Hockey Day in America, the Calder race and the Panthers (Puck Daddy Countdown)

(In which Ryan Lambert takes a look at some of the biggest issues and stories in the NHL, and counts them down.)

7. Putting your foot down

Shout out to Brooks Laich, a player who has a $4.5 million AAV and six points in the AHL this season, who got put on waivers Tuesday because he wasn’t in the Toronto Maple Leafs’ plans and wants the chance to play for a contender.

A Stanley Cup contender.

Which, come on, man. It’s important to have a big drive to compete as a professional athlete. That much is obvious. But when that drive to compete is also, like, making a 33-year-old with six points in the AHL and a huge contract say things like, “I want to play for a competitive team,” well, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate. Put another way, when the lede in the story about your demand throws shade like, “Brooks Laich is convinced his NHL career isn’t over yet,” that’s pretty indicative of your situation being not-good for you.

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Even if you could add a player with Laich’s contract — and not all true Cup competitors can — why would you do that? He’s not going to help you, full stop. He clearly won’t even help your AHL team. So why entertain this?

The Leafs did the right thing. Put him on waivers, make it known he’s available. “Hey bud, we tried, you know?” Laich can’t ask them to do more than that. But it’s not like there’s going to be a line around the block. There’s probably not going to be a line at all. Hell, the one team that employs him doesn’t want him that badly.

On the other hand, a lot of teams like Grit and Leadership, so I guess you never know. The Leafs are too smart to give him that kind of role. Maybe someone isn’t too smart for that. It’s the NHL, after all.

6. Minor trades

Yeah sure it’s officially trade season. Hooray hooray. But so far we’ve got two prospects who are really only notable because of who their dads are, and a just-okay defenseman for a third-round pick. No one is going to be satisfied with this. Not even the teams that made those trades.

How thirsty is the hockey world in general for an even somewhat notable trade? Radko Gudas brought some sticks home and Twitter lost its mind for an hour. Uncle Bob had to come in and come everyone down. It was wild.

Meanwhile the NBA has a team trading one of the 20 best players in the league for Buddy Hield and a middling first-round pick, then another team’s owner firing the GM and her own brother to install Magic freaking Johnson as the new GM. How do we as a sport achieve such everyday excellence?

5. Hockey Day In America

Wysh wrote about this Monday, the whole thing with Hockey Day In America being a pale, diminished version of Hockey Day In Canada — which was the freakin’ day before, so we didn’t even have to harken back to a month before to remember how much better the OG Hockey Day is.

But like, man, this is the “Why isn’t there a White History Month?” of Hockey Days, right? Almost every day is Hockey Day In America, and we don’t need six hours of Pierre McGuire to remind us.

Hockey Day In Canada is always from some little town in Saskatchewan no one has ever heard of, and it feels like an amazing thing to bring the big lights of Sportsnet to these little hamlets that need a new rink.

Meanwhile, Hockey Day is just six hours of, “Warroad, Minnesota, ever heard of that?” Yeah, I have. A lot. Because I am a hockey fan living in the United States. There’s a lot of mythologizing about Minnesota hockey in particular in the U.S.

Hockey Day in Canada was in Kenora, Ontario, this year. Who’s from Kenora? Mike Richards. Anyone else? Not that I can think of. Warroad is where T.J. Oshie is from, as well as the Christian family that won the Olympic gold medals USA Hockey won’t shut up about. Pay the slightest attention and you will hear this again and again on American broadcasts.

Hockey Day in America needs to not be on the same weekend as Hockey Day in Canada, broaden its focus, or just not exist. Literally any of those options would be preferable to what we have now.

4. It would be this mat that you would put on the floor, and would have different conclusions written on it that you could jump to.

Gotta love the hockey media sometimes.

Claude Julien loses his first game back in Montreal and people are trying to make pronouncements. Oh uh yeah they lost but Carey Price looks a lot better! I dunno about all that.

Same with the guy who replaced Julien in Boston: Bruce Cassidy has the Bruins on a big ol’ winning streak. It’s probably gonna last forever, and this is evidence they needed a new voice. Yeah, that’s it. For sure.

3. The Calder race

I think if I had a vote I would be leaning Matthews right now, but it’s hard to argue that neither Laine nor Marner deserve consideration. Any one of them winning the award would be perfectly understandable and deserved, but Matthews being a No. 1 center with impressive possession numbers and much more sustainable-looking stats is the reason to vote for him.

Anyway, I don’t get the outrage or the controversy. Whatever, they’re all great. And this isn’t a “Everyone gets a trophy” thing. You’ve seen me get plenty worked up about dumbass awards voting. But for real, they all deserve some amount of recognition. If all current patterns hold — and they won’t, by the way — then whatever Q-list actor opens the Calder envelope at the NHL Awards in June and says literally any name, my reaction will be, “Well, tough to argue that.”

The PHWA rightly gets a lot of stick from fans, but this is a hard one to screw up because of a plethora of options, rather than the usual situation: there’s one clear winner that a bunch of people don’t vote for because they don’t understand the sport. Pick any one of these three guys (and for-sure not Zach Werenski) and you’re good. Whatever.

2. Bonus overages

How about this one, folks:

https://twitter.com/CapFriendly/status/834081377054232576

Damn. That’s brilliant. Not only do the Coyotes reap benefits for taking on all these bad contracts and retaining salary when they move guys in exchange for a few draft picks and prospects, they also go over the cap ceiling, meaning they don’t have to spend money next season either.

That’s next-level tanking. This Chayka kid is like five steps ahead of the curve.

1. The Panthers

Okay let’s not all whip our heads around at once, but have a peak at those Atlantic Division standings.

The Very Bad Florida Panthers Who Fired Their Nice Coach Who Was A Good Hockey Man And Marginalized Their GM Who Is Another Good Hockey Man And No One Knows Who’s In Charge And Isn’t That So Bad For Them are currently third in the division after winning eight of their last nine. They have the same number of points as the Bruins with one fewer game played.

Turns out getting really good players back from injury is a thing that helps you win. Turns out trusting the process put in place by a bunch of smart people who understand the game in a different but equally-if-not-more effective way than the old school guys is gonna give you a good return or three in the long run. Pretty crazy.

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Are the Panthers great? Nope. Are they going to reach their point total from last year? Almost certainly not. Are they trending in the right direction? You bet. Is that what’s really important here for a team with a healthy mix of effective players both young and old (and also very very old)? Hmm, seems like yeah.

Far be it for me to put too much stock in a team winning eight out of nine games but the Panthers were never as bad as they were to start the year, nor are they as good as all this. But if being the third-best team in that division three-quarters of the way through the season seems reasonable, that’s because it is. And always was. No matter what else happened this year. Weird. Wild.

(Not ranked this week: Telling your six fans what to do.

I just don’t get stuff like this:

https://twitter.com/ArizonaCoyotes/status/833896728826830848

Like, the Coyotes have negative-a-thousand fans. How does scolding any of the hapless unfortuantes who stumbled confused into a Coyotes home game accomplish anything? Well, I guess I’m talking about the Coyotes, aren’t I? Damn. They’re good.)

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

(All statistics via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)

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