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Calgary's start, injured Stars and Chicago's PK (Puck Daddy Countdown)

CALGARY, AB - OCTOBER 18: Johnny Gaudreau #13 of the Calgary Flames in action against the Buffalo Sabres during an NHL game at Scotiabank Saddledome on October 18, 2016 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. (Photo by Derek Leung/Getty Images)
CALGARY, AB – OCTOBER 18: Johnny Gaudreau #13 of the Calgary Flames in action against the Buffalo Sabres during an NHL game at Scotiabank Saddledome on October 18, 2016 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. (Photo by Derek Leung/Getty Images)

(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.)

8. Calgary’s start

Do not, my friends, wade into Flames Twitter these days. There is nothing there for you.

Unless of course you want to revel in schaedenfreude, in which case, dive in headfirst.

Calgary picked up a shootout win on Monday night to earn their second W of the season, but a quick look at the standings found them still sitting third-last in a pathetic division, and ahead of only Arizona in points per game. They don’t have a single regulation win yet this season, meaning that opponents have taken 12 of a possible 14 points from them in seven games so far.

Fingers are flying from one scapegoat to the next. Dougie Hamilton! Brian Elliott! Glen Gulutzan! Probably a lot more, too (like Johnny Gaudreau, who has just 1-2-3 in seven games), but I can’t be bothered to find out who else is being blamed. I mean, yeah, Elliott’s sitting at .867 for the season, and Chad Johnson is only .901, but these are two long-term very good goalies, so that tells me something about the team in front of them.

Namely, it’s this: The Flames have plenty of talent but this appears to be two straight coaches who haven’t come up with a workable D-zone system that allows them to do anything helpful in front of their goalies. Bob Hartley was acknowledged as being in over his head months into his four-year tenure. Maybe Gulutzan is the same way? We didn’t have a lot of evidence that he is an effective head coach in the NHL, and he’s given observers no reason to be all that confident he’s improved since his Dallas days.

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And sure, new coach, veteran team. Maybe it takes a while to get everyone up to speed. But “a while” isn’t exactly something the Flames can afford here. How many more prime years do Sean Monahan, Gaudreau, T.J. Brodie, Hamilton, and so on have? How much longer does Mark Giordano’s body or skill level hold up?

Maybe they should have hired Bruce Boudreau instead? Just a thought!

7. Dallas’s injuries

Pretty sure Lindy Ruff ran over a wizard’s cat. There are few other explanations for why almost half of the Stars’ roster is now missing games.

Jason Spezza, out. Patrick Eaves, out. Ales Hemsky, out. Jiri Hudler? Patrick Sharp? Cody Eakin? Mattias Janmark? Out, out, out, and hmm, out also.

No joke, that leaves them with just six veteran forwards on the roster. And some of those guys are quite bad. At this point it’s Tyler Seguin, Jamie Benn, and praying a bunch of third-liners and AHLers can wrestle the opponent to a draw. Not great.

6. Winnipeg’s outdoor game

It has been pretty sad, I think, to watch the NHL’s outdoor game tradition shift from “exciting event the entire league cares about” to “gate-revenue and new-third-jersey cash grab” in the course of just a few years. What was the last Winter Classic everyone really sat up and took notice of if it wasn’t involving their team? Was it the one where David Steckel almost ended Sidney Crosby’s career? Was it the first time HBO didn’t do a 24/7 on it?

Like, man, mid-afternoon on a Sunday in October? Never thought I’d see the day. They sold out both the alumni game (featuring nothing but Arizona Coyotes alumni on the Winnipeg side, unless I missed a Dany Heatley appearance) and the actual game. Having 66,000 butts in some really expensive seats helps make up for the fact that if the Jets’ slow start continues, they’re going to struggle to sell out a 15,000-seat arena. Again.

There is good news, however: now all the Jets fans get to justify slapping “Laine” on the back of an original Winnipeg Jets jersey without feeling like they’re stretching the cognitive dissonance that they’re actually Atlanta Thrashers fans too thin.

5. Chicago’s PK

If you told me at the beginning of the year that a team would allow 14 power play goals in its first seven games, I would have said, “That’s Edmonton for ya.”

But the fact that it’s Chicago? Jeez oh man. How do you only go 12 of 26 on the PK, if you’re literally anybody. Small sample and all that, sure, but you’d think you’d hit 50 percent just accidentally, right? And frankly, that’s the only reason Chicago is 3-3-1, because in terms of non-power play goals, they’ve only given up eight. That’s a solid number! And despite giving up 22 in seven games, they’ve also scored 24.

If they can figure out the PK, they’ll be fine. And they probably will because they’re a good team. But they should keep in mind that the worst penalty kill in league history is 67.7 percent, set by the Los Angeles Kings in 1979-80. Something to aspire to.

4. Vancouver’s start

The Canucks entered Tuesday night’s game hosting Ottawa with one regulation loss from six games. Pretty good.

They also entered that game with the worst adjusted possession numbers in the league. Pretty much what you’d expect.

I hope to all the gods of heaven and earth that they PDO their way to 65 points by the end of January so they go all in at the deadline and trade Brock Boeser for, like, Cal Clutterbuck.

3. Los Angeles’s backups

Well, this is your chance to prove Jonathan Quick is a systems goalie. Or, to put a nicer spin on it, that Darryl Sutter is a systems genius.

Of course, Jeff Zatkoff and Peter Budaj so far seem to be doing the opposite. Which I guess you could have seen coming a mile down the road.

PITTSBURGH, PA - OCTOBER 25: Sidney Crosby #87 of the Pittsburgh Penguins handles the puck against Florida Panthers at PPG Paints Arena on October 25, 2016 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Joe Sargent/NHLI via Getty Images)
PITTSBURGH, PA – OCTOBER 25: Sidney Crosby #87 of the Pittsburgh Penguins handles the puck against Florida Panthers at PPG Paints Arena on October 25, 2016 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Joe Sargent/NHLI via Getty Images)

2. Pittsburgh’s outlook

Sidney Crosby was back in the lineup on Tuesday and scored a goal. Good news for a team that so far has a record outperforming its actual play. Not that you’d think “losing the best player in the world for several games to start the year” is a good thing, so maybe staying about .500 without him is fine, but you see the point.

Plus, Matt Murray is back as he served as Marc-Andre Fleury’s backup against the Florida Panthers. He likely provides a significant upgrade over Fleury (.904) and also allows the Penguins to potentially pull the trigger on the Fleury trade they’ve probably wanted to make for a while.

If this team can get its scoring bumped up a bit and actually receive capable goaltending, look out. Crosby and Murray help a lot there. So do other injured players like Conor Sheary and Kris Letang.

1. Arizona’s chances

Mike Smith week-to-week means the Coyotes won’t get reliably subpar goaltending. Hasn’t been a great start to the year for Louis Domingue, but he’s probably a fair bit better than .851 too. That’s not to say he’s necessarily even a league-average goalie, but he’s better than Smith. So that, too, is good for Arizona in that it forces their hand when it comes to playing the goalie they should be playing because he’s better, rather than the one they actually play because he’s paid more.

That is, unless they were going to use this season to tank. In which case, shuffle this item to the bottom of the list. If you’re tanking, you want Mike Smith around.

(Not ranked this week: The Habs’ urinal guy.

That person should be put in jail forever.)

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All statistics via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)