After Olympic gold, where does Connor Hellebuyck rank among history's best?

Connor Hellebuyck has had a good month. You might have heard about it.

The three-time Vezina winner and defending Hart Trophy winner as NHL MVP was the story of the story of Team USA’s gold medal win over Canada on Sunday, making 41 saves in a 2-1 OT win. It was the sort of signature game that a goaltender’s reputation can built on. After years of hearing about how he couldn’t win the big one, Hellebuyck went out and almost single-handedly won one of the biggest ones that there’s ever been. Then he became the first hockey player to earn the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And also, one of Frankie’s dudes.

Not bad. So now what?

That’s the question that comes up when a hockey history buff and a goaltending guru get together. So today, Sean McIndoe and Jesse Granger are teaming up to try to figure out where Hellebuyck stands in modern NHL history.

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Should the NHL learn from the Olympics and switch to a 3-2-1-0 standings format?

With the Olympics in the rearview mirror, we’re back to… what was it again? That league with all the teams and the six-month season? Right, the NHL, that was it. The NHL is back. Feel the excitement.

But while the Olympic tournament is over and some of us might be eager to move on, now might be a good time to wonder about whether the NHL could learn something from how the tournament was structured.

No, I don’t mean using 3-on-3 overtime to settle championships – fans around the world seem to agree that that part was bad. And I don’t mean the smaller rules that we debated last week in Rules Court. I’m thinking of an element you may have already forgotten about, since it was only in place for the round robin: Should the NHL borrow a page from the Olympics and move to a 3-2-1-0 points system?

That’s where teams receive three points for a regulation win, two points for an overtime/shootout win, one point for an overtime/shootout loss, and zero points for a regulation loss. Is that better than what we have now?

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A brief history of the Selanne Trophy, a fake award for best combined NHL/Olympics year

It’s been a while since we added anything to our fake trophy case. That’s where we store the Carson (for best sophomore season), the Bourque (for best final season), the Pollock (for best trade) and the Thornton (for best debut with a new team).

Today, we’re unveiling a new fake trophy, for the best combination NHL and Olympic performance in the same season. Please ooh and awe at the shiny new Teemu Selanne Trophy.

Selanne was a relatively easy choice for the honor of having the award named after him. After all, he’s the all-time leading scorer in Olympic hockey among NHLers, and it’s not all that close. He’d also been tied for the most points in any NHL-attended tournament until Connor McDavid broke the record this year. Oh, and when Selanne wasn’t dominating best-on-best, he found time to score nearly 700 NHL goals. He was good.

So our trophy for the best combination NHL/Olympic year will be the Selanne. We used the combo concept to build some all-time all-star teams a few weeks ago, but now we’re looking for single seasons.

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Ejections for fighting? 3-on-3 playoff overtime? Olympics rules court is in session

Welcome back to Rules Court, where we’re fixing the NHL, one new rule at a time.

Usually, that means considering your suggestions. But occasionally, we like to look elsewhere for inspiration, such as stealing ideas form other leagues. We’re doing that again today, because as you may have heard, there’s an international tournament going on. It’s called the Olympics, and the NHL was kind enough to send its players over for a change.

That NHL participation has meant that the rulebook used in the Olympics is almost identical to the one we all know and love. Almost, but not quite. As Pierre LeBrun reported last week, the “blended” approach to officiating still left a few differences between the IIHF and the NHL. And that got us wondering: Could the NHL learn something from international hockey?

Let’s see. Pierre’s article included nine differences between the two rulebooks. We’re going to put seven of them on trial today. (We cut the ones about switching ends for overtime and players losing their helmets during play, since they’re relatively minor and we don’t have a “meh” option for our rulings.) 

We convened the usual jurors – Sean Gentille, Shayna Goldman and Sean McIndoe – and cut-and-pasted Pierre’s description of the differences. If at least two of us approve the change, it becomes a new NHL rule, effective immediately. (Editor’s note: That’s not true.) (McIndoe’s note: OK, but it should be.)

While most hockey fans agree that the NHL is a perfectly run league with zero room for improvement, could we still find some inspiration from elsewhere? Let’s find out.

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Ranking the 14 potential Olympic men’s hockey gold medal matchups

With all 12 teams technically still alive in the Olympic men’s hockey tournament entering Tuesday’s qualification games, there are a huge number of possibilities ahead for the medal rounds.

As of this moment, however, there are only 14 gold-medal game matchups, however, that are plausible — which we’re defining as odds of 1 percent or greater.

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