Questions loom over Patrick Ka...

Welcome to 10 Insights and Observations. Every Thursday, I’ll use this space to highlight teams, players, storylines, and general musings around the NHL.

This week we look at Patrick Kane's value to contenders, scoring leaders not making the playoffs, 3-on-3 overtime strategy, the World Juniors, Alexis Lafreniere and much more.

Top scorers in danger of missing playoffs

As of this writing, three of the top four scorers in the league would not make the playoffs (Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Tage Thompson). That has never happened in the post-lockout era. It’s not completely unheard of for something like this to happen, though. In the 2009-10 season, the Tampa Bay Lightning had the fifth, sixth and seventh leading scorers in the league and they still missed the playoffs. Jamie Benn led the league in scoring in 2014-15 and missed the playoffs, as did Jakub Voracek who was fifth in scoring that season. The closest, though, might be the 2018-19 season, where Connor McDavid, Patrick Kane and Leon Draisaitl finished 2-3-4 in league scoring and all missed the playoffs. Last season, the only player to finish top-10 in scoring and miss the playoffs was J.T Miller. (he was ninth).

McDavid still no closer to a Stanley Cup

There is still plenty of time left in the regular season — over half the season — so I’m not about to count out the Oilers by any means. Should they miss the playoffs, though, it would be the fourth time McDavid misses the postseason. The first was his rookie season (in which he only played 45 games), while the other two he finished first and second in league scoring. Barring injury, he’s easily in position to lead the league in scoring yet again — he’s already 10 points up on the second leading scorer, teammate Leon Draisaitl.

If there’s some modern day hope to be found here, perhaps it’s in Steven Stamkos. After his rookie season, he finished fifth in scoring and missed the playoffs, then made it and went to the Conference Finals, then finished second in scoring and missed the playoffs (he scored 60 goals that season!). The following season, he finished second in scoring again, but missed the playoffs yet again (teammate Martin St. Louis, led the league in scoring that season). Tampa Bay made it the following season, even though they traded St. Louis at the deadline (he went to the Stanley Cup Final that season with the Rangers), and were promptly swept by the Montreal Canadiens in the first round.

Coaches prefer caution over chaos in overtime

When 3-on-3 overtime was first rolled out, it was chaotic. And that chaos made it insanely fun. Back and forth action, teams going full ice trading 2-on-1s and breakaways until someone finally scored. Less games going to shootouts and ending in a more “game-like” situation. Last season, there were 102 games that ended in a shootout in the NHL, which accounts for less than eight percent of the total. Before the introduction of 3-on-3, almost 14 percent of games ended in a shootout. So it has definitely worked.

Josi, Predators crashing back down to Earth

It was always going to be hard for Roman Josi to duplicate his 2021-22 96-point season. When you are that productive, and start the following season with a more modest 26 points in 33 games, it’s met with some disappointment. Interestingly though, he’s shooting more than he ever has. In his huge career season, he averaged 3.51 shots on net per game and led all defensemen with 281 shots on net. This season, he is averaging a whopping 4.3 shots on net per game! And go figure, he’s shooting a career low percentage (perhaps throwing just a bit too much junk at the net in the process), but to put things in perspective, he’s pacing for his third highest scoring season of his career.

Rangers' patience running thin with Lafreniere

In 2020, the Rangers lucked out and won the draft lottery, jumping from the 11th-best odds to the first overall pick. The consensus top player at the time was Alexis Lafreniere, fresh off a monster season in the QMJHL and an electrifying World Juniors where he looked like a complete franchise winger. He was already 6-foot-1, nearly 200 pounds and described as an NHL-ready product.

It has not exactly worked out that way, and it was announced Thursday that he was to be a healthy scratch for the Rangers' game against the Lightning. That’s sure to perk up the ears of opposing teams. His rookie season was the shortened, COVID bubble season. Difficult circumstances for anyone, let alone a first overall pick in New York City walking onto a team with a good veteran core that was ready to start winning. He played just 13:53 per night and played to a 31-point pace. Last season was more of the same, but along the way the “Kid Line” solidified itself and once the playoffs rolled around, he was very good. He still played just over 14 minutes per game, but he chipped in 9 points in 20 games and was hitting everything that moved — he was credited with 50 hits in those 20 games, way above his regular pace.

Is Kane slowing down ahead of expected trade out of Chicago?

The discourse around Patrick Kane and his availability on the trade market has been very interesting to follow. He only has five goals this season and 25 points in general in 33 games on a very bad Chicago Blackhawks team. He has always struggled defensively, but when he’s throwing up 92 points, as he did just last season, you deal with it. When he’s not producing at a high level, you can’t really stomach these types of efforts — weak along the boards in his own end, gives it away, then is nowhere being in the shooting lane.

Leafs thankful to not lose Holl in expansion draft

The expansion draft led to all sorts of interesting decisions. When Vegas entered the league, there were any number of teams that actively over-thought it and gifted the Golden Knights players that led them to make the Stanley Cup Final in their inaugural season. Seattle was not quite as fortunate.

There were essentially no side deals and teams just simply submitted their expansion list and let them pick away. One team that had one of the more interesting sequences of events was the Toronto Maple Leafs in all of this. There were two players in particular that stood out for them. Justin Holl, who had just emerged as a solid top-four defenseman, was a candidate to be lost. As was Alex Kerfoot, a player they did not particularly want to lose for free as the only piece remaining from the Nazem Kadri trade — plus he’s a useful player with some versatility that they value. To protect themselves, they acquired Jared McCann from Pittsburgh — another team facing some interesting decisions — and elected to expose both McCann and Kerfoot, protecting Holl in the process.

Some sweet, sweet holiday dishes

One of the prettiest passes in the league is the area pass. A player stopping up and saucer-passing a puck to space so that a teammate can skate into it. Look at this beautiful pass by Barclay Goodrow.

Stops up, identifies his teammate skating downhill, and just saucers the puck to space. Here’s another courtesy of Tony DeAngelo, just flipping the puck to space on a perfectly timed pass that hits his teammate in stride for a breakaway.

The World Juniors are a breath of fresh air

Wanted to end with a few notes on the World Juniors. First and foremost: nice to see the tournament back in full force, finally. It’s a great product and a reminder of how entertaining best-on-best international hockey is. Can’t say it enough: it’s criminal that we haven’t seen this with NHLers recently. If we never get to see a team that has all of Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, Steven Stamkos and Nathan MacKinnon on it at the same time, that is a damn shame.

International shootouts > NHL shootouts

One thing I do like about international hockey: five-person shootouts. Some will say they don’t like shootouts at all and want them to end as quickly as possible, which, fair enough, I get it. Ending the game with a skills competition of sorts is not the true essence of hockey. At the same time, if there is a shootout in a regular season game, the whole rink is standing. People are excited because it generally is exciting!

A three-person shootout is too quick and there’s not enough strategy involved. You score first, they miss and it’s almost over. You have five shooters and have to figure out how to divide them up, who is shooting where, so on and so forth and it gets very interesting, very quickly.