Puck Daddy Power Rankings: Colorado's comeback; NHL All-Star snubs; P.K. Subban

[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.]  

7. The CORSI Hockey League

The Leafs fired Randy Carlyle because he was a bad coach in pretty much every way, including his total inability to prevent his team from getting outshot pretty much every damn night of his tenure.

But since the coaching change, the Leafs have won just one of their three games. And they've only outshot their opponents twice (and lost by one — ONE! — the other time). Pretty clear what's going on here: Only giving up 65 shots over three games, or a little less than 22 per, is actually bad.

Because look if you want to beat good teams you have to both outshoot them AND outscore them. That's hockey, baby! Love it or leave it!

Anyway, people in Toronto are actually saying this now, because they feel the need to defend the job Carlyle did, like, posthumously I guess. It couldn't be that the Leafs, as currently constructed, are a fundamentally flawed team, right? Nah. That's crazy.

6.  Counting on an Avs resurgence

“Well let's not all look at once here, but the Avs have points in 11 of their last 15 games, during which time they went 9-4-2. Wow the Avs are good ! They entered last night five points out of a playoff spot, and only three behind the Calgary Flames. Now the run begins again!”

I can't imagine actually thinking that here in 2015 given what we know about this team. Their corsi-for in that awesome 15-game stretch in which all their winning was totally sustainable? A whopping 41.9 percent, good for 29th in the league. And their PDO? Funny you should ask, it was 103.9 (just 8.7 shooting but .951 goaltending), good for third in the NHL. Wow maybe Semyon Varlamov turned really good again, and didn't just get really lucky for like 20 percent of the season. That's what seems most likely to me.

“The team definitely won't collapse again under the weight of some of the worst possession numbers in the league. That couldn't possibly happen twice could it?” asked Patrick Roy while glancing nervously at the Maple Leafs' 2013 and 2013-14 seasons.

5. Being Ondrej Pavelec

Sure, you're making $4.1 million against the cap, but now you're getting to the point where you're the most expensive backup in the league.

As Josh chronicled the other day, Michael Hutchinson continues to dominate for the Jets, and as such Pavelec continues to get fewer starts. Which is as it should be: The idea of playing a guy because you pay him a lot of money, and not because he earns it, is a particular quirk of the kind of roster inefficiency one often sees in the NHL, which has of course always given deference to seniority of reputation ahead of actual performance. But in Winnipeg, where the cult of Pavelec has held sway for years, things are getting so disparate that Paul Maurice finally had to acknowledge it.

Even by the most basic standard of evaluating goaltender success — something as stupid as wins and losses — Pavelec entered last night being dramatically outstripped. Hutchinson has as many losses overall as Pavelec does in overtime or the shootout alone. Pavelec also has one fewer regulation loss than Hutchinson has wins. This seems like a problem.

But it gets uglier, not better, when you look at more advanced metrics. Hutchinson went into last night having started eight fewer games than Pavelec despite a save percentage that was 22 points better in all situations, and 26 better at even strength. That is to say, Hutchinson has played extremely well, and Pavelec continues to be bad, even in what is objectively the best season he's had in years. And even then, that's mostly predicated on him having the occasional amazing game as an outlier versus a bunch of bad ones, rather steady, reliable slightly-less-than-average play.

And hey, what do you know, Hutchinson has appeared in more games and gotten more minutes than Pavelec since the start of December. And in that time Hutchinson also posted an even-strength save percentage of .929 to Pavelec's pitiable .910. The Jets have gone 9-5-4. Guess who had all those OT losses and two of the regulation losses in those eight appearances. Weird how that works out.

How do you think Pavelec feels about this changing of the guard? Hmm.

4. Those All-Star jerseys

Best part of the weekend. Also I'm colorblind.

3. Those who flub when they snub

No but for real, the best part of All-Star roster announcements is the snubs and flubs. Because like, how are they gonna let a self-admitted slug like Patrik Elias make the cut when your favorite team's third-best player didn't?

Here's the thing with All-Star snubs: Who gives a rat's ass?

Could things about the selection process be different? Sure, but raise your hand if you actually watch and enjoy the All-Star Game. Now raise your other hand if you're lying. Okay, everyone who raised their hand the first time can put both hands down now. The All-Star Game is an unwatchable unaesthetic mess, and the only good things about the weekend are the All-Star Draft (which is perfect as-is but only for making fun of the guy who gets picked last; and as much as I love him I 100 percent hope it's Phil Kessel again), and the Skills Competition.

What I wish would change about the latter is that players who are actually the best in the league at things be invited even if they're not technically All-Stars: I want Nathan MacKinnon going up against Carl Hagelin to see who's the fastest skater even if I don't think Hagelin is anywhere close to being worthy of the title “All-Star.” I want Zdeno Chara and Shea Weber bombing slap shots into the net at 100-plus miles an hour, even if Chara missed to many games to really be a serious consideration.

But again, you really ought not get too worked up about any of this stuff. It exists solely to make the league money and reward the host city for being a good soldier or whatever. That's it. Have fun out there.

(P.S. If a defenseman or two wants to fake an injury so we can get PK Subban an invite, I'm all for that.)

2. Jersey retirements

This week saw Teemu Selanne and Dominik Hasek get their numbers retired, which is good and right. Selanne is one of the most interesting and beloved talents in hockey history, who successfully changed his entire playing style in his early 30s because the things that had served him so well before that were no longer within the realm of his physical capabilities, and he still dominated opponents for a good long while. I mean, he had back-to-back 90-point seasons at 35 and 36, both of which saw him break 40 goals. Dude is the greatest. I love Teemu.

And then there's Hasek, indisputably the best goaltender of all time, who at age 41 put up a .925 season in 32 games for a good but not-super-great-or-anything Ottawa team. His peak from 1993-99 is the greatest run of success any goalie will ever see in this league; he broke .930 five times in those six years, when the league average ranged from .895 to .905 or so.

To put that in context, a goaltender would need to be at about .940 or so over a six-season span(!!!!!!) these days to match that kind of dominance versus his peers. Unfortunately for those striving toward that level of greatness, only two seasons in NHL history have even seen a goalie even break .930: Tim Thomas in 2010-11 (when the league average was .913) and Dominik Hasek in 1998-99 (when the league average was .908). That is a run that is essentially 100 percent impossible to replicate.

1. Ethnics

Loved the interview published yesterday between our own Greg Wyshynski and NHL legend Jeremy Roenick, in which the latter professed his love of the great Pernell Karl Subban.

So enamored of Subban's game and attitude is Roenick that he suggested the player would be worth a $10 million contract from the New York Islanders, both because he is good at hockey, and because he would put asses in seats.

“You’re going into a new building. You’re bringing in an ethnic kid that has so much pizzazz. It would have been the greatest thing. … P.K. in a Brooklyn jersey! It would have sold tickets.”

So much pizzazz from this, ahem, ethnic kid, yes indeed. All the, uhh, ethnics in Brooklyn will really like him. It makes you wonder why a team in a heavily, umm, ethnic area has never gone out and tried to acquire a larger number of, err, ethnic players to appeal to that demographic.

I mean, if the Isles should have targeted an ethnic player like Subban why stop there? Why not also sign Anthony Stewart? And try to acquire Evander Kane, Johnny Oduya, and Dustin Byfuglien? Maybe get Nigel Dawes and Akim Aliu while you're at it? Is Sebastien Owuya still playing hockey? This is a bold new strategy that I bet would really appeal to all the ethnic non-hockey fans and has certainly never even been attempted in hockey history and is basically guaranteed to go really well.

(Not ranked this week: Fighting in college hockey.

If you get into a real honest-to-god fight in the NCAA, they give you five and a game, plus an automatic one-game suspension after that. I don't know what they give you for this kind of dive as a way of not getting into a fight, but it should be just as bad.)