This week, instead of the traditional question and answer mailbag, I solicited your reasons for concern or for encouragement for your favorite team. Here is what you offered, with my analysis below:
The Anaheim Ducks organization doesn’t seem to be moving in any discernible direction. The team’s lack of performance also makes me fear that goalie John Gibson will not get the Vezina Trophy nomination he deserves with his low win total, which seems to be a big deciding factor for the general managers who vote. — @Mkton31
I think your take on Gibson is reasonable. I voted for him as the Vezina Trophy favorite at the midpoint of the season. I had Gibson first followed by Frederik Andersen, another goalie the Ducks developed who is now thriving with the Toronto Maple Leafs. I’d flip those two if we were voting today, but that’s not a knock on Gibson. His wins (15) and goals-against average (2.75) entering play Tuesday are not indicative of the season he is having for Anaheim. His save percentage (.919) is a better indicator, but even that has taken a hit of late.
I disagree with your take that the Ducks don’t have a discernible direction. Anaheim is a team in transition. General manager Bob Murray has given the Ducks a bright future; you just have to be able to see it through the current darkness. Thirteen players on the active roster are 25 or younger, including Gibson, 24, defensemen Hampus Lindholm, 24, Brandon Montour, 24, and Johan Larsson, 21, and forwards Ondrej Kase, 23, Rickard Rakell, 25, Nick Ritchie, 23, Kiefer Sherwood, 23, and Daniel Sprong, 21. Anaheim’s top minor-league affiliate, San Diego, has been the hottest team in the American Hockey League, going 11-0-2 since Dec. 15. It has some of Anaheim’s top prospects, including forwards Troy Terry, Sam Steel and Max Jones. Maxime Comtois, the forward who might be Anaheim’s best prospect, is playing for Drummondville in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. The Ducks haven’t really had to rebuild at all in the NHL salary cap era because they consistently reload. They’re quietly doing that again.
Video: ANA@WPG: Gibson reacts quickly for diving glove save
Concerns: The Pittsburgh Penguins let in the League-leading amount of shorthanded goals, and with Justin Schultz coming back, who is general manager Jim Rutherford going to trade to make room and what do we get back? Encouraging: They are overall playing well and I wonder what turned that switch. — @whoopoi
The shorthanded goals against, 10 entering Tuesday, is an alarming stat, but it’s somewhat mitigated by the Penguins’ 25.8 percent power play. That said, they need to clean it up. It won’t come with a change in personnel, other than defenseman Schultz’s eventual return to the second power-play unit. The players on the power play must make safer decisions more often. That’s a big ask, though, because part of what makes Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Phil Kessel and Kris Letang great is the long leash they’re allowed for their creativity. It occasionally comes with a price.
The most logical picks among defensemen who could be traded to make room for Schultz are Jamie Oleksiak and Chad Ruhwedel. Oleksiak is signed for two seasons after this one with a salary cap charge of $2,137,500. Ruhwedel can become an unrestricted free agent July 1. Oleksiak is the more enticing of the two players, but he’s also the harder one to replace because of his size (6-foot-7, 255 pounds) and physicality. He’s also a lefty, whereas Ruhwedel, like Schultz, is a righty. But the Penguins have depth at defenseman, especially with the emergence of Marcus Pettersson, so by trading one they’d be trading from a position of strength.
Getting a healthy, rejuvenated and better goalie Matt Murray has been a key part of their turnaround. The pieces have always been there, but the goaltending had to come around. It has.
The Chicago Blackhawks are picking up unrealized potential players and getting younger slowly. — @plgg48
Dylan Strome is the perfect example. The Blackhawks gave up a good young player, center Nick Schmaltz, to get Strome, a center, and forward Brendan Perlini from the Arizona Coyotes on Nov. 25. I thought Schmaltz was the best player in the trade at the time. The 22-year-old still might be when he returns next season after sitting out the rest of this season with a lower-body injury. However, Strome seems to be the perfect fit to have on a line with Patrick Kane because he’s a high IQ center who can make plays. The knock on the 21-year-old has been his skating and his speed, but you don’t need to be a high-speed player to play with Kane, because if you do your job, he’ll do his to make sure you stay in the offensive zone for the majority of the shift. Perlini, 22, is a good fit in a bottom-six role.
Forward Drake Caggiula was a quality pick-up in a trade with the Edmonton Oilers on Dec. 31. He may not light up Chicago, but Caggiula has a chance to be a quality depth player, joining Perlini, John Hayden, David Kampf, Dominik Kahun and Dylan Sikura. They’re all 24 or younger.
Where the Blackhawks need the most help is at defenseman. The future lies with Henri Jokiharju and Adam Boqvist, but they’re teenagers.
Video: CHI@PIT: Strome breaks tie, Kane gets third assist
Eric Staal. He has 13 goals this season and leads the team in shots, but he is mired in a long slump and just doesn’t look nearly as good as the last two seasons. If he doesn’t get it together and the Minnesota Wild are on the outside looking in at the deadline, should they even try to trade him? — @ZBwildnation_HW
I wrote about this before the season, the fear of Staal’s scoring regression and the impact it could have on the Wild. He had 29 points (13 goals, 16 assists) in 44 games entering Tuesday, a 24-goal, 53-point full-season pace. That’s fine production coming from a 34-year-old veteran of 1,137 NHL regular-season games, but it’s a long way from his 42 goals and 76 points in 82 games last season. The fear was that if Staal’s goals regressed, which was likely considering he shot 17.4 percent last season, well above his NHL career average of 10.7 percent, the Wild would need other players to make up the difference. Coach Bruce Boudreau said he was confident they would. Nobody really has.
Entering Tuesday, Staal and forward Nino Niederreiter each had one goal in the past 14 games, forward Mikael Granlund had two in the past 28, and center Mikko Koivu had two in 22. Jason Zucker, a forward who scored 33 goals last season, had one in 14 games from Dec. 6-Jan. 8 before scoring three in three. The only forward who has consistently scored is left wing Zach Parise, who leads the Wild with 19 goals. The Wild were averaging 2.84 goals per game and allowing 2.91 entering Tuesday. Last season, when they made the playoffs with 101 points, they averaged 3.05 goals per game and allowed 2.79. These aren’t monumental shifts, but they’re enough each way to put the Wild squarely on the playoff bubble. If they’re still there in the days leading up to Feb. 25, the 2019 NHL Trade Deadline, it makes sense to see what they can get for Staal, a pending unrestricted free agent.
Arizona Coyotes: Concerns — Injuries, goal scoring, streakiness with breakdowns, Clayton Keller; Encouraging — A couple of points out of a playoff spot despite missing their No. 1 goalie, a top two defensemen, a top center, top penalty killers and Alex Galchenyuk finally putting up points but as assists, not goals. — @kaldareed
The Coyotes have Schmaltz (lower body), forwards Michael Grabner (upper body) and Brad Richardson (upper body), defenseman Jason Demers (upper body) and goalie Antti Raanta (lower body) on injured reserve. Raanta is done for the season. Demers and Grabner are out indefinitely. Richardson is considered week to week. It’s a killer list, but the Coyotes have remarkably been able to stay in the hunt, and that’s with Keller scoring one goal in 20 games since Dec. 4. However, I worry for them that a 7-1 loss to the Calgary Flames on Sunday might be the tipping point in the wrong direction. The Coyotes’ next three games are against the San Jose Sharks, Pittsburgh and Toronto. They play six in a row on the road from Jan. 20-Feb. 5, three before 2019 Honda NHL All-Star Weekend (Jan. 25-26) and three after. Tough sledding is ahead.
from A Viral Update http://bit.ly/2VYMj6T
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