NHL 17 ratings, PTOs and Monahan's new deal (Puck Daddy Countdown)

(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.)

5. NHL 17

Over the past week or so the good folks at EA Sports have been sending out the list of the top-10 rankings at each position for the players in its upcoming NHL 17 game. And boy, they’re not good.

They say they work closely with an NHL scout to come up with these rankings, and I’m sure that’s true. But either the scout isn’t very good at what he does or the system they use to evaluate players doesn’t work right — or both — because the rankings they spit out are, frankly, baffling.

If, for example, you were putting together a list of the best goalies in the NHL, and whatever you’re using to determine that rating puts Jonathan Quick as being tied with Carey Price for “best goalie alive,” well, maybe you need to go back to the drawing board. “Pekka Rinne is better than Corey Crawford and Tuukka Rask” and “Marc-Andre Fleury is the eighth-best goalie alive” also feature prominently as reasons to throw this list in the garbage.

As you might expect, things aren’t that much better on the blue line. Drew Doughty being the best overall is wrong but expected. Shea Weber being tied with him is shocking. Duncan Keith being third? Fair enough, I guess. He’s coming off a not-great year but he’s clearly very good. Ryan Suter being fourth? Uhh … hmm.

Meanwhile, they seem to get the forwards mostly right, but not having Patrice Bergeron or Brad Marchand in your top 10 centers and left wings? Well, that’s just very bad.

It was explained to me the other day that a lot of the time, it seems like “speed” is rated the same as, say, “toughness” in terms of what actually makes a player useful in that game, so in terms of overall quality the game will appear to overrate or underrate players who have no business being numerically ranked as they are. That should strike all involved as a problem. Brent Seabrook isn’t the 42nd-best player in the NHL, full stop.

Again, any process that spits out “Jonathan Quick is as good as Carey Price” is a process that simply does not work. There’s no other way to say that.

4. PTOs and short-term deals

Oooo, it’s that time of year, folks.

Teams are now starting to scoop up NHLers in the dying days of August for the express purposes of kicking tires or filling in roster gaps at low, low costs.

A short while ago the Tampa Bay Lightning got the ball rolling with a judicious PTO for James Wisniewski, who played only one game last season and is on the wrong side of 30, but who could be a useful depth defender if healthy. Then the Toronto Maple Leafs got involved, signing Jhonas Enroth as their backup goaltender (a very smart move; Enroth can play) and getting Brandon Prust to agree to a PTO. The Kings also nabbed Paul Bissonnette on a PTO.

Now, before we get all worked up about teams investing in guys who exist pretty much exclusively to fight, here’s something to keep in mind: PTOs are no-obligation on either party, meaning that teams don’t owe players any more than a roster spot. And then you remember that NHL teams are required by rule to have eight “veterans” on any preseason roster. A skater is any player who played 30 games the previous year, a goalie with 50-plus career games played, or 30-plus the year before, a first-round pick from the previous June, or — and here’s the important one — someone with at least 100 NHL games played in their lives.

Bissonnette has played 202 NHL games. Prust is up to 486. Are either likely to make the teams they just signed with? Nah. Are both likely to get a few exhibition games so their teams don’t have to worry about dressing someone who they actually want to use this year but who might get hurt by some knucklehead trying to make a point? Yeah.

So think about this when you buy tickets to an NHL preseason game: You’re gonna see more than a few guys on PTOs, pretty much guaranteed.

3. The Monahan contract

I’m very much of two minds on the Sean Monahan deal.

On the one hand, he has 80 goals in his first three NHL seasons, which is a good number. Plenty of players have done that in recent years, but a lot of them ended up being really good. Since the full-season lockout in 2004-05, Monahan is one of only eight NHLers to achieve that goal. The others are Thomas Vanek (104), Alex Ovechkin (163, hahaha), Sid Crosby (99), Evgeni Malkin (115), Jonathan Toews (83), Steven Stamkos (119), and John Tavares (84).

Obviously Monahan brings up the tail end on that group, but if your closest comparables in any stat have Toews and Tavares at the low end, you’re in good shape. And with that in mind, getting Monahan locked down until he’s basically almost 29 at $6.375 million really isn’t that bad at all.

But the thing I’ve always been worried about with Monahan is that the goals have been there in his career, and the everything-else really hasn’t been. Maybe who cares, right? Tough to argue with a guy who cleared 60 points in each of the last two seasons. Only 27 players have done that.

On the other hand, shouldn’t your No. 1 center have a better-than-46.1-percent adjusted possession share over the last two seasons? Yeah, he was coached by Bob Hartley that whole time, so maybe it’s not necessarily fair to judge, but Monahan’s impact on possession (via relative CF%) is very slightly negative, meaning the team does worse when he’s on the ice than off. Match-ups, maybe, or overall usage could be to blame. But still, he has no positive impact on possession, and at some point that perhaps catches up with you.

So I don’t know, really. Maybe he figures out the possession thing with a new coach, and that helps his offense take off. And also maybe he doesn’t. Not that he’s necessarily holding Johnny Gaudreau back from a production standpoint, and maybe that’s why the team went out and got Troy Brouwer this summer, but it just seems to me that Monahan has long been cast as a No. 1 center despite what could be a No. 2 talent level. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Sam Bennett overtake him in terms of quality this year, even if Bennett won’t have the benefit of Gaudreau on his wing.

What I guess I’d say is this is a contract that should become worth-it, but right now probably isn’t. Again, the comparable counting stats are pretty damn strong, but his possession play very much is not.

2. The Ceci contract

We all know how much teams love to overpay young defensemen with middling offensive output because of the perception that they are defensively sound and can help on the power play. With this in mind, I think a lot of people probably spent the summer a little worried that Ottawa would overpay for Cody Ceci, who is a just-okay young defenseman who scored 10 goals last year.

He is, however, also not very good. Like, 43.6 percent adjusted-possession not-very-good. Not that this is the kind of thing the Senators have really cared much about in recent years, but with a new GM now firmly in charge, it was hard to get a read on whether that would enter into things. Getting him locked down for two years and just $2.8 million AAV is about as well as they could have hoped to do, honestly.

I’m not generally in favor of bridge deals, but when it’s a player like this — with both obvious up- and downsides — it’s only prudent. That kind of contract should never be used as a cost-cutting measure, but if you’re in wait-and-see mode on a young, developing talent, it might just work out in your favor.

1. Prince

Yeah let’s all just listen to the damn song, baby!

What a decision by the Wild. Best of the offseason.

(Not ranked this week: The drive-thru.

Imagine you’re like, “Ah heck I really need a coffee today,” and you hit the Tim Hortons drive-thru on the way to work, and man you really need that coffee. What the hell, throw in a doughnut too. You put in your order just fine, but it seems a little slower than usual. That’s weird. Then you get up to the window and Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon are standing there with your order, grinning like a couple of goobers. And you’re like, “Buddy, I just want my damn coffee.” I bet they screwed up your order too! You wanted two sugars, not sugar and cream!

What, does Sid Crosby own a bunch of Timmy’s franchises or something? I bet he does. This dude is there constantly. Just making people’s days by hanging out. But for me it’s like, “I don’t care if you’re the best hockey player alive, buddy! Don’t speak to me until I’ve had my coffee!!!!” We’ve all been there, folks!)

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