the outcome of the latter (insofar as you can't legitimately count on Scott to score on tap-ins.)
But hey, at least the skills competition is guaranteed fun now.
4. Cam Talbot
This is a very, very tough contract to figure out. The Oilers took a huge gamble on a guy who played very well behind Henrik Lundqvist, and then in injury relief for him. He had a strong track record but only 57 games played in the first two years of his NHL career. He was also 28 years old at the time of the trade.
Now he's locked up through 2019 on a middling goaltending contract despite a rather up-and-down season for the Oilers.
In the first 13 games of the season, he had an .889 save percentage. You can chalk some of that up to the fact that the Oilers were a mess defensively to start the year and they were learning a new system and all that stuff.
But it provides a strange basis for evaluation, quite frankly, to say, “Well in his last 14 games he's .938, so it's important to re-sign him.” It just seems a little early to make that sort of decision, especially because he's been seeing a lot of Florida and the low-octane Pacific Division lately.
That's not to say Talbot isn't worth the money, because the track record at basically every level of significant competition (NCAA to present) indicates he can play this position successfully. I think he probably is a slightly above average NHLer. But wouldn't you rather see just a little bit more from him before you say, “Well this is our guy.”
Maybe the Oilers are also a little gun shy after letting Devan Dubnyk walk for one bad half-season before becoming an unbelievable goaltender elsewhere. It would have probably been smarter to get a little more of a sample with your team before throwing this much money at him.
3. Coming around
They started out 16-3-2!! (With 107.4 PDO.) Now they're 8-13-3 since!!! (With a 98.8 PDO.)
I wonder what changed!!!! This is somehow Keith Yandle's fault!!!!! Blow up the team!!!!!!
Y'know what? Really do that last one.
2. The wizard who cursed the Oilers after an Edmonton fan ran over his cat in the middle of Game 1 of the 2006 Stanley Cup Final
With Ryan Nugent-Hopkins now out long-term with a hand injury just a week or two before Connor McDavid was scheduled to come back, that wizard is getting a good return on investment for the eye of newt he used to permanently curse this club.
1. The Capitals
Here's how good Washington is, and has been all year: After Tuesday night, a team as great as Chicago had a 12-game winning streak on its hands, and three extra games played, and was still five points back of the NHL-leading Caps.
That's absolutely incredible, because Chicago has basically gotten at least two of the 10 or 15 best individual player performances in the league this year (from Patrick Kane and Corey Crawford). And it's still not even close to what Barry Trotz's crew has done.
(Not ranked this week: Bobby Farnham.
In the last month, the guy was suspended four games for an ugly hit that probably warranted more, and fined for diving. Why is he allowed to be in a league with actual hockey players, again?)
Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.
(All statistics via War On Ice unless otherwise noted.)
--
Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.
