Halak, NHL All-Star votes and Rinne: Puck Daddy Countdown

Counting down the biggest stories in hockey this week.

7 – Trading Halak

The Islanders crease is crowded, no doubt about it.

The Islanders are also pretty bad this year. No doubt about that either.

The Islanders are also paying a lot of money for Jaroslav Halak to be awful (.901). No doubt.

So now they’re looking to trade Halak, especially after agent Allan Walsh complained about the situation, as he is wont to do. The insistence on using three goalies is, of course, overdoing things by half, because if you like one of Halak or Thomas Greiss — and they’re roughly equivalent goaltenders in my book — then using JF Berube as the third-string guy doesn’t make a lot of sense.

And if you only like Greiss, then keeping Halak around doesn’t make a lot of sense either. One imagines Walsh is simply trying to force a trade for one of his clients (he represents both Berube and Halak) and there is no shortage of teams that need goaltending early in this season. The question is whether anyone would want to take on $4.5 million for a 31-year-old goaltender who can’t beat out Greiss (a bargain at $1.5 million) for a job. Because why would they?

The problem Garth Snow has, then, is one that’s not uncommon in the NHL. Greiss is a $1.5 million goalie who’s clearly outperforming the guy who is paid triple his cap hit. Happened last year too, though to be fair Halak was also awesome at .919 over 36 games. Still, Halak has more starts than Greiss this year despite significantly worse performance, likely in deference to the salary situation. It’s not unlike the Pavelec situation in Winnipeg: They keep giving him starts because they’re paying him to take starts. And they do it even if it’s detrimental to their success.

But you’re on like 50 games of Greiss being in Lundqvist-area goaltending quality and that’s enough to get Halak’s name out there. Will they find a taker? Tough to say. Probably not given the price point and performance to this point. Will Halak rebound? There’s no reason to think a career .917 goalie will continue to sit at .901 or anything close to it; he almost certainly didn’t hit any sort of wall this summer that made him not-an-NHLer.

So who knows how this all shakes out, really? No outcome here would surprise me. Except, like, Halak getting traded to the Kings I guess.

6 – Running out of things to talk about already

Speaking of hitting walls, Auston Matthews didn’t do that. Despite what they’re asking on TSN.

Matthews has six goals and four assists in his first six games. He has no goals and no assists in his last three. People are, for some reason, acting like they’re concerned about what this means for Matthews’ future. Hit a wall. Good lord, can you imagine anything so dumb? Connor McDavid had a two-game stretch without a point two weeks ago and I don’t think anyone was crying about it in Edmonton.

Also, you know how many shots on goal Matthews has in those three games? Ten. That’s still a real lot!

The dumbest thing Matthews ever did was score four goals in his first NHL game, because now all these braying jackals are acting like a barely-19-year-old rookie on a not-great team who has 10 points in nine games is somehow a disappointment. Meanwhile, no one has a bad word to say about Roman Polak and Matt Hunwick, who aren’t good to begin with and have further sucked all year.

God, I wonder why Phil Kessel felt like a huge boulder got lifted off his back the second he got traded out of that hellhole.

5 – More details on Vegas

What a wrinkle revealed this week, that Vegas has brief window in which it can exclusively negotiate with free agents.

You wonder if anyone’s going to take them up on it. Normally you’d say, “Who wants to go to an expansion team?” and you’d be right, but at this point? I dunno. The NHL is really stacking the decks so this team can be competitive right away.

This is likely to change, but as of right now they might be able to target a pretty rich vein of guys who can play a bit: Brent Burns, TJ Oshie, Kevin Shattenkirk, Steve Mason, Michael Stone, Karl Alzner, Jiri Hudler, Greiss, Sam Gagner, etc.

Some teams are probably hoping Vegas does just that, because if they sign a departing free agent, that means the team they came from isn’t in the expansion draft any more.

Because there wasn’t enough intrigue with the expansion draft, adding this to the mix certainly ratchets things up just a bit more. I think it’s awesome, but it also puts Vegas in a weird spot when it comes to planning things. Fortunately they have another eight months.

4 – All-Star voting

Would love to know what the definition of “bona fide NHLer” is. And I bet the union loves having its members grouped into “bona fide” and “not bona fide” based on, what, the league’s perception?

The good news, though, is that we’re going to end up in a situation where we can still vote in some crap player who inexplicably got a bunch of games this year.

I guess what I’m saying is there has to be a really good joke candidate we can pick for the purposes of laughing at him but then actually pretend like, “Oh we really like this guy and think he’s so good and he represents something worth highlighting.” Let’s get that guy into the All-Star game even though he’s clearly not in the top-25 at his own position.

Like, “Shea Weber for All-Star.” That would be hilarious.

3 – Alex Radulov

How quick does the local and national media turn on Alex Radulov when he stops making a lot of stuff happen? How soon do his teammates start talking about what a pain in the ass he is?

We all love him now (as well we should), but he’s going to lose the “reformed” part of “reformed bad boy” image the second he hits a Matthews-like three-game skid.

2 – No blackface

Much love and respect to the many NHLers out there who dressed up for Halloween and didn’t put a bunch of shoe polish on their face and post a pic on social media like, “But I love [famous black entertainer] what’s the big deal!” The Vegas line on that would have been pretty tempting.

Baby steps and all that. Important milestone.

Now we have to have a talk with Jonathan Toews about appropriating skeleton culture.

1 – Craig Anderson

Much love, strength, and respect to Anderson. What a performance on Sunday.

(Not ranked this week: Pekka Rinne.

Okay so the Predators have been quite bad throughout the lineup so far this season, but one expects that will turn around. One guy who has been particularly bad, though, has been Rinne, who’s only continuing his rotten performance from last season.

He went .908 in ’15-16 and so far this year he’s .906. Tough to see that turning around any time soon. So the question is what Nashville does here. He’s a $7 million goaltender who’s playing worse than replacement level. Marek Mazanec isn’t an .806 goalie — good lord, .806 in two appearances? — but does either he or Juuse Saros actually constitute an upgrade over Rinne?

It’s tough to say. Mazanec doesn’t scan well as an NHLer based on past performance either. Saros has legit AHL numbers but he’s also only 21 and has only been in North America for two seasons.

One thing’s for sure, though: Tempting as it may be to blame the Preds’ problems on goaltending, they run a lot deeper than that. Goaltending is a problem, but fortunately(?) for Rinne, he’s probably not as high on the list as you’d expect.)

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

(All statistics via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)