Steven Stamkos, NHL suspensions and LA Kings' future (Puck Daddy Countdown)

(Ed. Note: The column formerly known as the Puck Daddy Power Rankings. Ryan Lambert takes a look at some of the biggest issues and stories in the NHL, and counts them down.) 

8. The Department of Player Safety

Game 1 of Tampa/Pittsburgh was, to put it kindly, a melee.

Ryan Callahan boarded Kris Letang in a very scary incident, and it only got worse from there. Ondrej Palat hit Brian Dumoulin in a similar if less plainly intended manner. Chris Kunitz went knee-to-knee on Tyler Johnson with another borderline hit.

And for all we know, the Department of Player Safety never even thought about picking up the phone. Well, probably they thought about it in the same way the average person thinks to themselves, “Maybe I'll have the lobster tonight” and then decides, nah, can't justify that.

Let's put this in the simplest terms possible: The NHL Department of Player Safety has become an absolute joke. Under Stephane Quintal, we've seen the trend started during Brendan Shanahan's second season devolve to a pitiful level of gutlessness where even the most obvious of suspendable plays doesn't so much as result in a hearing, let alone a fine, let alone a suspension.

Ryan Callahan deserved more than a five-minute major for the Letang hit. Full stop. Whether you thought it needed to be a suspension shouldn't be all that debatable, but even if you thought a fine was more appropriate, the only people on earth who thought that was an unfortunate but clean play were in the Tampa dressing room, in the greater Tampa area, or sitting in the DoPS office in Manhattan playing Candyland instead of actually policing the sport.

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Again, this started under Shanahan, who it's been said many times before came into the job guns blazing. He thought nothing of handing down suspensions of eight games or more to anyone who even thought about crossing the line. It was the kind of frontier justice that happens early in any Western about a town gone bad.

Nowhere was that typified more than the playoffs in his first season. The playoffs, we're told, are supposed to be a time when things rarely get penalized, much less rise to the level of suspension. And yet:

One thing that you'll note here is that this includes the remainder of Shanahan's tenure, which highlights the unfortunate truth about player safety in general: It's extremely and unfortunately political. I'll tell you what almost certainly did in the early Shanahan-era thumb on the scale of justice, too.

Raffi Torres. He got 25 games, which he should have. Bettman came in a few months later and cut that to 21. Not a huge drop, but one that undermined the power of the Player Safety department thoroughly.

That only 15 players have been suspended in the last four years. How many do you think  would have been suspendable under Shanahan, given the clearly defined “Don't do this, but this is okay” kind of rules he'd been laying out. Now, who knows what is and isn't a dirty hit? Even if it's one of those pornography, “I know it when I see it” things, we have to err on the side of “Quintal really doesn't want to suspend anyone.”

Which isn't the job description.

Why not, like, I don't know, just quit? Maybe then we wouldn't see as many concussions in the league. Just throwing that out there.

7. Messing with Joe Thornton's beard

Listen, David Backes, you can apparently get away with a lot in this league in 2016, but tugging on a man's beard? Especially a beard as wondrous as that on the kindly face of my good nice son Joe Thornton, a true treasure of my days and nights.

If DoPS worked properly this beard-pulling would have resulted in a lifetime ban from the sport. David Backes is disgusting to me.

6. Ads-on-jerseys dislikers

So the NBA is finally going to make this happen, and the nightmare scenario for all the people who hate ads on jerseys as a concept is now here.

Gary Bettman always said that he wouldn't be down to be the first league to do it, but now that the NBA — his beloved NBA — is going forward with it, you can bet the NHL will be the second. I would not expect, however, that the NHL will be able to pull $5 million a year per team in jersey sponsorships, which is what the Sixers are getting from StubHub.

But even if an NHL jersey ad pulls half that on average, it's a not-inconsiderable chunk of change for the league as a whole. That's an extra $75 million in revenues across 30 teams. That adds $37.5 million to the players' share of HRR per year. That raises the cap by $1.25 million annually. And that maybe allows one extra player to stay with good teams rather than being shuttled off elsewhere. It's not a huge difference, but it's a difference.

How quick do you think all the jersey-ads-haters in Chicago get on board if the increase means they can actually keep a core player after all? Especially if they're as unobtrusive as the NBA's are.

5. No Olympics?

All that stuff about “The NHL is gonna use the World Cup as an excuse to not go to the Olympics?”

Yeah hey what a shocking turn of events that the NHL might not go to the 2018 Olympics. I'm sure it's unrelated.

4. Steven Stamkos

As the man himself tries to work his way back from the blood clot in his arm and work out all the medication issues that comes with that, one starts to get the feeling Jonathan Drouin might be Wally Pipp-ing him pretty hard here.

Not that the Bolts are going to complain about Stamkos getting back healthy or anything like that, but if this is what life without Stamkos — and with Drouin instead — looks like, then Steve Yzerman is probably more than happy to let him get $11 million from Toronto this summer.

Maybe that ends up being a good thing for all involved, because saving the money on re-signing Stamkos helps the Bolts keep everyone they need to keep, and gives Drouin the spot in the lineup he's now showing is richly deserved.

Meanwhile, Stamkos gets to cash in on the UFA market, which he also deserves to do.

Point being: Drouin has been really awesome in this postseason, and that's good for everyone. He's been so good, in fact, that he's helped to prolong the Lightning's postseason run to the point where a Stamkos return is feasible. That also helps all involved.

3. The Kings

Getting Darryl Sutter back is huge. While the team's window may be closing quicker than most people might have expected (thanks in large part to worrisome contracts given to not-great players coughdustinbrowncough), having assurances that Sutter will be around for the next few years props that window open basically as long as he's around.

This club has clear areas of need, and moving to address them started with the Sutter uncertainty. Because if you lose a coach that good, that window goes from being wide open to potentially slamming shut depending on who's hired to replace him.

Now, it's always possible that Sutter's dithering was designed to extract an extra year or two, or a few extra hundred thousand dollars on the contract. And well, that's business. But the good news is that this doesn't impact their player spending in any way, or at least shouldn't, so as long as you have the certainty of an elite coach everything else is a lot easier to work.

Let's be clear: This season's first-round elimination in five games was an aberration. This team is still really good despite some of the wartier aspects of the lineup that still need addressing. I know everyone had a few chuckles about the Jonathan Quick meltdown because he was never as good as his postseason numbers indicated, but he also isn't as bad as this meltdown. If he plays at a normal level for his career, he's a slightly-better-than-league-average goaltender; and with a team that gets as much volume shooting as the Kings, that's all you really need to whale on the competition most years.

This kind of thing happens. The Kings are still great (though probably trending downward more so than other elite clubs) and so is Sutter. This contract is great news for the team.

2. The Panthers' shakeup

So the Florida Panthers are going in a new and better direction when it comes to player evaluation. Almost an entirely new front office, with a more analytical bent to their decision-making. However, it turns out that all the But Dale Tallon Drafted Jonathan Toews pearl-clutching from the usual dopes in the national hockey media was for nothing, because not only is Tallon still in the decision-making process, he's the guy who gets his way when there's a disagreement with the GM.

I will say that's a little strange, but having someone to be like, “Hey, I'm not gonna offer Dave Bolland any sort of contract” is a good thing. Tallon is good at a lot of things in this sport, but player evaluation has often been a blindspot for him. More eyes and voices in the process is a good idea.

The Panthers recently started going as all-in on analytical decision-making as anyone in the league. And because they're a budget team, that's what they should be doing. Any moves they can make to gain even the slightest edge on a richer team will serve them extremely well.

It's tough to be excited about having owners having a voice in these decisions, but that's perhaps the cost of doing business. It's certainly better than not making these changes, anyway.

1. Killer instinct

Is it just me or has the analysis on NBC broadcasts gotten even worse than it usually is?

It's usually bad, but now we have Pierre McGuire saying that if last season's Tampa team — which went to the Cup Final last year and finished with 108 points — had gone down 2-0 in the first period they would have “melted down.” We have Jeremy Roenick saying Sidney Crosby, the best player alive, needs to crib some notes on Caring About Hockey from Jonathan Drouin. We have Mike Milbury advocating pulling a goaltender who's been a team's MVP for this entire playoff run, because he gave up two goals in the first period.

This was all during Game 2 of Bolts/Pens, by the way. And I'm sure you can do this for literally any game in the last week.

Like, yeah, you're never going to get more than surface-level analysis from these guys in the first place. Fair enough. We all know that's the deal.

But all three of those points are flat-out idiocy. It's some lazy-ass garbage used to fill minutes. Why is it that there are plenty of very insightful hockey people in a position to provide analysis on national television, but we have to sit there and listen to these half-formed hack spewings? It's been said a hundred times, but why does anyone think Milbury adds anything but being a loud moron to proceedings? What does Roenick provide that a particularly mediocre Don Cherry parody Twitter account wouldn't? Can't NBC just find someone likable, give them an iPhone hooked up to Elite Prospects, and have them do the same info McGuire does?

It really shouldn't be actually painful to watch NHL playoff games. It shouldn't seem like a better idea to watch games on mute than with sounds.

There are so many good announcers and analysts out there. Anyone with Center Ice or Gamecenter Live understands this. Dozens of better options exist, and probably even cost less than these guys do.

For everyone's sake, can we change this crap before Game 3?

(Not ranked this week: Being a loser who excitedly goes to the World Championships instead of living in a closet in their basement for a month after losing to a better team.

Shame on you, Alex Ovechkin, trying to continue playing hockey for meaningful prizes after another long season. You stink buddy! Go to heck!!!!!!!)

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All statistics via War On Ice unless otherwise noted.)

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