Brayden Point’s playoff performance on behalf of the Tampa Bay Lightning this year reminds me a little of what Joe Nieuwendyk accomplished on behalf of the Dallas Stars back in the 1999 Stanley Cup playoffs — one of the oddest postseasons ever when it came time to select a playoff MVP.
The overall playoff scoring leader that spring was a player who didn’t even make it to the Stanley Cup Final – Peter Forsberg of the Colorado Avalanche. There was also considerable Conn Smythe support for Dominik Hasek, the goaltender of the runner-up Buffalo Sabres.
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When the focus shifted to the champions, the biggest issue was that contributions on the Dallas side were so scattered. Nieuwendyk led in goals (11). Mike Modano led in assists (18). Just like Hasek, Ed Belfour was very good in goal and important contributions were made by, among others, Brett Hull and defenceman Derian Hatcher.
In short, it was a year in which your Conn Smythe ballot could have gone in a lot of different directions.
Ultimately, Nieuwendyk was the choice, in part because out of his 11 goals six were game-winners and came at crucial, deciding moments.
So now you fast forward to this year’s playoffs, where Point’s goal-scoring is very Nieuwendyk-like. With goals in six consecutive games now, he’s upped his playoff goals-per-game average to 0.57 (33 goals in 58 career games).
Historically, that ranks seventh among players who’ve played 30 playoff games or more. It’s an elite group, with one curious outlier: Mario Lemieux, Mike Bossy, Barry Pederson, Maurice Richard, Cam Neely and Wayne Gretzky are the only players currently ahead of Point.
If Tampa Bay goes on to win the Stanley Cup, and present form holds, voters will have to make some hard choices.
Nikita Kucherov looks as if he’ll be the runaway points leader (he’s at 23 now, a long way ahead of Nathan MacKinnon, David Pastrnak and Point, who are at 15).
Andrei Vasilevskiy is having another excellent playoff and there’ll be scattered support for Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman in the same way there was for Hull and Hatcher.
And yet, it’s hard to imagine that anyone’s meant more overall to Tampa Bay’s success than Point. If the vote was held today, I know which way I’d be leaning.
This and that
• Tampa Bay’s done the vast majority of its scoring damage with the man advantage. Of Kucherov’s 23 points, 15 have been on the power play. Hedman has 10 power-play points; Stamkos and Point nine apiece. Of course, that had me wondering who has been the most effective even-strength scorer in these playoffs, and I have to tell you, I was a little surprised when it came up as William Karlsson of the Golden Knights.
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Karlsson, too, is a little too easy to overlook when it comes to the Golden Knights’ success thus far. That nominal second line – Karlsson between Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith – is still carrying on the legacy of the playoff Golden Misfits, though their contributions have been largely overshadowed by Marc-Andre Fleury’s goaltending, Mark Stone’s scoring and leadership and the defensive contributions of Alex Pietrangelo, Shea Theodore and Alec Martinez. But Karlsson just soldiers along, quietly getting the job done.
• You watch Martinez contribute to Vegas and you remember how much Jake Muzzin’s absence meant to Toronto when things started to unravel for the Maple Leafs and then you factor in Tyler Toffoli’s timely scoring on behalf of the Canadiens and you wonder if the Los Angeles Kings are regretting at all the decision to part with all three, given the sort of contributions they were/are making to their current teams.
The things that are missing in L.A. right now – scoring from the second line; defensive depth and stability – are the things those players are contributing to their current teams. Much has been made of Dougie Hamilton’s pending UFA status, which we’ll address below, maybe not enough about Martinez’s because he is also unsigned after this year. If you’re wondering, Martinez is 33, a left-shot defenceman who can comfortably play both sides and coming off a just-completed six-year, $24 million contract he signed back in December 2014.
• Every year, the NHL Players’ Association conducts an internal poll of its membership, surveying them on all sorts of topics and issues, some serious, some frivolous and fun.
I believe the exercise carries some weight because this is the view from ice level and who better to assess the best-of-the-best than the players on the ice. Now, this year, there has to be a small caveat: Because of the schedule and the full intra-divisional play, players only got to face the same handful of teams over and over again and thus didn’t get to play head-to-head against the other 75 percent of the league.
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Accordingly, there likely was a certain amount of reputation voting that went on this year. Even so, there were some interesting results:
Sidney Crosby and Patrice Bergeron ended in an exact tie for most complete player, which is statistically difficult to do considering 490 players cast ballots during March and April of this year.
If you wanted a single player to help you win one game, the choice was Connor McDavid.
Hedman was the runaway winner of the best defenseman, finishing ahead of Roman Josi. Hedman, by the way, has been selected best defenseman three years running. It’s interesting where the players’ choices veered from there: Cale Makar was third, then Drew Doughty, John Carlson, Seth Jones and Miro Heiskanen.
• A few other winners from the NHLPA poll: Patrick Kane was chosen best stick handler; Nicklas Backstrom the best passer; Auston Matthews the most fashionable; and Crosby most superstitious (followed by old friend Michael Frolik, so clearly voters were paying attention). Colorado’s homage to their Quebec Nordiques roots meant they were the deserved winners of the best reverse retro jersey voting.
Maybe the two most interesting results were in answer to questions about scheduling.
The players were asked, if they could, would they like to see the NHL continue with regional divisional play?
The answer was a resounding no – 68.8 percent voted against the idea.
However, when players were asked if they’d like to see the practice of playing back-to-back games in a single city continue, so as to cut down on travel, they gave it a high approval rate: 66.30 of the voters said yes to that concept.
The NHL is planning to go back to the traditional divisional structure next year and is open to slight tweaks or amendments beyond that. Presumably, the players’ input will be factored in when it comes time to make a more permanent decision.
The Dougie Hamilton discussion
I try not to play amateur psychologist very often because other than brushing up against the rudimentary principles in Psych 101, I’m not qualified. But I do have a theory I want to explore about why Carolina’s Dougie Hamilton is such a divisive player.
Hamilton was in the news again this week when Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported that the Hurricanes had given his camp permission to speak to other NHL teams to see what the market might be for the pending unrestricted free agent. This is an unusual step for an NHL team to take – and fascinating on a couple of levels.
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Let’s assess who – and what – we’re talking about.
Hamilton had another fine year with the Hurricanes, leading the team in points by defensemen. He’ll probably finish in that five-to-10 range in the final Norris Trophy balloting.
He is an analytics darling, usually factoring high in wins above replacement values, but gets a lot of push back from people in the “eye test” camp, who see a confounding habit of taking ill-timed penalties and an unwillingness to engage physically, even though he’s a towering 6-foot-6.
Hamilton hasn’t always had the trust of every coach he’s ever played for to log the key minutes when a game is on the line.
To me, time-on-ice is a pivotal stat because generally speaking, the higher the minutes someone plays, the greater the trust a coach puts in that player. Remember, coaches are the ultimate, short-term thinkers. They’re trying to win every night – and put out the best lineup to ensure that happens as frequently as it can. Hurt feelings are someone else’s issue – for GMs, agents and assistant coaches to patch over. Head coaches only care about tonight’s outcome. Hamilton is already nine years into his NHL career, so let’s examine his year-by-year usage over that span:
In his three years in Boston, his time on ice went from 17:08 to 19:06 and then to 21:20.
In his three years in Calgary, he played 19:46; 19:41 and then 21:31.
Since arriving in Carolina, it’s been 19:40; 23:17 and 22:43.
It means two years ago, a season in which he missed 20-plus games because of a broken leg, Hamilton had his biggest year, in terms of TOI. This year, he placed third on the Hurricanes in ice time, behind Jaccob Slavin and Brett Pesce.
Hamilton’s greatest strengths are on the offensive side of the puck. This past season, Hamilton was tied for seventh in points by a defenseman with 42. He was tied for fifth in goals with 10. In terms of minutes played, that 22:43 average had him in 37th place.
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Compared to other elite defensemen, Hamilton’s minutes have been managed more carefully by a succession of different coaches on a series of different teams – though one could argue that in the past couple of years, that may be partly attributed to Carolina’s overall depth on the blue line.
No matter which camp you find yourself in – analytics, eye test, or some middle ground in between – there’s no disputing that Hamilton is a gem offensively and offensive defenseman almost always get paid.
At a time when getting shots through to the net from the point is critical in creating offensive opportunities, Hamilton finds those seams and gaps better than almost anyone in the NHL. (This year, he had the most shots on goal by a defenceman, 180, which was good for ninth overall in the league).
Being able to walk the line and time the shot just so that the puck gets through … well, for years, the Sharks’ Brent Burns did it better than anyone and now, he’s getting a push from Makar, Arizona’s Jakob Chychrun and Edmonton’s Darnell Nurse.
But Hamilton is right there, with the best, and that’s a valuable skill. One that almost every team needs more of.
Now, whenever a player stands 6-foot-6 and weighs 210 pounds, invariably, teams want to see a more physical approach. Often, in fact, that’s held against a big man – if he doesn’t play a big or physically menacing style. You can debate Hamilton’s overall on-ice merits and demerits back and forth, but in the end, the open market will eventually decide his contractual worth.
Still, after Friedman’s report got Hamilton’s name trending on social media, fans in the pro-Hamilton camp did a curious thing: They started tweeting out pictures of museums in their cities, on the grounds that if Hamilton does get to be an unrestricted free agent and starts visiting cities, then the presence of a world-class museum or two (or five or 10) might be a tipping point in the negotiations.
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This was an amusing riff on a comment made years ago about Hamilton during his time with the Flames – that he would rather go to a museum than to a bar with his teammates. It wasn’t meant to be insulting; it was more the idea that he marched to the beat of a different drummer and had an interest in history or the arts. Who knows? Maybe he even cracks the occasional book. The horror!
In junior, Hamilton was honored in 2009-10 with the Ivan Tennant Memorial Award as the top academic high schooler in the OHL, and the next year, he won the Bobby Smith OHL Scholastic player of the year. That raised the question I’ve wrestled with for years – is it possible to be both a jock and an intellectual at the same time?
Because sometimes, in the world of professional sport, you get the sense that maybe the two cannot go hand in hand. I don’t believe it has to be an either/or proposition. On the contrary. Having a foot in both camps might actually be a good thing. Now, having said that, hockey is the ultimate team sport. When a team wins, it’s usually because that year – or that month, or that week – all the pieces meshed in a way that’s hard to do.
Sometimes, you don’t even know why it happens. Why St. Louis gets it going one year, but not the next two? Or Washington. Or Vegas and Montreal now. And yet, when the Hamilton-goes-to-museums conversation resurfaced on Twitter this week, you had a sense that a percentage of people thought it came at the expense of team camaraderie – trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. I’ll maintain that’s a false narrative because, in addition to being the ultimate team sport, hockey is also, above all, a meritocracy. If you get the job done on the ice, little else matters.
More on the Hamilton watch
So, leaving aside the specifics of Hamilton’s pending UFA status for now, I am constantly impressed with how the Carolina ownership, from top to bottom, thinks and operates. I remember when Tom Dundon got the team and he started to do things a little differently. My original thought was: Let him try to forge a new path and see where it goes. The NHL is a copycat league, often to its detriment. Maybe someone who thinks outside of the box can come in and develop a formula that works. You can’t argue with the results.
Carolina has taken a business-like approach in all the decisions they make. They’re prepared to go their own way, especially when it comes to making hard, financial decisions. Too many other teams have gone the opposite way: Overpaid for today’s bright shiny toy, only to see their latest contract add (or extension) become a contractual albatross in short order.
A flat cap, naturally, exacerbates that. Carolina couldn’t see a global pandemic coming – but the decisions they’ve made to keep costs down have left them with an admirable nucleus and what looks like a bright future in both the short- and medium terms.
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Not many teams would be prepared to let someone of Hamilton’s pedigree walk, but they might. I never had the sense that Hamilton ever liked the spotlight in either Boston or Calgary.
I did a feature on him early in my days at The Athletic.
What I assume the Hurricanes are thinking internally is that if Hamilton gets a chance to ponder all the options out there, he might quickly realize that staying put, at a lesser number, in a market where he can mostly go about his business quietly and anonymously, is the best decision he can make.
After all, he is a pretty smart guy.
And finally
It was a pretty good 24 hours for Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour – officially signing a contract extension to remain with the Hurricanes for the next three years and then winning his first Jack Adams award later Thursday night. Brind’Amour became just the third Jack Adams winner to have also helped the same team win a Stanley Cup. The other two? Patrick Roy in Colorado and Bill Barber in Philadelphia. Good company there.
(Top photo of Brayden Point by Mike Ehrmann / Getty Images)
