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.
MINUS: The fact that with 60 games left in the schedule everyone is complaining about/wondering about/ assuming the Oilers will somehow get the top pick in next year's draft.
I get that the team has disappointed for years. I get that the Oilers are currently in last place, but that is no reason to let go of reality and succumb to the idiocy of the masses. HNIC actually called Monday's Leafs/Oilers game the "Mathews Cup," which I now consider the nadir of a formerly great broadcast.
Let's just calmly go through a couple of things here:
1) The Oilers have lost seven one-goal games. 2) They have been screwed out of at least six points by blown calls. 3) They have not dressed a single game with their ideal lineup so far this year. 4) They will have McDavid - who's what, at worst a top 20 player already? - for 40 of their remaining 60 games. 5) Once McDavid is back, they will be able to run out McDavid, Draisaitl and RNH down the middle. I don't think the NHL is prepared for such a thing. It will be unstoppable.
The Oilers will not get last place. You think they can't make up 9 points in 60 games on a team as bad as the Coyotes? I love the 'Yotes, but just their second-line centre doesn't have a goal at even-strength this year and they have legitimately brutal goaltending.
So let's be realistic: The team is behind the eight-ball and they might miss the Playoffs. I don't think they actually will, but they might. But there isn't a chance in hell they will be the last place team in the NHL come April. Zero Percent.
MINUS: This might get old, but I'll keep writing it until the NHL changes how it protects its players. You would think that when a league is getting sued by its ex-players for a player safety issue that - regardless of the worthiness of such a lawsuit - they'd want to at least protect themselves going forward.
That being said, I do understand that player safety is a CBA issue and is perhaps more complicated than simply saying that you want to increase suspensions tenfold. However, something has to be done when a cross-check to a player's neck (and someone in the comments section pointed out that it shouldn't matter who was attacked, and I agree) is only worth a single game and no major penalty, or when a guy gets his ribs broken because an idiot smokes him from the blindside ten feet from the boards, of which the justification for not suspending him is as idiotic as the hit.
At a certain point - I believe already reached - protecting the players becomes a moral issue, and not just a legal, financial or hockey based issue.
PLUS: You want more scoring? Bigger nets are drastic, but what about just making a few minor adjustments? Smaller goalie equipment is obvious, angled posts too, and obviously another obstruction crackdown is necessary, but no one is talking about two things that would easily make more scoring:
1) More major penalties. Anything that involves hitting another player with your stick, as well as any boarding penalty should be five and a game.
2) Double the width of the blue line. First of all, offsides are probably the main culprit in making hockey boring - even if there isn't more actual goals, the number of whistles and aborted rushes caused by offsides are what slow the game down.
Instead of calling back goals that are millimetres offside, lets give the guys another two feet to play with.
PLUS: The best sub-one-minute song that I know. The cockiness to waste a song this great by not playing it three times and adding a chorus is the best part.
MINUS: I actually heard this on TSN: After Carlo Colaiacovo got hit in the throat, the announcer said he left the game with an "upper body injury." This really makes me mad, because "upper body injury" is an idiotic euphemism that teams use to avoid giving public information about an injury. Someone who isn't a political functionary of a team should say the proper injury and be embarrassed to use the stupid euphemisms.
PLUS: The movie Insomnia I somehow thought I'd seen all Christopher Nolan movies, and while it's not the Prestige it's still a damn good flick.
Also a PLUS to the movie Drive Angry perhaps the best bad movie I have ever seen.
PLUS: Fixing the Oilers isn't that hard. Here is what I would do:
1) Trade Jordan Eberle to the Ducks for Jacob Silfverberg. Silfverberg has some offense, but he's a defensive genius and could easily win a Selke award.
2) Trade a second round pick and a prospect to the Leafs for Leo Komarov. He is also a Selke worthy defensive forward.
3) Call the Hurrianes, offer them next season's first round pick for Riley Nash.
The Oilers would then have three Selke quality forwards, one for each line, and an elite centre for each line as well as a scoring winger. Perfect balance.
I think that 1) all three of those trade proposals are realistic and 2) that's the best three lines in the NHL, in terms of what a single team could ice.
4) The next move is simple: Trade that supposed lottery pick, that 2016 first rounder for the defensemen you want. Nashville would be my first call, just to see if they want a lottery ticket for Ryan Ellis. Whether it's Ellis or not, you have to think someone would give them the D they need to compete for a chance at Mathews.
PLUS: This has always been one of my favorite songs.
PLUS: Last night - for a brief time - the Arizona Coyotes were sitting in first place in the Atlantic. Somebody should seriously consider faking an "emergency" so that we can get Dylan Strome on this team and capitalize on all the free points they're getting.
The Coyotes are 17th in the NHL in 5v5 save%, they have no centres on their roster to speak of after Hanzal and one of their defensive pairings features Michalek and Dahlbeck; the other Nick Grossmann.
How are they winning? It's bizarre. Fun. But Bizarre. The song above is apt, I'd say.
PLUS: The Carolinas are a team that is the opposite of the Arizonas: They should win but don't. Look out for them over the next sixty games, they're going to surprise a lot of people when the puck starts going the right way.
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