Puck Daddy Power Rankings: Corey Crawford truthers, Glendale, NHL Awards

[Author's note: Power rankings are usually three things: Bad, wrong, and boring. You typically know just as well as the authors which teams won what games against who and what it all means, so our moving the Red Wings up four spots or whatever really doesn't tell you anything you didn't know. Who's hot, who's not, who cares? For this reason, we're doing a power ranking of things that are usually not teams. You'll see what I mean.]

8. Ben Bishop's injury (again)

Turns out he tore his groin in Game 2 and played on anyway. He had a .939 save percentage in Games 4-6.

So here's a question: Do groins actually matter? I'll hang up and take your answer off-air.

7. Corey Crawford truthers

Can we please can it with the Chris Osgood comparisons for this guy? Osgood was basically always a poor goaltender who happened to be on one of the greatest pre-salary cap assemblages of talent ever, and he actively hurt them even if it wasn't apparent. Put another way, the Red Wings probably would have won more Cups if they'd employed anyone but Chris Osgood. For his entire career, his save percentage is a point or two below league-average.

Meanwhile, Crawford is well above average. In fact, among the 28 goaltenders to play more than 20,000 minutes in both the regular season and playoffs since 2005-06, Crawford's save percentage of .9176 in all situations ranks tied for eighth (and is in fact two ten-thousandths behind Craig Anderson for sixth).  That's starting to get into some pretty lofty company, all things considered.

The gap between him and fourth-place Pekka Rinne (.9185) is smaller than the one between him and 11th-place Super-Great-Goalie-One-Of-The-Best-Ever Jonathan Quick (.9166).

When talking about greatness, no one would ever dare criticize Jonathan Toews for merely being really good in the postseason because he's got great players all around him. Being on an elite team, if nothing else, has actually provided the impetus for the preposterous “Jonathan Toews is the best player alive” argument. Similarly, Marc-Andre Fleury continued to be propped up as an elite goaltender long after any evidence of such went away in a hurry.

So why the Crawford criticism? Part of it stems from 2011-12, when Crawford was a .903 goalie in the regular season and .893 in the playoffs. The next year, they won a Cup as he went .926 in the lockout-shortened season and .932 in those playoffs. That looked like an unsustainable jump. And to some extent it was, but he's still been very good ever since, and we now have enough evidence to suggest that, yeah, 3-5 points better than league average is a reasonable expectation for him.

And also it's the contract. He got that $6 million AAV deal the summer after Chicago won the Cup a second time (that he put up those insane numbers in what was effectively a contract year didn't help the perception that 2013 was a fluke) and that's a lot of money to pay anyone.

But among goalies, his $6 million cap hit is tied for seventh in the league, which, hey, that's what he is in save percentage in the cap era, too. You might be able to argue that he's being paid... appropriately?

Here's one thing you can indeed say about Crawford vis a vis his similarity to Osgood: When the playoffs roll around, he plays better than in the regular season. There are only 12 goalies to play more than 3,000 minutes in the postseason in the last 10 years, and very few people have been better than Crawford.

So next time, let's try to think through these accusations before we actually say them.

6. Glendale

Can we just stop with all this crap already? Good lord how is every twist more embarrassing for the team than the last?

5. The NHL Awards are right around the corner

Nothing in hockey brings me so much joy as forcing myself to sit through the NHL Awards (and especially the pre-show) every year. In much the same way as watching “The Room” or “Sharknado” is fun because you're sitting there not-believing how bad the show is, watching the NHL Awards is even better because at least something about those movies are interesting and fun, and maybe even winking at knowing how bad the whole thing is.

There is a self-awareness in those horrible films. There is no self-awareness on the NHL Awards.

The good news is, this year could actually have a decent through-line because Rob Riggle is hosting it and Rob Riggle is enjoyable and charismatic. The better news is, the world's favorite and most charismatic celebrity could not make the room full of no-laughing hockey players, coaches, and executives crack anything more than a pity laugh, because the joke-writing! Hoo boy, the joke-writing:

THIS IS A REAL THING FROM THE 2012 NHL AWARDS.

I review this event for Puck Daddy every year and it's the best. Just the absolute greatest. We're a week away. I can't wait.

4. Not-so-cryptic tweets

Think expansion isn't happening very, very soon?

The big announcement is that there's going to be an expansion team in Las Vegas within the next year or three. It's happening. It shouldn't be but it is.

Now the leaders in Branford need to figure out what the non-threatening, family-friendly, old-people-skewing equivalent of NHL hockey is.

3. Marian Hossa

Three Cups in six years for Chicago. And they just happen to be the only six years in which they've had Marian Hossa. I'm sure that's a crazy coincidence. He's been to five Cup Finals in the last eight years.

Man, this guy is so good, even at 36. Another 61 points in the regular season, and 17 more in the playoffs, dominant possession play, led the playoffs in shots on goal, and so on. Basically there is nothing he can't do even now. I hope he plays until his cap-circumventing contract ends. A for-sure Hall of Famer.

Hossa forever.

2. Answering the bell

Patrick Kane wasn't hearing a lot of "You're a bad idiot who can't score" talk from the media during his fallow streak (in which he went "just" 2-6-8 in his final eight games of the playoffs), but he was almost certainly putting a lot of pressure on himself to perform. He did so in a huge, huge way in the clinching Game 6.

The goal was a nice passing combination on a 3-on-2, and he really didn't do very much except have his stick in the air waiting for the pass for a good hour before Brad Richards got it to him.

But the assist on the game's first goal? That was a bit of inspiration rarely seen in these playoffs. The patience as both Jason Garrison and JT Brown closed in on him a second as he crossed the blue line, and the beautifully touched pass right onto Keith's stick were just amazing. Of course, that Keith was open at all was due to an ill-timed line change attempt; Garrison and Andrej Sustr both shifted to the right side of the ice in anticipation of Brown getting the puck deeper than he did before turning it over.

But it just goes to show in a series this tight — Kane's goal gave Chicago the first two-goal lead either team enjoyed in almost six full games — giving a player of Kane's talent even the slightest breathing room is going to end up being a dagger in your heart.

Two points in the biggest game of the season because Tampa (finally) started making mistakes.

And despite all the fretting about his performance in this postseason, he still finished sixth in the playoffs in even-strength points per 60 at 5-on-5 among the four teams that made the Conference Finals. Just a special, special player.

1. Kimmo Timonen

Best moment of Monday night was Timonen trying to hand off the Cup after Jonathan Toews gave it to him first, and Toews insisting that he take it for a skate. That was awesome. We were lucky to have watched him play in the NHL the last 16 years or so.

(Not ranked this week: “Yeah but the cap.”

Look, in a lot of cases, no one is as big a spoilsport when it comes to player value and valuation in hockey as me. But the people who started screaming about the salary cap the second Chicago won on Monday are the worst. We know, they're probably gonna lose a lot of players from this dynasty team, even if the core stays intact. Let's maybe give them, say, 20 minutes of celebrating before we start redrawing the NHL and throwing shade at Stan Bowman for mishandling the cap.)

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