Patrick Marleau, Jake Allen and slew-footing (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.)

8 – Jake Allen

Look, one of the teams really being sunk by bad goaltending is of course the St. Louis Blues, because neither Jake Allen nor Carter Hutton are performing very well.

The good news is the team is good enough to keep going along in a playoff spot regardless, despite the fact that those two goalies and Pheonix Copley (unfortunately, that first name is spelled correctly) have probably cost the team about 22 goals. That’s more than seven — SEVEN! — points in the standings, mathematically speaking.

Now, the Blues left Allen home for a road trip because he’s been struggling so badly (.897), which I don’t necessarily think is fair because in point of fact that’s the best goaltending performance the team has gotten this year. Hutton’s .892, Copley is .828 (albeit in one game).

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Y’know what’s so so so funny about this? This summer the Blues traded Brian Elliott, whom Doug Armstrong always seemed to think was kinda not good. And while Elliott is also .891 this year in Calgary and very much not the starter, the point is that they thought Allen was The Guy going forward. Turns out he’s very probably-not.

Not that we should let 30 bad games define a goalie’s career or anything (hey, Elliott’s only played 23!) but bailing on the guy who was a career .925 goalie in your system maybe doesn’t seem like it was the best idea. Weird how that works out.

7 – Ice issues

This seems like it’s becoming a thing, right? Big hole in the ice in Pittsburgh, Ryan Miller complaining about the ice quality in Chicago, that Hurricanes game straight up getting postponed.

What’s the scoop here? Three’s a trend and all that. So the trend in the NHL is that ice is bad.

Prove to me this isn’t a climate change thing, baby!

6 – Trading for Tommy Wingels

Not that the Senators gave up the moon or anything for a guy like Tommy Wingels, but if you acquire him thinking he’s gonna make a difference, let’s put it this way: He’s Tommy Wingels.

Career high 38 points (four years ago) currently sitting on 5-3-8 in 37 games. Not a play driver, not a defensive forward. So like, okay you gave up Zack Stortini or something, and San Jose’s eating money. Fair enough, but I dunno. Who cares?

And while we’re at it, what’s with that Zack Smith extension? He’s basically Tommy Wingels already, and you don’t need to give him either four years or $13 million. Seems like a really big waste of money for a team that, like, doesn’t have a lot to go around. I dunno, man.

Are these the moves that ensure long-term success for a franchise that has utterly failed to build around a borderline generational defensive talent? I’m gonna say nah.

5 – Devan Dubnyk

Read this week where Devan Dubnyk is very upset the league is making him change pad size mid-season. And while I think everyone generally agrees goaltending equipment is too big these days (because it is), to Dubnyk’s point, it’s also very dumb that the league is instituting an equipment change 50 games into the season.

And yeah, lots of goalies are gonna be mad about it, and maybe they shouldn’t be, but man, the self-interest for Dubnyk is obvious. My man is having a season for the ages. He’s at .935 as I write this, which would be sixth all-time if it holds up. And he’s doing it with a huge workload. Pretty damn impressive, if we’re being honest.

So yeah, he’s being asked to eat a big ol’ turd sandwich on this one and his save percentage is gonna hit .905 by game 82 as a result. Sorry Devan. Shoulda switched in September I guess!!!

4 – Kings goaltending

So dude is out ’til March at the earliest with this groin injury. Guess we should have expected that.

But now they’re on the lookout for goaltending options, which seems a little silly to me. Not that Peter Budaj being better than league average is something you should neessarily be banking on or anything, but if all you need is an actual good backup instead of Jeff Zatkoff, I think that’s not a hugely pressing need.

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The problem right now is the Kings should be higher in the standings, right? They’re pretty deep down in a not-great division, but have the third-highest expected goals ratio in the league. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn their PDO is well below 100, and entered last night’s games sitting eighth-lowest in the NHL. That’ll lose you some games, but it ain’t Budaj’s fault. Fifth-lowest shooting percentage in the league, and while Darryl Sutter teams seemingly always have a low shooting percentage, well, you see where it gets you. Especially if your special teams are mediocre or worse, which the Kings’ are.

So like, this is a good team and everything, and honestly their goaltending is about as good as you might be able to reasonably expect. The fact that Jeff Carter has 41 points and the next-highest guy on the team has 26 might be your bigger problem. Just saying.

3 – The Komarov/Gaudreau incident

So everyone in Toronto is very upset that Matthew Tkachuk appeared to attempt a few slew-foots at the end of yet another Flames loss. Fair enough, I suppose, given that he definitely did try to do that.

But the thing with the NHL is that slew-footing needs to be comically overdone for anyone to really care about that very much, and especially in light of the whole thing where Leo Komarov hit Johnny Gaudreau in the head, there was no way that was ever going to get called, and certainly wouldn’t result in supplementary discipline.

Here’s the thing: The Komarov hit should be suspendable. It isn’t. The slew-foot is suspendable but never gets called. DOPS prefers frontier justice these days, and the latter was very much that, especially when the former is taken into account.

I know we’re supposed to be very upset that something bad happened to a nice Maple Leafs boy but like, if it were the other way around and Mitch Marner got his face caved in then Komarov attempted to slew-foot someone? Yeah, the headlines are real different.

And that’s true of every stupid team in the league. Stuff like this will happen forever because this league is very dumb indeed.

2 – The nice man Patrick Marleau

Four goals that’s a good number. His wife seems cool too.

Remember when the Sharks were gonna trade him for basically nothing? No me neither.

(And by the way, thanks so much to the big boy Joe Thornton for the whole chicken thing. The sport is literally indebted to the guy forever for coming up with that, and to Jason Botchford for tweeting about it. How blessed are we?)

1 – Henrik Sedin

Hey now, 1,000 points. Hell yeah.

Daniel’s only 38 points away, too. Probably won’t get there this year, but there’s always the final season of that contract, isn’t there.

And they got to these points by dragging around some pretty mediocre players. Look at this list: Trent Klatt, Bryan Smolinski, Mike Santorelli, Zac Dalpe, Jason King, Steve Bernier, etc. etc. etc. Amazing, really.

Remember how the Vancouver media spent like half the Sedins’ careers saying they weren’t first-line players? That was really cool.

(Not ranked this week: These Dallas Stars, folks. Did you see this?

Can you believe these people? To joke about the crowds at their pathetic games? It’s really very sad, folks. I feel bad for them. I do. Lots of people say they’re a bad franchise and it’s hard to disagree. Their goaltending is weak! Jamie Benn isn’t producing any more, believe me. I just see a lot of problems with this team, people, okay?)

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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