Follow @james_tanner123 Since +/- is the NHL's worst stat, I thought it would make sense to appropriate it and make it useful as we review the best and worst of the past week in the NHL.
PLUS: First, just to the NHL season. Sure, the Coyotes were not good, and there was a lot of tanking, and the NHL Player "Safety" Department remain masters of irony, but there was some crazy cool stuff that happened: Dubnyk, Price, Hammond, Benn, Stone, the Senators great comeback, five Canadian teams making the Playoffs, Crosby going a whole season without being injured, the revival of Ovechkin's reputation, watching Erick Karlsson, the emergence of Oliver Ekman-Larsson and I know I'm forgetting things.
But all-in-all, a great regular season.
PLUS: The end of all this tank-talk. I think it's a viable strategy and that smart fans embrace it. But, I get the other way of thinking, as much as it annoys me. Either way, glad it's over. Congrats to the Sabres, who get one of the two and it's also exciting that the Coyotes can do no worse than pick third.
So, the Coyotes maybe get Jack Eichel, they might get Connor McDavid and they most likely will have to pick between Ryan Strome and Noah Hanifin. I can dig that, for sure.
PLUS: The new Kendrick Lamar record is so good that it might be better than either of the last two Kanye records which were good on a Radiohead/Vampire Weekend level. I just don't get people who say there's "no good music today." They are just lazy or outdated.
MINUS: The disproportionate focus on individuals in hockey, which is so much more of a team sport than you'd think if you just followed along in the media.
Think about it: The best defenseman in the league plays on the worst team (only a 5-0 record vs the Oilers prevented the Sabres from having a better record; last time I'll mention that) the scoring champ's team missed the Playoffs and two of the three best goalies started the season with people (if they thought of them at all) not just doubting, but all but guaranteeing, that they'd never be starters in the NHL.
Oh and the rookie of the year is a former sixth-rounder.
So, hockey is a team game and also very unpredictable.
MINUS: We all know the NHL tracks its standings in the dumbest possible way, but the L.A Kings got a bad deal. 15 O.T / shootout losses. But that's not the worst thing:
The L.A won 37 games in regulation. THREE TEAMS IN THE NHL WON MORE.
That, my friends, is the definition of a joke.
If the NHL - as it should - awarded 3 points for a win in regulation, and split the three points for a win in OT or a Shootout, the L.A Kings would have made the Playoffs.
Shootouts are a coin-flip and this is an injustice. The NHL has its defending champs on the sidelines come Playoff time, which is embarrassing for the league, but that fact it's the league's fault is nearly unforgivable.
MINUS: The Wild-Card system is also a joke. All you have to do is look at the Playoff match-ups to know what I'm talking about.
Nashville-Chicago will no-doubt be a great series, but the fact it's in the first round is ridiculous. The NHL is probably never going to seed teams 1-16 due to travel reasons. Fine. But at least do the Playoffs 1-8 so that we don't have "should be the Final" match-ups in the first round.
PLUS: I'm about 4/5ths through the book Gone Girl and it is unreal. A masterpiece of pacing, structure and mystery. I cannot recommend this book enough.
PLUS: Jamie Benn. Not only does he win the scoring title, he does it with a hat-trick, with less than ten seconds left in the game and with Seguin in the press-box. Oh, and he prevents yet another Penguin from winning the award.
Awesome.
MINUS: The Senators and Canadiens playing each other. What are you doing to me NHL? I want to cheer for the Sens due to their great run, but I also don't think I can actually cheer against Montreal because I love that they are like this great team which is somehow seen as an underdog because their goalie is so good and their peripherals aren't.
I think I'm going to cheer for Montreal though.
Still, PK versus EK? Hammond versus the Price? This is going to be great.
MINUS: It's too bad the Leafs didn't end up Playing Ottawa so we could have a Hamburgler vs. Grimace (Kessel) angle.
MINUS: The Coyotes lost 50 times this year. 50. And that's just in regulation. They actually lost 58 times. 58. That is crazy. They also allowed 102 more goals than they scored.
Yikes.
PLUS: The Coyotes are not going to be bad for very long. Here is a list of their forward prospects: Max Domi, Brandan Perlini, Henrick Samuelsson, Ryan MacInnis, Maxim Letunov, Anthony Duclair, Tobias Rieder, Christian Dvorak, Laurent Dauphin and also probably one of McDavid, Eichel or Strome.
So that's like kinda good, right? And only one of those guys (Rieder) is currently on the team. And they still have Boedker and Hanzal and Chiphchurra.
And a great D anchored by OEL. This team will be a force, and way sooner than anyone thinks.
PLUS: I can't be the only one experiencing a little schadenfreude at the thought of the Bruins missing the Playoffs, can I?
PLUS: I'll leave you with this. It's my current favorite song. It's by Courtney Barnett, who's album I recommended a few weeks ago, but I can't stop listening to this, which isn't even on the album. Hope you like it too.
Thanks for reading