A quick mix of the things we gleaned from the week of hockey, serious and less so, and rolling four lines deep. We’re finding things out: I don’t have a clue how to write.
1. Can you keep a secret?
Understanding that the NHL regular season is not officially over, and that some major statistical awards (the Art Ross and William Jennings) are still very much in contention, we’re going ahead and giving you, dear reader, a sneak peek at our NHL Awards choices.
So narrow are some of these races, however, that we reserve the right to change our mind before ballots come due in a couple of weeks.
Shhhh…
Hart Trophy: Nathan MacKinnon.
This race is unusually tight. I wouldn’t blame any voter for selecting Connor McDavid and/or Nikita Kucherov over MacKinnon. As I write this, all three studs are tied with 83 even-strength points. I’m giving the edge to the Avalanche MVP because he logs more minutes, scores more goals, and has more game-winners.
Norris Trophy: Roman Josi.
I agree with Jon Cooper, who said Wednesday that Josi “has willed his team to the spot they’re in.” That would be the playoffs. Nothing wrong with a first-place vote for Quinn Hughes or Cale Makar or even Victor Hedman, but Josi’s elevation when the games have mattered most is swaying my ballot.
Calder Trophy: Connor Bedard.
Brock Faber’s 25 minutes a night is insane for a freshman, and Luke Hughes has been fantastic stepping up for New Jersey’s depleted blueline. But let’s not overthink it: Bedard tops all rookies in goals, assists, even-strength points, and jaw-dropping highlights — despite appearing in at least 10 fewer games than his competition for this prize.
Selke Trophy: Aleksander Barkov.
The best two-way forward leading the way for one of the NHL’s best defensive squads. So good is Barkov, he’ll help Sam Reinhart appear on a few Selke ballots, too.
Vezina Trophy: Connor Hellebuyck.
The best of a crowded field, Winnipeg’s last line of defence deserves the hardware for his gaudy numbers not only in the save percentage column but in the minutes played column, too. He might squeak onto a few Hart ballots, too.
Jack Adams Award: Rick Tocchet.
Another toss-up. That Tocchet righted a misguided ship, turning the Canucks into a Presidents’ Trophy contender, gives him a slight edge over the excellent Peter DeBoer, Peter Laviolette, and Rod Brind’Amour — who may be taken for granted at this point — as well as dark horse Andrew Brunette in Nashville.
Lady Byng Trophy: Auston Matthews.
Sure, he was given a silly 10-minute misconduct for gently hugging Tage Thompson last Saturday. But when you subtract that infraction — purely a function of the officials wanting the game to end — the Maple Leafs MVP has just three minor penalties en route to a potential 70-goal season. (Makar is a fine candidate as well and a rare defenceman who could win.)
2. Beware Andrei Vasilevskiy.
The Tampa Bay Lightning have been the hottest team in hockey since the trade deadline, and it’s no coincidence that the most decorated goalie of this decade has been on a 9-2-1 heater since February.
“We needed to go on a run like this.” captain Steven Stamkos says. “We had to look ourselves in the mirror and just clean up some things. I think we’ve played much better away from the puck defensively.”
And when the Bolts have broken down, a healthy Vasilevskiy has held the fort.
Absent for the season’s first two months as he recovered from back surgery, the workaholic Russian was slow to regain his form. No. 88 posted a .888 save percentage in February, when Tampa’s playoff berth was threatened.
He rebounded with a .915 in March and is dialling up a .933 in early April.
“Vas may not have the goals against and the save percentage that he is used to, but he’s got the wins. And a big part of that early was our fault. It was our team. We didn’t play well enough in front of him. He was going through 200-plus days off, trying to get his game back, and we didn’t have our game. And as our games rounded in, a big part of it is because we’ve jumped on Vasi’s back,” Cooper explains.
Back surgery is no joke. Considering Vasilevsky’s slow start, was his coach concerned that he may never regain his Conn Smythe–winning form?
“You know how that is. You block those thoughts out. Or I tried to,” Cooper replies. “You just know his work ethic, the way he looks after himself off the ice, that he was going to come back from this. Clearly, he has.
“The hardest thing, though, probably wasn’t the physical aspect of it. It was the mental aspect of being off for so long and then having to jump back in. And especially jumping back in when we weren’t clicking on all cylinders. Then everybody’s putting all the pressure on him to bail us out. Our game had to improve first, and Vasi’s been a big part of it.”
3. Do we agree with all of John Tortorella’s methods? No.
Are we confident his Philadelphia Flyers can hang on to their unexpected playoff spot? Nope.
But did we enjoy the rawness of his press conference this week enough to post its entirety below and encourage you to watch? Absolutely.
4. The sad flipside of Maple Leafs fans invading Buffalo’s KeyBank Center to celebrate Auston Matthews’ 60th on a Saturday night is the unnerving feeling of seeing someone squat in your own home, hog your remote, eat your Fritos, and wear your slippers.
“It was nice to be on this side of it, I’ll say that,” says Jake McCabe, who spent parts of his first eight NHL seasons in a Buffalo rebuild still moving at a Metrolinx pace.
“It’s deflating, for sure. Yeah, it’s deflating. There’s no other way to put it. You go out on your home ice, and it’s not your home ice anymore. And it’s a cool thing that we get to enjoy on this side.”
That deflation could be heard from the air being let out of a quiet “home” dressing room.
“We all know in this room that we have to earn it,” Sabres centre Dylan Cozens said. “We understand it’s been a long time, and we have to get that support back by being a good team and winning games.
“When it comes down to it, we can work as hard as we want, but at the end of the day, to get that support back, we’ve got to win games. It’s going to be a big summer for all of us. We’ve got a lot to prove.”
The embarrassment hits home for Syracuse, N.Y., native Alex Tuch.
“We have to try to get the fans back in here to support us,” Tuch said. “It’s been tough. It has. For everybody involved — both sides. But we’re going to continue to work, and we’re gonna turn it around.”
Comparison is the thief of joy.
So, what does Cozens think of Leafs fans gobbling up, what, 80 or 90 per cent of the game’s tickets and invading the Sabres’ home?
“It’s something,” he replied. “Hopefully, we can get that kind of support one day when we’re on the road. We’re going to be a great team like that, and we’re going to build something special here.”
As the Sabres drift toward a 13th consecutive lost season, perhaps the most bittersweet moment of perspective arrived this week.
The club rightly celebrated lifer Jeff Skinner for playing in his 1,000th regular-season game. Also: Skinner has zero playoff games played.
5. Hart contender Nikita Kucherov was memorably villainized during All-Star Weekend for coasting through the Skills Competition’s stickhandling course after making a mistake.
The sentiment seemed to be: If I’m not going to win, why bother trying?
And while we don’t condone giving up, it was interesting to hear Kucherov’s skills tutor, Adam Oates, provide a little insight into Kucherov’s frustration with the “unfair” course setup during his appearance on Real Kyper & Bourne this week.
Here’s the clip:
6. Mats Sundin needed 981 games to set the Toronto Maple Leafs’ all-time franchise record for even-strength goals (273).
Matthews has already scored 270 even-strength goals after 555 games played, passing icons Dave Keon and Ron Ellis (269 each) on Monday and Darryl Sittler (261) in March.
Further: Sundin was a plus-99 as a Leaf. Matthews is a plus-140. (FYI, the greatest plus/minus over a Leaf’s career belongs to Tim Horton at plus-151. That record will tumble, too.)
7. Quote of the Week.
“It’s impressive. Too bad I got traded or he would have gotten (to 300) faster.” —Mats Zuccarello on ex-teammate Chris Kreider reaching 300 goals (via Arthur Staple)
8. The wildest stat, in a season full of them, might be the New York Islanders blowing 22 third-period leads through their first 74 games. Lock up half of those, and they cruise to a postseason berth.
Can you really look at the goal differential of the clubs just outside the wild-card cut line and argue with a straight face that they deserve to be part of some expanded playoff tournament?
9. Nick Robertson may find himself on the bubble of the Maple Leafs’ playoff lineup, but he’s making a case for inclusion with some game-breaking goals of late.
What’s impressive is that he has a game plan behind his game-breakers.
On Monday, he revealed that he was always going to deke Sergei Bobrovsky because the Florida goalie plays breakaways low and deep in his crease.
Last Saturday it was Robertson’s nifty, no-lift five-hole shot that surprised Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen right along the ice.
Robertson credits his older brother, Jason, for helping him develop that weapon during their off-season training sessions together.
“It’s a shot I like to do. Just working on it,” Nick says.
“It doesn’t elevate at all. I try to shoot it on the heel because that’s where the puck won’t really elevate, and you just know where the location is going. I know I can just fire it there.”
Try it at home, kids.
10. The impact of the Florida Panthers’ big trade-deadline acquisition, Vladimir Tarasenko, has been inconsistent.
The Stanley Cup winner erupted for three points in his second game since the trade, then dipped into a five-game pointless swoon in which he hardly got pucks on net and went minus-7.
A plus-13 player who averaged 16 minutes in Ottawa, Tarasenko is a dash-3 in Florida, where his ice time has dipped by two minutes a night and he’s been relegated to second-unit power-play duty when the group is healthy.
But with a three-point showing in Toronto, he has eight over his past seven and earned a promotion to Aleksander Barkov’s top line with Carter Verhaeghe banged up.
“He’s pretty prolific,” Paul Maurice says.
“He’s got this shot from right around that dot, probably a 10-foot box in there, and he scored a bunch of goals, scores in practice. And then you start watching it to figure out how he keeps doing that. But then you never figure that out, or you’d have been doing that yourself.”
What Maurice didn’t know before coaching the versatile winger is how contentious he is without the puck.
“This might come off as a horrible stereotype. It’s true of a lot of the Russian-trained players: They understand the game defensively very well. My experience over there [coaching in the 2012-13 KHL season], they’re all pretty smart defensive players. So, he’s fit in,” Maurice says.
“I’ve moved him from left to right wing on three different lines. And now I think we’ve settled on something I like — and he’s on the right side. He’s a very, very smart defensive player. He reads the play very quickly. That would be the thing I could’ve anticipated based on his lineage, but it’s true to form. He’s a good defensive player.”
Sam Reinhart, too, has picked up that Tarasenko is more than a wicked flank shooter.
“He’s a pro. He’s been around the game a lot. He’s won,” Reinhart says. “It’s the little details on the ice that you might not have expected. You know, he thinks the game so well. He’s on the right side of the puck. And that’s been huge for our team.”
The Cats are a disappointing 4-8-1, however, since calling in the Tank.
“It’s nice to score goals and make passes,” Tarasenko says. “But when the team loses, you’re not experiencing happiness.”
11. Maybe it’s because of my own first name, but I’ve always loved the individual cheers for players that sound like boos on first blush.
In Ottawa, they root for Artem Zuuuuuub. In Tampa, it’s Kuuuuuuch. In Buffalo, they love seeing Ukka-Pekka Luuuuuuk-konen come up with a big save. And in Toronto, they’ve recently given love to rugged playoff rentals Luuuuuuke Schenn and Ilya Lyu-Boooooosh-kin.
Of course, the O.G. of the Boo-urns! cheer is Roberto Luuuuuuuu-ongo.
Never gets old, right, Commissioner Boooooo-ettman?
12. Noted Breadman fan, Larry David …
