The great start of the Montreal Canadiens insulates them against the consequences of a drop in performance while Carey Price is out. Lose a few, and they’ll be just fine.
Of course, that’s if there is a drop in performance.
Montreal players, you can bet, have heard all the talk that without Price, they’d be not nearly as high in the NHL standings, that the goaltender covers up all the flaws on this roster that would otherwise be vividly evident.
Which may be true. But they do have Price, and last I looked, it’s not illegal to have a great goaltender.
Without Price this week because of some mystery illness, the Canadiens have a chance to demonstrate that they can be successful without their all-world goalie. They won without Price in Calgary late last week (no great feat these days, granted) and won impressively again at home against Winnipeg Sunday, and the Jets are a very good hockey club.
So far, not having Price is no problem at all.
It could turn out that having to play without Price for a stretch might be a very powerful team-building process for the Habs, instilling even more confidence in an already confident team. That said, if a week turns into a few weeks or a season-long annoyance, we may end up having a very different conversation.
More Weekend Takeaways…
What a mismatch this looks like Monday at the ACC, 9-2 Dallas against the one-win Maple Leafs. They may be comparative in possession metrics, but everywhere else the Stars are vastly superior, notably in scoring, where their 40 goals scored and 11.6 shooting percentage dwarfs Toronto’s 20 goals scored and 6.5 per cent shooting.
But the key move by Dallas GM Jim Nill that is really paying off in the early going is the acquisition of goalie Antti Niemi. With Kari Lehtonen coming off a lousy season (Stars were 29th in team save percentage) and in possession of a massive contractual commitment ($5.9 million cap hit, three more years), Nill had a variety of options, including trying to dump Lehtnonen, or find a younger, cheaper goalie.
Instead, he acquired Niemi’s negotiating rights from San Jose for a seventh round pick in June, and then signed Niemi to a three-year deal with a $4.5 million cap hit.
Now, most GMs might argue a combined $10.2 cap hit for goaltending, particularly if neither is an all-star, is just way too much. But the overall Dallas save percentage has improved to middle-of-the-pack, and while Lehtonen is still struggling along, Niemi has played in eight games and given the Stars the solid netminding that has allowed other elements of the team to shine.
Perhaps spending that money is making other parts of the lineup better.
The Dallas PDO (combined shooting percentage and save percentage) sits at 102.5, good enough for sixth in the NHL.
Toronto is at 95.0, and if you use that metric as a rough measurement of how lucky teams are, it seems to make a lot of sense how both are faring in the early going.
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The Sabres thought they needed to go out and get a Swede to address their goaltending needs.
Maybe they had a better Swede all along.
Linus Ullmark had 29 saves in a victory over the New York Islanders on Sunday to move to 2-1 as a Buffalo starter.
With a .930 save percentage, he’s off to a better start in a Sabre uniform than Robin Lehner, who was acquired from Ottawa in the off-season and then was injured in Buffalo’s home opener.
The Sabres, meanwhile, moved to 5-7 by beating the Isles, and seem to be pulling together under Dan Bylsma. Since facing some adversity with the loss of winger Evander Kane to injury, Buffalo is 3-1, suddenly no longer the doormat of the east.
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The Buffalo News cited sources on the weekend indicating Chicago winger Patrick Kane won’t be charged after being accused of rape during the summer months, perhaps marking the end of a disquieting set of events that threatened to blow into a big scandal.
If the paper’s report is true, the NHL showed prudent restraint in declining to suspend Kane before training camp as many argued it should. Moreover, Kane hasn’t been the “distraction” many suggested he would be to the Hawks.
“Those are just reports, and not really any facts or anything so far,” Kane said. “So for me to comment on that would be going against what we’ve been doing the whole time, so I’m not really going to say much about it until the district attorney addresses everything and he make his decision.”
We’ll see if this is in fact the end of this case, which will no doubt leave Kane feeling like his name was dragged through the mud, and probably his accuser feeling as though she was not served well by the legal system.
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The Islanders drew only 11,278 to a Sunday afternoon matinee against Buffalo, and attendance is down more than 20 per cent at Brooklyn’s Barclay Centre compared to last year at the Nassau County Coliseum. It’s way too early to panic, what with the Mets having a fabulous post-season and Brooklynites still learning the Isles are now the home team, but first impressions matter and you have to believe the club was looking for more than dropping to 29th in league attendance when it made the move.
To the west, things are only marginally better for the New Jersey Devils, 28th in attendance, and new general manager Ray Shero says part of his mandate is to find a way to beef up crowds and attract a new clientele.
“I think we do have a great fan base here,” Shero said in an interview last week. “It’s a matter of us giving them a reason to come out.”
Shero said the Devils intend to start putting a greater emphasis on youth hockey in the Newark area and trying to attract younger fans through things like open practices and a greater presence on social media.
“We’ve got to get our brand out there,” he said.
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Auston Matthews, likely the No. 1 pick in next June’s NHL draft, suffered a back injury about a week ago. After playing with the injury for three games, the 18-year-old was told to shut it down for a few weeks. Zurich, his Swiss club, is off for 12 days, but the injury will eliminate Matthews from competing in the Deutschland Cup for the United States.
Back injuries aren’t what NHL clubs want to hear about when they’re considering a prospect. But Matthews is so good this likely won’t impact his immediate future at all.
https://twitter.com/DamoSpin/status/660630086392135680
Another potential high draft pick, Finland’s Patrik Laine, missed two weeks with a shoulder injury recently but is back. Both Laine and countryman Jesse Puljujarvi, another likely top 10 pick, are expected to play for Finland next week in a U20 tournament against Sweden, the Czechs and Russia.
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As seen by the goalie interference call last week against Toronto’s Joffrey Lupul for bumping the skate of Henrik Lundqvist, an unintended consequence of using video review on this type of call is the standard may be heightened considerably.
Subtle bumps, nudges and knocks that once were seen as part of the action could now end up nullifying goals when detected by replay. The idea of using replay was that egregious interference fouls missed would be fixed, not that every little foul would result in goals being wiped out.
As Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported on the weekend, GMs will be shown the Lupul-Lundqvist incident at their meetings in Toronto this month and asked a simple question: is this goalie interference in your mind?
This is a narrative, you have to believe, that’s going to follow the NHL right through the season.
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Several NHL players, notably Erik Karlsson, griped about 3-on-3 play in overtime recently, but don’t expect the NHL’s biggest star to join that choir.
“I like it,” said Pittsburgh captain Sidney Crosby on Saturday. “I’d rather finish a game that way than with a shootout.”
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Michael Friisdahl, the new CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, succeeds Tim Leiweke, but in name only.
Leiweke was in charge of the Leafs, Raptors and Toronto FC, plus all the other ventures that MLSE was involved in, from the NBA all-star game to the 100th anniversary of the Leafs.
Friisdahl will be part of the business stuff, but when it comes to running the teams, he’s not expected to be a major voice. Brendan Shanahan, president of the Maple Leafs, won’t even be reporting to Friisdahl, but instead to the MLSE board directly.
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People were of various opinions regarding the decision not to offer a video tribute of any kind to former Leaf sniper Phil Kessel when he returned to the ACC with Pittsburgh Saturday night. Penguin teammate Kris Letang chirped the Leafs via Twitter, saying the team offered “crickets” when it came to recognizing Kessel.
Truth be told, the Leafs have been ridiculous about this kind of thing for years, offering tributes to players who weren’t even close to stars. Beyond that, Leaf management can probably say that with the $64 million deal they gave Kessel, plus the $1.2 million they’ll be paying him annually for the next seven years to skate for another team, they already gave at the office.
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The decision of Jeremy Bracco to leave Boston College to play for the OHL Kitchener Rangers last week was just the latest incident of a CHL team poaching NCAA teams for talent. It hasn’t exactly been a blizzard over recent years, but there have been enough to make it an annoyance for NCAA teams, who can’t easily replace a player lost partway through a season.
Why can CHL teams do this? Simply, the NCAA is not affiliated with the International Ice Hockey Federation, and therefore U.S. collegiate players are simply viewed as free agents without a contract commitment to anyone.
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Dean Lombardi had a rough enough off-season without having his former backup, Martin Jones, end up in his division with the rival San Jose Sharks.
The L.A. general manager, fearing the Sharks might offer sheet Jones, probably hoped he’d sent Jones far enough away when he traded him to Boston. Problem was, the B’s were also tight to the cap, and just as vulnerable to an offer sheet as the Kings. Knowing that, Sharks GM Doug Wilson came up with an offer Boston GM Don Sweeney could live with, and landed his new starting goalie.
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Nashville pick Jimmy Vesey remains unsigned, and he started his senior season at Harvard with a bang, notching two goals and three assists in a pair of weekend victories over Dartmouth.
The 22-year-old forward had 32 goals in 37 games last year. NHL teams are already circling if the Preds can’t sign the 2012 draft pick, who will likely attract even more attention than collegiate blueliner Mike Rielly did last season. Rielly, a Columbus pick, ultimately signed with Minnesota.
As previously noted, Vesey’s dad works as a scout in the Leaf organization, and his brother, Nolan, was drafted by Toronto in 2014.
