At the quarter-pole*, some early NHL awards

We’ve reached the quarter pole in the NHL season, which means two things: It’s too early to start drawing conclusions and throwing around awards, and we’re going to go ahead and do those things anyway. So dig your tuxes and gowns out of the closet, because we’ve got a dozen early-season awards to hand out.

Most Valuable Player: Sidney Crosby, Pittsburgh Penguins

Ho-hum. Crosby won the award last year, he was the overwhelming favorite to win it this year, and so far that looks like it’s exactly what he’s going to do. He’s not running away with the scoring title, which is a mild surprise. But all the guys keeping pace with him come from struggling teams, and the Hart Trophy basically always goes to someone from a Cup contender. So it’s Crosby by default, which is basically too boring to spend any more time on.

Most Valuable Player Who Isn’t Sidney Crosby: Jakub Voracek, Philadelphia Flyers

That’s better! And we’ve got several candidates to consider, like Voracek, who’s tied with Crosby for the lead in points, and Tyler Seguin, who leads in goals scored. Steven Stamkos has been fantastic, Vladimir Tarasenko has owned the highlight reels, and Rick Nash’s hot start left him carrying basically the entire Rangers offense.

And that’s just the forwards, which is … well, which is probably all we need to talk about, since defensemen and goalies rarely win the Hart.¹ Besides, we’ll get to those guys in a minute.

I’m going to go with Voracek, who’s recorded a point on over half of the Flyers goals this year, and is basically single-handedly keeping them in the playoff picture. Will it last? No, not at his current pace, but that shouldn’t matter. We’re trying to recognize the first quarter of the season here, not predict the rest of it, so Voracek has earned the right to pick up Crosby’s scraps.

Least Valuable Player: The Backup Goalie, New Jersey Devils

Do you know his name? I didn’t know his name, and apparently neither did Devils coach Peter DeBoer until the weekend, when he finally gave him his first start of the season in the team’s 21st game. Before that, Cory Schneider had gotten the nod each and every time, becoming only the third goalie in the salary-cap era to make that many starts in a row to begin a season. That streak ended on Saturday, when DeBoer remembered that he had a second goaltender on the roster.

The guy’s name is Scott Clemmensen, by the way. That probably sounds familiar, since the journeyman has been backing up around the NHL since 2001, including three separate stints in New Jersey. He got his first start of the season against the Flames in Calgary. He lost. LVP! LVP!

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(* I know, I know.)

Weekend wrap: Are you feeling lucky?

A look back at the biggest games and emerging story lines of the NHL weekend.

Theme of the Week: As Luck Would Have It

Let’s check in on everyone’s favorite stat: PDO, which adds up a team’s shooting and save percentages to come up with a number that settles in around 100, give or take a few points. Both shooting and save percentage are heavily luck-driven, so a PDO that’s significantly above or below 100 can be an indication that a player or team’s performance is being influenced by random chance, meaning it’s less likely to continue. PDO outliers aren’t always the result of luck and luck only — there’s some evidence that talent level and playing style could sustainably boost a team a point or two over 100, for example — but that explanation goes a long way.¹

So who have been the NHL’s luckiest and unluckiest teams? The five top PDOs belong to the Predators (103.5), Penguins (102.8), Flames (102.3), Devils (101.6), and Canadiens (101.2).² That pours some cold water on two of the Western Conference’s best early-season stories in Nashville and Calgary, and the numbers look especially glum for the Flames, a bad possession team shooting a league-leading 10.26 percent that can’t possibly continue. On the other hand, the Predators, Habs, and Devils are seeing their PDO driven more by strong save percentages, and all of those teams have All-Star-caliber goalies. Still, Nashville’s in for a drop — since 2007-08, only one team has stayed over 103 for an entire season.³

At the other end of the PDO scale, five teams are sitting below 98.5. Not surprisingly, three are having lousy seasons: the Oilers (96.4), Blue Jackets (96.9), and Hurricanes (97.5). That tells us those teams should expect at least some improvement as the season goes on. That’s not much consolation, since all three are basically already out of playoff contention, but it’s worth keeping in mind when deciding how hard to lean on the panic button. The Capitals (98.2) have been another disappointment, but they’re still in the Metro mix and are worth keeping an eye on once their luck starts to even out.

That fifth low-PDO team is a weird one: It’s the Vancouver Canucks, who’ve actually been overachieving based on preseason expectations. Their shooting has been fine, but their .901 save percentage is second-worst in the league.⁴ That doesn’t reflect well on big-money free agent Ryan Miller’s play, but if he drifts up closer to his career average, the surprising Canucks could turn out to be for real.

Cup Watch: The League’s Five Best

The five teams that seem most likely to earn the league’s top prize: the Stanley Cup.

5. Chicago Blackhawks (12-8-1, plus-19) Hey, look who finally decided to join us. The record still isn’t much to look at, especially when you factor in the three shootout wins, and they lost to Vancouver last night. But the goal differential and the league’s second-best possession numbers earn them a spot, albeit just barely ahead of the Canucks and Ducks.

4. Montreal Canadiens (16-6-1, plus-4) I was all ready to give their spot to Boston if the Bruins had won their showdown on Saturday night. Instead, the Habs looked great while earning a road shutout. You keep finding new ways to make me sad, Bruins.

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Grab bag: When Leaf fans attack

In the weekly grab bag:
- Comedy all-stars, including Mike Milbury getting caught with his head down
- Phil Kessel snubs the media; my modest proposal for a new rule for handling these stories
- An obscure goalie who got to back up two Hall-of-Famers at the same time (and also once attacked Brendan Shanahan)
- Something that annoys me about "your" team's P.A. announcer
- Maple Leaf fans litter the ice with their team trailing 8-0. No, not on Tuesday... 24 years ago.

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Checking in on the NHL's hot seat

Almost one-quarter of the NHL season is in the books, with several teams hitting the 20-game mark this week. And as usual, we’ve seen the usual array of goals, saves and bloopers, tight games and blowouts, inspiring upsets and outright tanking.

But something has been missing. Somehow, we’ve made it this far without a single coach or GM losing his job, which is rare. We usually get at least a firing or two over the first month, and last year we had one after just three games.¹ But this year … nothing.

Or at least nothing yet. It’s inevitable that the pink slips will eventually start flying, and probably sooner than later. It’s never easy to see somebody lose his job, even in the big-dollar world of the NHL, but it does help to be prepared. So here’s a look at 10 seats around the league that are already getting warm or worse.

Sharks Coach Todd McLellan

Why he’s in trouble: McLellan has been on the hot seat for years, and his firing seemed like a sure thing after last season’s playoff collapse against the Kings. He was given a surprising reprieve by GM Doug Wilson, who vowed to overhaul the roster instead. That led into the summer’s odd standoff with Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau, and the team emerged without a captain but with essentially an unchanged core. So far, that patience hasn’t paid off, as the team has hovered around the .500 mark.

Their most recent effort, Tuesday’s 4-1 loss to the lowly Sabres, will turn up the heat. It also doesn’t help McLellan’s case that the Sharks have a Stanley Cup–winning head coach on the staff in Larry Robinson, although Robinson has long maintained that he doesn’t want to run a team again.

What could save him: McLellan wasn’t the one who promised to reshape the roster and then didn’t deliver; that’s on Wilson, and maybe he’s the one who should be feeling the heat instead. That’s a mixed blessing for McLellan, since a GM under fire will often have to throw his coach overboard to buy time. But Wilson has shown patience so far.

More importantly, while the Sharks have been a disappointment, they haven’t been all that bad. They’ve been mediocre, sure, but they’re still right in the mix in a surprisingly tight Pacific, and one good week could have them pushing the Ducks for first place.

How hot is it? 4/10 now; 7/10 if they’re not in first place by February; 11/10 if they don’t win at least two playoff rounds.

Prediction: If the team is still stumbling along in December, the comparisons to the 2011-12 Kings will mount. That team made a midseason coaching switch to Darryl Sutter, who’s led them to a pair of Stanley Cup wins.

Flyers Coach Craig Berube

Why he’s in trouble: He’s the head coach of the Flyers, which is one of those positions where the seat starts getting warm on the day you take the job. That’s especially true when the team struggles to get over .500, which the Flyers have for much of the season. And he’s working for a GM who didn’t hire him; Ron Hextall was the assistant GM when Berube got the job last season, and could want to put his own guy in place now that he’s in charge.

What could save him: He’s been on the job for only a year. And last year’s Flyers struggled through the first few months, too, before eventually heating up enough to make the playoffs and then take the Rangers to a seventh game.

How hot is it? 3/10

Prediction: Berube makes it through the season, but needs another playoff spot to keep his job beyond that.

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Pick your cap: What if hockey's hall of fame worked like Cooperstown

The Hockey Hall of Fame officially welcomed six new members Monday night at the annual induction ceremony in Toronto. As per tradition, there were speeches, highlights, and the unveiling of each member’s plaque.

What there was not was any kind of formal emphasis on specific teams. That’s because, unlike baseball’s Hall of Fame, the hockey version doesn’t associate each new member with one team. Cooperstown inducts each player wearing a cap of the team he’s most associated with, which can lead to plenty of debate.

Hockey doesn’t do that. But what if we did?

It wouldn’t be an especially tough question for this year’s four player inductees; Dominik Hasek would go in as a Sabre, Peter Forsberg as an Av, Rob Blake as a King, and Mike Modano as a Star. But other years, it wouldn’t have been such an easy call. Some of hockey’s greatest stars split their prime years between two or more teams, and choosing just one franchise to induct a player under would lead to all sorts of arguments, hyperbole, and hurt feelings.

That sounds like fun, so let’s give it a try. Let’s reimagine the Hockey Hall of Fame under Cooperstown rules: Each player has to go in as a representative of one team, and one team only.

First, let’s get a few of the easier ones out of the way. Consider this a pregame stretch:

Brendan Shanahan: Red Wings

He played the majority of his 21-year career elsewhere, but the three Stanley Cups in Detroit make this one an easy call.

Doug Gilmour: Maple Leafs

He spent more time in Toronto than anywhere else and had his best seasons there; that’s enough to trump the Cup he won in Calgary.

Dino Ciccarelli: North Stars

He moved around a lot, but he scored three times as many goals with Minnesota as anywhere else.

Al MacInnis: Flames

A tougher call than I expected; he played 10 years in St. Louis and won his only Norris there. But his offensive totals (and Stanley Cup) from his 13 years in Calgary tip the scales.

Paul Coffey: Oilers

Played just seven of his 21 seasons in Edmonton, but they were his best.

Pat LaFontaine: Islanders

A tougher call than you’d think, since his crazy 1992-93 in Buffalo was his signature season. But injuries just limited his games played as a Sabre too much.

Wayne Gretzky: Oilers

Come on.

♦♦♦

Now that we’re all warmed up, let’s move on to some tougher cases. Here are eight Hockey Hall of Famers who’d be tougher to nail down.

Patrick Roy: Canadiens or Avalanche?

Roy played 10 full seasons in Montreal to just seven in Colorado, with one season split between the two. But in terms of games played, it’s much closer, at just a 53 percent–to–47 percent edge for the Canadiens. And that’s for the regular season; in the playoffs, Roy actually played 133 games in Colorado to 114 in Montreal.

He split his four Stanley Cups between the two teams. Roy’s numbers in Colorado were significantly better than in Montreal, with his six best seasons in terms of GAA all coming as an Av. But that’s a function of the high-flying ’80s and early ’90s versus the dead puck decade that followed; adjusted for era, his numbers with both teams largely even out.

Perhaps the best argument for the Avalanche is that those were the years that Roy seemed to go from “very good goaltender” to “all-time great” in the eyes of most fans. But that’s because it was the second half of his career, when he started passing milestones and breaking records. As good as he was in Colorado, he was objectively better in Montreal — he won all three of his Vezinas there, and was a postseason first- or second-team All-Star five times, compared to just once in Colorado.

The verdict: Roy goes into the Hall as a Hab, in a decision that wasn’t as close as I thought it would be. By the way, Roy himself was asked about this when he was inducted, and dodged the question.

Brad Park: Rangers or Bruins?

Park isn’t as well known to the current generation of fans as fellow ’70s blueliners like Bobby Orr or Denis Potvin. In fact, that’s a big part of his legacy — he was the runner-up for the Norris Trophy six times over nine seasons without ever winning, the first four to Orr and the last two to Potvin.

With the exception of two years with the Wings, he split his career between the Rangers and Bruins. And it was just about as even a split as you could imagine. He played seven full seasons with each team, plus one year split between them. And his productivity with each team was eerily similar. Via Hockey-Reference.com, here were Park’s per-game averages with each team:

Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty close.

The verdict: The Rangers. They drafted and developed him, and he earned the majority of his All-Star selections (and Norris second-place finishes) in New York.

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