Puck Daddy Power Rankings: 'Embarrassing' Ovechkin, KHL concerns and Jaromir Jagr

[Author's note: Power rankings are usually three things: Bad, wrong, and boring. You typically know just as well as the authors which teams won what games against who and what it all means, so our moving the Red Wings up four spots or whatever really doesn't tell you anything you didn't know. Who's hot, who's not, who cares? For this reason, we're doing a power ranking of things that are usually not teams. You'll see what I mean.] 

5. Embarrassing the game!!!!!

So let's say you want to, like, really really really easily get on a lazy hockey writer's good side. It's a two-step process:

1) Find a player who the hockey establishment already dislikes for nebulous reasons (think “high-profile European” or “black guy”).

2) Say he is disgracing the sport.

That's it. You're done.

So Ryan Getzlaf comes out and says Alex Ovechkin's diving “all over the [f-wording] ice.” (Hockey writers also like it when you use heck-words.)

Was this because Ovechkin drew a pair of penalties in the game and did that thing where if someone slashes you on the hand you shake your hand like, “Ow my hand got slashed?” You're not allowed to do this in hockey because hockey is for tough Canadian guys only.

Wait, it wasn't that? It was because Getzlaf and Ovechkin got tangled up, then Getzlaf tried to two-hand Ovechkin in the leg, and then tried to fight him? Hmm. Hmmmmm.

It might also be important to note here that Ovechkin had a four-point game in this one and the Ducks got frickin' clobbered at home and maybe that's why Getzlaf got all riled up too. At any rate, he said the words including the F one and the you-know-whos in this sport rubbed the sleep from their eyes and cracked all their knuckles before really going in hard on a beloved target.

“Finally,” said all the hockey writers collectively, “a chance to criticize Alex Ovechkin again!”

Because remember, they sure can't call him a lazy Other who doesn't play defense and is a selfish bad person. Not with a plus-11 rating (and oh, P.S., he's still scoring all the goals in the world and isn't that just so, so weird and coincidental?). People tried criticizing him for getting a free car for a special needs hockey program but that didn't stick, so thank you Ryan Getzlaf for bringing to our attention that the guy you slashed in the leg fell down and embarrassed himself — and your team, wink wink — in that game.

Oh and by the way, dawg, this was like two frickin months ago, you ding dong:

But maybe that's only diving part-of-the-way over the [f-wording] ice. Better ask an expert. Like Getzlaf.

4. The KHL

The crashing ruble, Russia's perceived-but-not-actually-real exceptionalism, and probably some other things too has had a lot of people worried about what's going to happen to the KHL next season for a while now. Lots of teams might stop participating in it, some players might leave, and so on.

One group of players that in fact seems guaranteed to leave at this point is non-Russians. The Russian government passed a law this week saying that it would only allow a certain number of foreign-born athletes to play in the country. This is assumedly on top of the limits the KHL, like many other European sports leagues, sets for the number of rostered foreigners a team can carry at any one time. That means that, in addition to whatever attrition would come as a result of the value of the ruble cratering, even more foreign players might leave the league to ply their trade elsewhere, such as the Swedish, Finnish and German leagues, or perhaps the AHL and — in some cases — NHL.

This should be a serious worry for the KHL, in which foreign-born players make up some 40 percent of rosters these days. And that includes 11 of the league's top 18 forwards, and 11 of 16 defensemen, in terms of points. (Only two of the top four goalies in terms of save percentage aren't from Russia!) In short, the KHL relies on foreigners for its league to be any good at all and it's going to kick a bunch of those guys out of the country.

3. The Western Conference playoff race

The East has been decided for weeks, of course, but with 25 or so games to go in the West, things are still looking pretty tight. The bottom three teams that were in a playoff spot heading into last night's games — Vancouver, Calgary and San Jose — are all in the same division, along with last night's No. 9, Los Angeles. And while it seems as though the Minnesota Wild, who are currently rampaging up the standings, are more or less definitively locked out of a Conference III slot, they're just three points out of the Wild Card and making a convincing enough case that they at least intend to make things close.

Five teams separated by four points, and while a deficit of that size isn't easy to make up, you have to imagine that with just two of those five teams missing out on the postseason, there's going to be some shuffling of the deck. The chances all five teams stay relatively static in their spots is low.

We have a lot of evidence, for example, to suggest that the Kings are probably going to squeeze on in there, though at whose expense we do not know. Most models that incorporate things like possession, rest, opponent quality, and so on show Los Angeles has a very good chance indeed of making it into the postseason. So the question is who gets bumped?

Luck-fueled Calgary, who can't seem to stop forcing overtime with insane comebacks before scoring the goofiest damn overtime winners in hockey history every chance they get? (Seriously, their PDO in the third period is 104.8.) Not-really-that-good-but-at-least-they're-trying-hard Vancouver, who at times look like they could do serious damage in the Western Conference playoffs but more often find themselves sweating out results against Buffalo and Edmonton? Or maybe actively-tried-to-get-worse-in-the-offseason-and-hey-look-Joe-Thornton-is-still-a-monster-at-112-years-old San Jose, which is still ostensibly in the midst of a baffling non-rebuild rebuild that hasn't ever made sense.

Honestly, it's really hard to envision a scenario in which both Minnesota and Los Angeles sneak in and, like, Calgary and Vancouver end up kicking rocks. But that's why they play the games, I guess, and why the next month and a half or so is going to be so fascinating.

(But seriously though the Flames are going to miss the playoffs.)

2. That Preds trade

Still trying to wrap my head around the big trade that officially signaled the start of the Leafs rebuild. It's not so much why the Leafs traded Cody Franson and Mike Santorelli for such an inexplicably minimal price — Franson was a coveted borderline-first-or-second-pairing defenseman and Santorelli a solid depth forward who was likely to garner interest from smart teams league-wide, and all they returned was a late first-round pick and an okay-to-good prospect, and they had to take on Olli Jokinen — but rather why Nashville felt compelled to make the trade.

The Preds don't need another defender, and depth forwards aren't a problem either. They're swimming in both, even if a recent injury to Ryan Ellis at least made the Franson acquisition a little more helpful. But you really can't object to adding players of quality for what they gave up. Especially if they think they can keep Franson and Santorelli, both of whom are former Preds.

But you do have to wonder whether this is going to take them out of the running for their actual need, which is a center of some quality. Now, the number of teams league-wide who would like to shore up their center depth is, roughly, 30. You really can't ever have enough, but as has been pointed out in numerous places, it's of particular concern for Nashville in the nails-tough West, where you probably need to run through some combination of Toews-and-Shaw, Getzlaf-and-Kesler, Backes-and-Stastny, and maybe even Pavelski-and-Thornton. I said it on Monday, but perhaps the best thing this trade did was prevent Nashville's rivals from getting these two players that they themselves don't actually need too badly.

Here's another thing, though: This season is found money for the Preds. They've been pretty lousy the last two seasons, and they're doing this now. I still don't think it's, like, mega-sustainable to have this much success with a top line of Filip Forsberg, Mike Ribeiro (???????) and James Neal over the long-term, but who's gonna complain about this? They're a legit No. 1 center away from being able to do this annually, and yeah you don't find legit No. 1 centers anywhere ever, but if I'm David Poile I'm calling Patrick Roy every day saying, “So let's talk about this O'Reilly kid...” and see where that gets me. I'd be going after that kid hard this summer.

This trade is some real temperature-taking stuff, I guess. It fortifies the team in ways it doesn't need but will at least give them a better chance to see what they are when they stop getting absolute world-class goaltending and every bounce going their way.

1. Jaromir Jagr

The league's oldest player turned 43 this past week and he is still amazing. Like, not in terms of, “Isn't it amazing Jaromir Jagr is still in the league at 43?” amazing. In terms of, “Holy crap Jaromir Jagr is actually still a difference-maker at 43.”

To wit, among the 86 forwards to play at least 725 minutes at even strength this season — that is, guys who are used as top-line players — Jagr was ranked seventh in relative corsi prior to last night's game (at 51.6 percent). Seventh. And it's not like he's getting any sort of real sheltering from New Jersey, either; have a look at this chart from War On Ice:

You can't really see Jagr's name on there, but he's the bubble that's mostly overlapped by Marian Hossa, right below Jamie Benn and slightly down and to the left of Jonathan Toews. And sure, he's only got 29 points in 52 games, but look who he plays with: Travis Zajac and Mike Cammalleri are his most common linemates, and they don't have as many points at 5-on-5 as he does if you add them together (a combined 4-13-17 to Jagr's 8-10-18).

This guy joined the NHL two months after they reunited East and West Germany, and he's done nothing but play with boat anchors this season, and he's still extremely useful in actual tough situations.

Someone's gonna trade for him and get a pretty good second-line option. I'm not sure what to make of it, but that doesn't seem like it should be remotely possible.

(Not ranked this week: Makin' stuff up.

Totally shocked to learn yesterday that the picture of Dustin Byfuglien flipping off Evander Kane wasn't indicative of anything but two guys joshin' around. A weird and shocking turn of events, because no one has ever before in human history flipped someone off as part of a fun thing they were doing. I've definitely never flipped off my dog every day for no reason at all. I can't believe no one conceived of this before Greg thought to himself, “Maybe Dustin Byfuglien …............ doesn't hate Evander Kane?” and asked someone about it. Weird stuff.)