All-Star'ish Stuff

We are heading into All-Star Weekend for the NHL, and the whole concept of an All-Star Tourney Game and All-Star Weekend is to celebrate individuals rather than teams. Therefore today seems like the perfect time to post not about "the NHL season up to now," but about individual performances and achievements in the world's greatest spectator sport...

Snubs

Why not start by kvetching about certain players being left off of (or included on) the divisional All-Star teams?

As a Tampa Bay Lightning partisan, I of course have to declare that it is an international scandal that Brayden Point was not selected. He made it last year and is having an even better campaign this time around, having piled up 64 points in 49 games, with his 30 goals tied for second-most in the league when the Lightning's bye week started on Sunday. Making those offensive numbers shine even more is the fact that Point also plays Selke-level defense.

But of course, 'tis also an international scandal that Calgary's Mark Giordano, Toronto's Morgan Reilly, and Winnipeg's Patrik Laine are not in the All-Star Game. Plus, it is unthinkable that Clayton Keller (minus-14, with 89 players having scored more than him) is in it, and that the sole reason he's in it is because he plays for next-to-last-place Arizona.

But that's what you get when you take a five-on-five sport and limit its ASG to three-on-three, while simultaneously mandating that every team in the league have at least one guy play in it no matter what. And I'm not necessarily complainin', I'm just sayin'.


Nash
Rick Nash will not be playing in the ASG, which is obvious since he has not played at all this season and recently chose to retire due to lingering concussion issues. I am not proud to admit this, but I'm one of those people who, when Nash was playing, thought less of him as a player thanks to his lack of playoff sheen.

Looking back, however, the #1 overall pick from 2002 was a supreme producer who happened to spend nine seasons, including almost all of his prime, playing for a Columbus Blue Jackets team that was otherwise thin on talent and only made the post-season once. That certainly wasn't his fault when you consider that Nash was among the top eight scorers in the NHL across that span; that he finished with less than 30 goals in only two of those nine seasons in Columbus; that one of those sub-30 seasons was his rookie campaign; and that in 2003-04 he won the Rocket Richard Trophy for topping the whole league in goals (tied with Jarome Iginla and Ilya Kovalchuk). Nash ranks as the franchise's all-time leader in goals, assists, points, goals created, even-strength goals, short-handed goals, and power play goals, plus several other categories.

Of course he played six additional seasons, mostly for the NY Rangers, after being traded by the Jackets because they feared they would not be able to sign him for market value when his contract expired. Post-trade, Nash remained a reliable forward as he finished his 15-year career with 437 goals. Only three players had more goals than him in that 15-year span: Iginla, Alex Ovechkin, and Patrick Marleau. Add in Nash's 368 assists and you will see that he accounted for 805 points in 1,060 games played, for a clip of .759 per game that ranks well ahead of Marleau's .709.

Rick Nash played in the ASG six times. And yep, he was a legit All-Star, even though some of us failed to admit it in real-time.

Awards
If the season were to end today, here is how I would vote for some of the individual awards:

Since the Hart Trophy is for the league's most valuable player to his team, not necessarily for the league's most outstanding player overall, I would check the box for John Gibson. The Anaheim Ducks are an abysmal club that gets woefully outshot and outchanced almost every single night, yet Gibson's goaltending has been so masterful that the Ducks are only one point out of a playoff spot. With the kind of campaign he is having, he would get my vote for the Vezina as well.

It's the Ted Lindsay Award that goes to the most outstanding player, and I would have to give it to Nikita Kucherov. On top of Kuch's famously lethal shot, his 56 assists heading into the bye week led the league and were four clear of second place Blake Wheeler's total. No matter who he is on the ice with, regardless of whether it's at even strength or on a power play, the way he sees the ice and thinks the game constantly results in him befuddling defenders and setting up teammates for goals... Back in the 1980's I always heard Larry Bird described as "the best passing forward in the NBA." Here in the 2010's, people ought to be referring to Nikita Kucherov as "the best passing winger in the NHL."

There are several worthy candidates for the Norris, and when it comes to choosing a Norris winner there is an endless struggle to not be so bedazzled by a blueliner's offensive numbers that you fail to notice where his defensive game might be wanting. With that in mind, I would give my hypothetical Norris vote to Mark Giordano, for he is having a superlative season on both sides of the ice while logging almost 25 minutes per night, and is a major reason why the Flames have become deadly serious Cup contenders. Plus, wouldn't it be great to see a 35-year-old take this trophy home?


Miscellany
Phil Kessel's marker against Vegas on Saturday was his third goal in the last six games and twentieth of the season, making this the eleventh straight campaign he has crossed the 20-goal threshold. He is on pace for 34, which would be the seventh time in his career he has scored 30 or more. With his 33 assists factored in, the 31-year-old Wisconsinite is currently averaging 1.10 points per game, well ahead of his impressive career mark of .883... Kessel is not in this year's ASG, but there is no doubt he's an All-Star, and please don't forget how huge a role he played in Pittsburgh's back-to-back Stanley Cups. Why do I get the feeling that in 15 or 20 years I'll be writing about how big an outrage it is that he's not in the Hall of Fame?

Part of the reason Kessel gets fewer accolades than he deserves is that teammates Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are so good they inadvertently cast a shadow over him when it comes to media coverage. Well, the same can be said of Washington's Nicklas Backstom playing on the same team as Alex Ovechkin, for since he arrived in the NHL for his rookie season of 2007-08, Backstrom has rang up an incredible 848 points, a total that is exceeded by only four other players in that span: Ovechkin, Crosby, Malkin, and Patrick Kane. Meanwhile, the players immediately behind Backstrom to round out the top nine are Ryan Getzlaf, Anze Kopitar, Joe Thornton, and Henrik Sedin. And Kessel, just three points back of Sedin, comes in tenth... I get the feeling that at some point I'll be writing the same "he should be in the Hall of Fame!" posts about Backstrom that I envision myself writing about Kessel, for there is no doubt that every other player in this top ten will be in the Hall, some of 'em in their first year of eligibility.

Speaking of underappreciated Swedes whose last names begin with "Back," Mikael Backlund also deserves a tip of the cap. Now in his eighth full season with the Flames, he is a lunch pail centerman usually deployed in the bottom six and tasked with primarily defensive responsibilities. In other words, he ain't a flashy highlight reel kinda guy, which makes it even more impressive that he reached the 300-point plateau when he recorded a goal and assist in Saturday's Battle of Alberta win over Edmonton. Although Backlund is not the type of player who gets voted to the ASG, he provides A+ depth and therefore is the type of player who will win you a Stanley Cup.

When thy roster is top-heavy, thou shalt not drinketh of the chalice, simple as that. Guys like Mikael Backlund deserve more recognition than they typically receive. And having said that, there is one more hockey player I want to write about, but I'll save that for another time because I have already gone long. Au revoir for now!

MLK, Born Today

Next Monday is set aside as Martin Luther King Day. But today is his real birthday, and he would be turning 90 had he not been met by an assassin's bullet on that "early morning April 4" (though with apologies to Bono, it was actually in the evening when the shot rang out in the Memphis sky).

But I digress. Rather than wait until next week, I figured I would go ahead and re-post my favorite MLK quotes now, on the true anniversary of his birth, rather than wait until the generic third-Monday government-declared day of recognition. Here they are:

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law…This would lead to anarchy…I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Anyone who lives in the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country.

...I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo…If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.

Death is not a period that ends the great sentence of life, but a comma that punctuates it to more lofty significance. Death is not a blind alley that leads the human race into a state of nothingness, but an open door which leads man into life eternal.

I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. The note was a promise that all men – yes, black men as well as white men – would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

…we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.

A man can’t sit on your back unless it’s bent.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: (1) collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive, (2) negotiation, (3) self-purification, and (4) direct action.

…right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.

…I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are presently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom…If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me. I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights leader, but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all of their scintillating beauty.

Random puck stuff

Since my post about the midway point of the NHL season is behind me, here are a few rattlings about other recent goings-on in hockey:

Karlsson dialed in
Before I stray to any non-NHL topics, can we talk about Erik Sven Gunnar Karlsson? You know, The Greatest Defenseman Of His Generation, or at least The Greatest Offensive-Minded Defenseman Of His Generation. The man who until recently could do no wrong, and about whom it was, until recently, illegal to think of in anything other than divine terms. The man whose play enthralled the age-bigoted Millennial scribe Ryan Lambert to such a weird degree that Lambert always wrote of him in homoerotic lavishing prose.

You might recall that 20 or so games into this season, Karlsson's first one playing for any NHL team besides the Senators, many of the same people who once rhapsodized about him were suddenly pointing to his low (for him) point totals and were wondering if he had exited his prime and wouldn't work out in San Jose. Never mind that he was driving play and performing very well defensively (which is quite important for a defenseman!) but was simply experiencing bad puck luck in the offensive zone. Never mind that he is just 28, that hockey is streaky, and that it's foolish to seriously entertain major conclusions based on one-fourth of a season, especially when those conclusions run counter to nine full seasons' worth of evidence.

Well, now that another fourth of the campaign has been played, Erik Karlsson has done what everybody should have known he would do: Kept at it, thereby course-correcting his puck luck, and reverted to All-Star form. After ringing up three assists in San Jose's win over Edmonton on Tuesday, Karlsson now has points in 14 consecutive outings, which is something only 14 other defensemen in NHL history have ever done. And with him having assists in each of those games, he is also on a 14-game assist streak -- only four other defensemen have done that before, and their names happen to be Bobby Orr, Paul Coffey, Phil Housley, and Brian Leetch. Rarefied air, indeed. Methinks everything is just fine in Karlsson's world right now.


The Black Girl Hockey Club
Last summer, Renee Hess of Riverside, CA started a blog with the goal of fulfilling her "idea to put together a group of Black women hockey fans." With the self-explanatory name Black Girl Hockey Club, it now has more than 1,100 followers from around the country, and last month more than 40 of them traveled to DC to get together and attend a game between the Caps and Sabres. The game proved to be a good one, with the Caps prevailing 4-3 and Devante Smith-Pelly notching his 100th career point. The BGHC gals got to meet him and other players afterwards. They plan to do this sort of thing again in other NHL cities.

On January 5th Hess used the BGHC's Instagram and Twitter accounts to mention Kalei Forga, a 12-year-old girl who plays hockey and who has started a GoFundMe account to help raise the money needed for her to participate in an international tournament in France. Next thing she knew, funds were rolling in and one of the contributors was Minnesota Wild defenseman Matt Dumba, who used his own Twitter account to re-tweet the BGHC's post.

The BGHC blog is here. Kalei's GoFundMe page is here. This kind of stuff is good and needs more publicity.


The WJC
This past weekend, the annual World Junior Championships (i.e., for players under the age of 20) ended with Team Finland winning the gold medal game 3-2 over Team USA. Perusing the Canadian media throughout the tourney, and especially during the medal round, I saw a seemingly endless parade of headlines and articles describing the Finns as underdogs and wondering how they manage to hang with the big boys. I kept thinking that the writers of such articles must be on crack.

I turn 48 next week and Finland has been one of hockey's powerhouse nations for as long as I can recall, producing NHL stars before I was old enough to vote (see Kurri, Jari; Tikkanen, Esa). Even back in 1987, when the Canadians got disqualified from that year's WJC on its final day thanks to this bench-clearing brawl with the Commies Soviets, the Finns were the best team participating; they won gold that year, and even if the Canadians had not gotten DQ'd, under the rules of that era Team Canada would have needed to beat the Soviets by five or more goals in order to get past Team Finland and reach the top of the podium.

As I have pointed out before, Finland won more Olympic medals than Canada during the five Olympics in which NHL players were allowed to participate. In fact, Finland won more medals than any of the big seven hockey nations during that span, for it was the only one that medaled in all five of those Olympics. Say what you want about none of its medals being gold, you still get the picture: Finland was on the podium every time -- while Canada twice had no medal at all, and Russia, Sweden, and the USA thrice had no medal at all.

Had this year's WJC been won by Switzerland, Denmark, or Kazakhstan, then yes, it would be fair to refer to the winner as having punched above its weight class. But it's absurd to say that when you're talking about the same country that has given us Teemu Selanne, Saku Koivu, Jere Lehtinen, Miikka Kiprusoff, Kimmo Timonen, Pekka Rinne, Patrik Laine, etc. To my ears, it sounds dumb to talk about Finland hockey as if it were the equivalent of early 1990's Southern Miss football.


Makes you go hmmmm
Until recently, I did not know that these United States are home to something called the Federal Hockey League. I would have thought that was a fictional organization from Slap Shot, but it turns out to be an actual league with six franchises located in small to smallish markets across some far-flung geography.

The Carolina Thunderbirds play in Winston-Salem, NC. The nearest FHL franchise to them is the Mentor Ice Breakers, who play 475 miles away near the shore of Lake Erie in Mentor, OH, in an arena with a seating capacity of 1,600. Meanwhile, over in upstate NY, the Watertown Wolves ply their trade in a city with a population of less than 30,000.

I do not know anything about the FHL's financial health or its prospects for long-term survival. It sure sounds like a long shot of a league, but hey, this is its ninth season -- and it just so happens that one of its executives, Carolina Thunderbirds President/GM Scott Brand, recently came up with a whale of a rule change and got it on the books.

Brand's idea was to have shootouts not take place after overtime, but following the pre-game warm-up before each and every game. In other words, have the shootout before the game even starts and without knowing if it will even prove to be needed.

It sounds nutty at first, largely because it is somewhat nutty, but the purpose is to raise the stakes late in regulation of a tied game, and also in overtime should the game get there. Because if you already lost the shootout prior to puck drop, you know you cannot allow the game to "get to a shootout" because then you are guaranteed to lose with no way of getting the two points in the standings.

Not to say that you ever would sit on your ass during an OT or late in a tied contest, but let's face it -- you are more likely to go for broke and empty all your barrels when you know that winning before the shootout is literally your only chance at winning. On the flip side, if you prevailed in the pre-game shootout and are up a goal late in the third, do you really want to go into the hockey equivalent of prevent defense when you know the other team is going to go all-out and throw every kitchen and bathroom sink at you trying to force the extra session?

Brand lobbied the league and got his idea into the rule book, albeit only on a short-term basis and only at the Thunderbirds' home arena, and it played out in reality at a recent game between the Thunderbirds and Port Huron Prowlers. Port Huron won the pre-game shootout, so as the waning minutes of regulation ticked away with the score tied 4-4, Carolina poured it on knowing they had to score in actual game action due to having already dropped the shootout. It did not work, so the game went to OT and Carolina pulled its goalie in the extra session even though the score was tied. Then there were three goalmouth scrambles in the final minute while the home team's net sat wide open and unprotected at the other end. But none of that action generated a goal, so overtime ended with the game tied at four, which meant Carolina lost.

According to Brand "the players liked it, they thought the last three minutes of that overtime was the most intense hockey we played." The excitement in the arena was palpable and the fans loved it too -- right up until the final horn sounded and there was no fourth chance for their team to avoid defeat. Brand said the feedback afterwards was "nasty" and that he "received things close to a death threat." Therefore he stood by his pledge to let the response of the paying customers determine if the rule change would stick, and as of today, the pre-game shootout is already a thing of the past.

I am mostly a purist but am not automatically opposed to change. I must say there is something about the pre-game shootout that really appeals to me, and I hope it gets another chance. I certainly wouldn't try it at the NHL level, but I do believe it would be good idea for a lower league like the FHL or Southern Professional Hockey League to try it for a full season, league-wide, and see how it goes.

And if that were to happen and it were to go well, then who knows? Once upon a time, hybrid icing seemed like an odd idea, but by 2013-14 it became the law of the land in the NHL after having started out way down the ladder in the USHL. The idea for hybrid icing came from the man who was then the USHL's Director of Hockey Ops -- and that man happens to be the same Scott Brand who dreamed up pre-game shootouts in his current role as Carolina Thunderbirds President/GM.

Thoughts at the halfway-mark

We have arrived more or less at the midway point of the 2018-19 NHL season. That means there is a lot of runway left, and many things can change and some will change, but we've seen enough to start talking like experts so why not do that? Here are some thoughts about this campaign up to now.

Goals Galore
Two seasons ago, Sidney Crosby led the league with 44 goals while Nikita Kucherov and Auston Matthews finished tied for second, with 40 apiece.

Last season, Alex Ovechkin led the way with 49 followed by Patrik Laine's 44, with six other players reaching the 40-goal mark.

Right now 22 players are on pace to meet or exceed 40 goals this time around, including six who are on pace for 50 or more. And Ovechkin has a very good chance of getting all the way to 60, a mark that hasn't been attained since Steven Stamkos did it in 2011-12. Which tells me that the surge in speed and skill, combined with the league's stricter enforcement of slashing -- and also combined with players doling out far fewer open-ice hits, because of how hard it is to guess what the Department of Player Safety might do if the press and the opposing team complain -- is having the kind of impact that NHL power brokers must be loving.

Vegas

Early on, the defending Western Conference champs were listing and it looked like their season might be one big long sophomore slump. In my post at the quarter-way point, I remarked that their unimpressive record was "largely because Marc-Andre Fleury's goaltending has not been up to his usual standards."

Well, things have definitely changed for the better: 20 games into the campaign, Fleury's save percentage was just .901 overall (after finishing .927 last season) and a shockingly low .895 at 5-on-5, but since November 17th he is .919 overall and .928 at 5-on-5. This is a result not so much of him improving his good games, but of him altogether eliminating his bad ones.

Combine Fleury's improvement with Nate Schmidt's return from suspension and Paul Stastny's return from injury, add in an uptick of more than 13 percent in the team's shooting percentage... and suddenly the Golden Knights look like contenders again, having vaulted up the standings to third place in the Western Conference.

Last season should have taught us to never doubt this team, don't ya think?


Calgary
Speaking of the Western Conference, the Calgary Flames currently hold its #1 spot and lots of people are treating that fact as if it's a surprise. They shouldn't.

Yes, the Flames missed the playoffs last season, and have in fact missed them two of the last three. But when you look at the talent on their roster, it seems to me that missing the playoffs is what should be considered an anomaly, not the other way around. They simply have too much offensive firepower and too much defensive talent to be sitting at home come springtime.

This club should have been considered a playoff contender entering the season. Now that "Big Save Dave" Rittich has stabilized its goaltending and Bill Peters has proven to be an upgrade behind the bench, it should be considered a Cup contender.


Crawford
The demise of the Chicago Blackhawks has been painful to watch, all the way from the inevitable slowing of Duncan Keith to the predictable inability of Jonathan Toews to live up to his cap hit, to the unjustified firing of Joel Quenneville.

Alex DeBrincat has had a solid year and Patrick Kane is on a hot streak, but it's gotta be hard for fans to get jazzed about those things when the team itself -- less than two years removed from being a top seed and less than four years removed from winning Stanley Cups -- sits tied for the third-worst record in the league.

And the most painful thing to watch about the Blackhawks' demise is the plight of their most important player: Goaltender Corey Crawford. On December 16th, during a game against San Jose, a collision resulted in Crawford's head striking the goalpost and him immediately grabbing it. He was diagnosed with a concussion after trainers helped him leave the ice -- 51 weeks to the day after he sustained another concussion, the effects of which lingered for almost ten months and forced him to miss the final 47 games last season plus the first five this season. And these were not his first two concussions, as I remember him having at least two others in the past.

Crawford is an elite netminder when he's in a game, but over the past year he has missed more than twice as many games as he has played -- all because of concussions, which, just so we're clear, are defined by the United States CDC as "a type of traumatic brain injury." Crawford turned 34 this week; has won two Stanley Cups; has played 432 games for the Blackhawks and has the highest career save percentage of the 13 goalies in history who have played more than 100 games for them; and entering this season he had earned more than $35 million in salary throughout his career.

What I'm saying is that Corey Crawford needs to retire. The cumulative effects of concussions can be debilitating and long-term, and he has a 16-month-old son who needs a dad. Corey Crawford has made his mark and made it well, and the risks of continuing to play through the remaining season and a half of his contract far outweigh any possible rewards. 'Tis time to put his gear away for good.


My Lightning Indulgence, Part One
Part of me doesn't even want to mention my team. Partly because everyone in both the American and Canadian hockey media is talking glowingly about them and I don't want to jinx anything; but mostly because I can remember so many examples of high-scoring teams failing to win the Cup because, you know, defense wins championships, goals are harder to come by in the post-season, etc.

But this Tampa Bay Lightning squad is so good I can't not mention them, so here are some notable facts about them:  They are 15-0-1 over their last 16 games and have not lost in regulation since November... They have bagged six goals in four of their last five games, and since November 27th have played only two games in which they scored fewer than four goals... They have the league's best record despite goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy, key defenseman Anton Stralman, and defensive-minded winger Ondrej Palat all missing significant time with injuries, and much of that time being concurrent... Nikita Kucherov, long known for his shot, has become such a good passer that he's dishing out assists like a Hall of Fame centerman even though he plays on the wing... Also, Kucherov has had seven straight multi-point games, and there has been only one game in the last six weeks in which he has not recorded a point.

I dunno if this team is going to win the Cup, but I do love this team.


My Lightning Indulgence, Part Two
As eye-popping as the above factoids are, there are two topics that I think could prove to be even more important if the Bolts are able to embark on a deep run this spring. One of those is the work being done by Steven Stamkos at the face-off dots, and the other is the work being done by Coach Jon Cooper at distributing his personnel and managing their ice time.

Face-offs are one of those things that are easy to forget about until your team is forced to take one at a critical juncture in a tight game. But they are important, crucially so in certain situations, and they have long been a glaring weakness on a Tampa Bay team that is otherwise a juggernaut. Face-offs were in fact one of the main reasons the Lightning came up short against Chicago in the 2015 Stanley Cup Final, and they have always been a weakness, maybe the only weakness, in Stamkos's game.

The last two years, however, he has worked diligently at face-offs and turned them into a strength. 2017-18 was the first time Stamkos completed a full season with a face-off percentage above 50 (he finished at (52.2%), and as of a few days ago he was above 57% for 2018-19 (according to puckbase.com he is at 55.4% right now). When you consider that this is his eleventh season in the NHL, this goes to show that an old dog can make himself learn new tricks. The fact that Tampa Bay's captain did this, that he focused on a non-glorified and seemingly mundane aspect of the game because he realized its importance, is one of the reasons we Bolts fans love him.

And as far as Jon Cooper's coaching is concerned, it really is a shame that him "having so much talent to work with" will probably prevent him from being considered for the Jack Adams Award for coach of the year. Stamkos and Kucherov do not currently play on the same line, which is not bad because their respective lines are both churning out points. But being aware that they like playing together and have clicked when playing together in the past, Cooper has been sure to orchestrate his team's partial line changes to get them on the ice at the same time before a full line change kicks in. He has also been sure to put them on the ice together during power plays. And evidence of how well this works is that during Stammer's recent 15-goals-in-13-games streak, Kuch assisted on at least 5 of the 15 goals (I want to say that 7 of the 15 goals were on the power play and Kuch assisted on 5 of those 7, but I can't swear on a stack of Bibles that that's what I heard on the radio, and I don't feel like trying to look it up, but still).

In addition to strategically pairing Stammer and Kuch without depriving their respective lines of their services, Cooper has taken advantage of his team's depth by keeping his stars' minutes lower than they would be on other teams. Knowing that the Lightning's "third" and "fourth" lines can score as well as some teams' second lines, and can do so without sacrificing one bit of their defensive responsibilities, Cooper has shrewdly given those lower lines more ice time than you usually see down-roster.

The Stanley Cup Playoffs are always a war of attrition in which endurance plays a major role, and I can't help but wonder if part of Cooper's master plan is to have his stars enter the playoffs with less wear on their tires and more gas in their tanks than other teams' stars? If so, the other side of the coin would be that Tampa Bay's "third" and "fourth" lines, which are already more productive than most, would have the additional advantage of better game shape and thus better timing as a result of spending more time on the ice and less on the bench.

Again, I do not know if that's the plan. And if it is, I don't know if it will work. But it makes sense, and I like it.

And with that, I am signing off. Here's hoping for a great second half of the season!