Puck Daddy Power Rankings: Experience factor; Del Zotto's deal; expansion dreams

[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. Concussions

Amanda Kessel's college career is reportedly over because of them. They don't even allow much checking in women's hockey (it still happens), which makes this all the more upsetting. Hockey's a physical, contact sport, obviously, but this shows just how easy it is to get concussions that have extreme effects for years after the fact.

At what point do we start acting like this kind of injury is the mega-huge deal it really is?

6. Stocking up on “experience”

No one is saying that Johnny Oduya or Patrick Sharp aren't still good hockey players — well, there's plenty of reasons to have doubts about Oduya, but nevertheless — and to some extent they are what the Stars need. But the suggestion that they're being sought to, I don't know, offer counsel on How To Win to the rest of the Stars (All losers! Tyler Seguin only has one Stanley Cup!) seems a bit silly.

Do you want to know the secret to winning a Stanley Cup? Having Stanley Cup-caliber talent just about everywhere in the lineup and also behind the bench. Shouldn't Jim Nill know that after all those years in Detroit?

What is Sharp going to tell Art Ross winner Jamie Benn about how to be a dominant forward who gets results as well as big point totals that he didn't already know besides, “Get more goals than the other team?” What can Oduya tell Alex Goligoski about defending better? “Have Jonathan Toews playing in front of you,” isn't necessarily the most helpful advice here.

And that's not to say Sharp and Oduya's success is entirely the product of their extremely great team — and one wonders by the way what kind of Leadership we would attribute to Toews if he had been stuck playing for, say, Dallas instead of a juggernaut in Chicago this whole time — but it sure doesn't hurt. There's basically no way Oduya is going to live up to the contract he got, but you pay a premium for recent Cup winners in this league.

In their games, Oduya and Sharp ostensibly provide Dallas something the team needed. Defense and scoring depth were both problems. And after what the nightmare season Kari Lehtonen turned in, Nill also (somewhat inexplicably) added an expensive goaltender who also happened to win a Cup with Chicago once upon a time.

The Stars will almost certainly be better next year than they were this year. But it will be because they've improved in terms of personnel and goaltending luck almost certainly won't go against them nearly as hard as it did in 2014-15.

So how much do you want to bet Sharp and Oduya's “leadership” is credited with the turnaround?

5. Rookie camp highlights

Nothing in the world is better than seeing a kid score some insane between-the-legs, backwards, blindfolded goal against a netminder who wasn't even paying attention in mid-July. That's the good stuff, baby!

4. “This is a good contract for Michael Del Zotto”

That's a real thing actual hockey writers said just last week about a contract that will give Del Zotto a cap hit of nearly $4 million for the next two seasons.

Now, obviously $3.875 million doesn't buy what it used to, but I don't understand where people get away with saying this kind of thing with a straight face. Sure, last year Del Zotto faced tougher competition and zone starts than he has at any point in his career, but the Flyers did better in terms of both possessing the puck when he was off the ice versus when he was on.

What this boils down to, really, is his goal total. He tied a career high with 10 goals (in just 64 games), which is really good. And the fact that eight of those came at even strength suggest he maybe could have used a little more power play time, if nothing else. And man, 119 shots in 64 games is a decent total too.

But please excuse anyone of being skeptical over the whole, “24-year-old posts career-best numbers in contract year,” thing being indicative of future value. Obviously, as with any good season Del Zotto has in his career, you'd have to say that a lot of luck was involved.

He basically posted the third-best shooting percentage of his career despite playing the hardest assignments he's ever faced. The likelihood that this holds up seems low.

And look, this number is probably a little bigger than anyone save Del Zotto would have liked, but the fact that it's only a two-year deal gets the team out from under a potentially awful contract while they're still rebuilding. Which is better than going long-term by a fair sight.

But in the end, a lot of the argument advanced for this being a good contract boiled down to, “He was the second-best defenseman on the Flyers last year,” which seems to me more an excoriation of the team, rather than a reason the player is valuable.

3. Overstating things

One thing that struck me as odd this week was all the headlines about “Pavel Datsyuk out until November!!!!!! (maybe)” and yes, all those exclamation points were only implied.

November is a long time from now, obviously, but wait a second it's still not even August yet. If he's out until November — and there's been conflicting reports here, because his agent recently said Datsyuk could be ready for the start of the season — that means he misses something like a dozen games or so. Detroit has 11 scheduled for October and their first game in on the Nov. 3. Let's say he misses that one too and that's 12.

While you never want to be without one of your best players for a month, it's a little more alarmist to say “four to five months!” even if that's technically the case. Especially because of how soft Detroit's schedule is for that first month of the season.

They open hosting Toronto, travel to Carolina the next night, then host Tampa for three games in five days. Then Carolina is at Detroit before the Wings travel to Montreal for another back-to-back. After that it's three in seven days at Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver. Four days later they host Carolina (again!), then have a back-to-back home-and-home with Ottawa to close out the month.

I see a whole bunch of wins in that 11-game stretch. Missing Datsyuk probably isn't going to matter much.

2. Pretending(?) to be really upset

If you ever wanted to get a bunch of free hockey gear from a player you really like, wait until he's traded or signs somewhere else, then have your young child cry about it, then upload that video to YouTube. Your signed jersey will be in the mail by close of business that day.

1. Dreams of expansion

So only two cities submitted expansion bids and the NHL is very disappointed. Not because they wanted to expand to three or four cities, but because oh my god they're not going to be able to twist arms at the municipal level and play the bidders off against each other. Now the owners are probably only going to get $1 billion in non-hockey related revenue to split among themselves ($500 million per team)! What a bummer!!!

The big revelation here, of course, is the three Seattle bidders who all said, “No thanks,” but apparently never really considered, “Hey maybe we should join up,” because it's really hard to build an arena in heavily populated areas. No Toronto team comes as no surprise, because the league seemingly hates the idea even though it's a license to print money and keep making fun of the Leafs simultaneously. No Milwaukee bid, okay fine. Some of the other hopeful bidders you'd probably heard bandied about (like Saskatoon for some reason) didn't get anywhere either.

The league sent out 16 — SIXTEEN — expansion applications and only got two back. Big coincidence here: They're the only two with buildings that are already being built. Weird. Weirddddddd.

(Not ranked this week: Memes.

Caitlyn Jenner won an ESPY last week for her courage, because she is a sports figure and what she did and continues to do is extremely courageous.

Proof of that courage arrived soon after the awards show, where her speech about acceptance was a show-stopper. No surprise here, but the vomitous pigmonsters who make up hockey's right-wing bro culture, and have trash for brains and their brains are in their butts so they crap on their own brains every day, wasted no time in popping up and saying, “Hey, in case you forgot we're all subhuman turd-eating cowards, we're doubling down on our bigotry.”

A thing I saw on Facebook last Friday morning was another one of those shared viral/”hilarious” memes saying, in effect, “Caitlyn Jenner isn't brave! [Insert false equivocation here] is the real hero, and I have the crippling insecurity to prove it!!!!!!”

In this case, Rich Peverley was the false equivocation in question, because they used that famous photo of him being carried to the dressing room after suffering a serious heart problem and asking back in the game because he had no idea what had just happened to him. “Very Brave,” say the cretinous urinepeople who came up with and shared this meme.

Jenner is courageous specifically because she decided to show the world who she really is with the full knowledge that exactly this kind of human trash pile would write and say and think these things about her. Their steadfast belief that nothing should upset the worldview of their straight white male gutlessness always leads directly to these kinds of attacks and much, much worse. This kind of thinking is why trans and gay teens kill themselves with regularity, and everyone who thinks like this has blood on their hands. Jenner, as she said, can take it, but others cannot because the world in which we live remains so cruel to those who fail to conform to what a bunch of asses in backwards hats think and do and say all the time, and unabashedly.

Meanwhile, though, let's also spare a thought for Peverley, for whom the worst moment of his life is routinely used by scared, racist, homophobic, misogynist, transphobic [expletive]boys to “prove a point” they can high-five about over a couple of Bud Lights.

Caitlyn Jenner is all kinds of brave in ways that they could never be, and if you know someone who shared that meme, just cut them out of your life, because they're not worth your time or attention. And if you are someone who shared that meme, go to hell.)

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