Quick to Judge

Voting for the 2012 All Star game is on and--as always--the players from teams with the biggest fan bases get voted in while some of the league's ACTUAL all stars get snubbed. Looking over the current voting standings, I can't help but notice that one the league's best goalie has been snubbed by the hockey community once again.

Jonathan Quick is easily the most valuable player on the Kings' roster. Beyond that, his stats rival that of the best goalies in the league. Quick's prowess isn't new either. He's been dominant since 2009. However, Quick has yet to be invited to an All Star game, receive an award of any type, or even receive any sort of noticeable acknowledgement of his spectacular play. It's the most cruel sort of negligence.

Rewind back to 2009-10. At this point, the Kings had been pretty forgettable since the days of Wayne Gretzky. Enter Jonathan Quick. It's his first full season in the NHL. Interestingly enough, it's the first time the Kings would make the playoffs since the lockout. It would make sense that Quick had a lot to do with that since he started 72 games of the 82-game season, and unreal workload. And Quick's quantity of play was not substituted for quality, rather it was supplemented by it. In the 09-10 campaign, Quick posted a SV% of .907 and a 2.54 GAA. Beginner's luck? I doubt it. Sophomore slump? Not at all. In 10-11, Quick improved on his numbers. Playing 11 fewer games (there's no way he could have kept pace with 72/year), Quick posted a .918 SV% and a 2.24 GAA.

If you continue to track Quick's numbers into this season, they continue to get better. Through 31 starts this season, he has a ridiculous .930 SV% and 2.08 GAA. Oh, and he leads the league in shutouts with 5. You would think that numbers like this would garner a spot on the All Star roster. However, on the list of the top 15 vote-getters, Quick sits at 11.

Let's look at the goalies who sit above Quick:
1. James Reimer
2. Tim Thomas
3. Marc-Andre Fleury
4. Carey Price
5. Pekka Rinne
6. Henrik Lundqvist
7. Ilya Bryzgalov
8. Jimmy Howard
9. Nikolai Khabibulin
10. Roberto Luongo

Most of these guys are good goalies, but why doesn't Quick get higher consideration when he has better stats than most of them?

Even more pressing--why doesn't Quick get any love from his own team? No matter how well Quick plays, it seems that every year the Kings coach and management want to wedge more Jonathan Bernier into the net. ESPN (not that they're a reliable source of hockey opinion) predicts Bernier to somehow take the job away from Quick. So far, Benier's "competition this season has been a 3.10 GAA and .883 SV%. The Kings don't seem to realize that Quick is the one piece that is keeping them in contention.

Don't tell me about Anze Kopitar, Mike Richards, or Dustin Brown. The Kings offense has been miserably weak. They rank dead last in the league in goals per game with 2.1. Richards may be the top goal-scorer for the team, but even then he only has 13 this season and Kopitar is the only other player in the double digits in goals (10). Kopitar is also the top point producer on the team with 34, but there are only two other Kings with 20 points or more. Don't kid yourself and say that Quick's getting any help at the other end of the ice.

While his team wallows in futility, Quick is a rock on the other end of the ice. I told you that the Kings are scoring 2.1 goals per game. Well, the Kings are allowing 2.3 goals per game, which is the 6th best GAA in the league as a team. Granted, Bernier is probably responsible for the negative ratio, but the Kings offense isn't really giving Quick much room for error. Yet, the Kings sit one point out of the top spot in the Pacific Division.

All of this and Quick is still only considered a "dark horse" for Vezina consideration and sits behind 10 other goalies for All Star consideration, likely because of players like James Reimer who haven't really played that much or that exceptionally well this year, but are likely to get in because he plays in Canada or because he plays for a team with a large fan base.

Look at the stats. Look at reality. Quick is a real contender and the lynchpin of his team. Be a real hockey fan and call a spade a spade. Give credit to the real stars of the NHL. You could start by voting for Jonathan Quick.

What Controversy?

3.00 GAA and a .896 SV% sounds like Roberto Luongo's playoff stats...if he were having a good year. I certainly wouldn't have predicted they'd be the Blackhawks' young upstart goalie, Corey Crawford, midway through December. So technical and calm, Crawford maintained a 2.30 GAA and a .917 SV% in his rookie season with a markedly weaker squad in front of him. He played well enough to convince Stan Bowman to give him $8M over the next 3 years. What do we say of the start to the season? Shocking? Disappointing? Sophomore slump? I'd agree with that. One thing I won't say and I don't think you'll hear a lot of other people say is 'bust'.

Crawford has definitely had his struggles this year. Crawford is known as a goalie who is very technical, almost robotic at times. If you were going to beat Corey Crawford, you weren't going to wait until he was out of position or took a bad angle, because you would never score. Corey wasn't born a fundamentally-sound goalie. He earned his talent by working his ass off in Norfolk and Rockford for 5 years, while watching his big league team sign a veteran bust and call up an undrafted teammate after only spending one year in the AHL. Then he had to watch as that former teammate backstopped his big league club to a Stanley Cup Championship. Could you imagine Crawford's inner anguish? However, instead of demanding a trade or complaining that he should have been called up before Antti Niemi, he just worked harder. He worked harder so that one day when Antti Niemi's agent got greedy (whether or not he was worth the money is another discussion), the Blackhawks would be more inclined to try the 2nd-round prospect who had been groomed in the AHL for 5 years.

Crawford would meet yet another challenge, though. The Blackhawks, wary to hand the reigns over to a rookie had signed Marty Turco to be their starter. Again, Crawford didn't complain, but worked harder and made the most of his opportunities. Not surprisingly, Crawford earned the starting job by December.

Crawford's 2011-12 campaign didn't start where he left off last year. His first few games were pretty typical of Corey, but by the end of October, you could already tell that he wasn't himself. Allowing 4, 5, 6 goals was NOT something Crawford did regularly. One could blame the poor defensive play we've seen this year. Nik Hjalmarsson, Steve Montador, Sami Lepisto have put forth some poor efforts this year. Even Duncan Keith and Nick Leddy have had some doozies. Unfortunately, these weren't Corey's only problems. He seemed to have lost some of that technical play we had seen before. On more than one occasion, Crow seemed to lose his crease. He would be down too early, only to watch a puck hit the net above his shoulder. He needed to go back to the basics.

Thankfully, the Blackhawks started a new veteran reclamation project in Ray Emery. Emery's story is different, although it still includes trials and challenges. Formerly a stalwart tender in Ottawa, Emery found himself out of favor with the Ottawa brass and since then has spent his days bouncing around the league. His stay in Philly ended with Emery finding that he had avascular necrosis, a rare disease in which the cells of femur in the hip joint begin to die due to a lack of blood flow. Emery had surgery and declared his intention to rehab and play again one day, but most fans had written him off. True to his word, Emery returned to the NHL in the last month of the 10-11 regular season and the first round of the playoffs with the Anaheim Ducks. Emery was a new man, posting 7 wins, 2 losses, a 2.28 GAA, and a .926 SV%.

Emery's performance made the league take notice, but the Ducks' regular starting goalie returned this year after a bout of vertigo and no longer needed Ray's services. The rest of the league was either set at goalie or were unwilling to take a chance on Emery's new hip. The Hawks didn't really need a starting goalie and they had their reservations about Emery as well. Chicago brought Emery into camp on a tryout basis before signing him. The Hawks haven't regretted it, either. Unlike Crawford, Emery DID pick up where he left off last year. So far, Emery's posted a 7-1-2 record with a 2.70 GAA and a .904 SV%. He's been a rock when the Hawks D has looked like they were in the spin cycle. He looks like a guy who's somehow found a second "prime". Think that bird on the back of Ray's helmet is a hawk? I'd be more inclined to think it's a phoenix.

Emery has made it possible for the Hawks to let their young star sit back and work with goalie coach Stephane Waite, while the Blackhawks continue to win games. This has led the media to speculate that there is a goalie controversy in Chicago. I'm not convinced.

Remember how Corey Crawford got to where he was last year? Watching everyone else be where he wanted to be and working hard on his technique to get there. All of the sudden Corey's lost that drive? I doubt it.

The Blackhawks are lucky to have a guy like Emery to hold down the fort until Crawford gets his head right, but the truth is that Emery is a streaky goalie. I'm ecstatic that he's on the positive side of things while Crawford is working things out, but Hawks fans shouldn't expect Ray to keep up this pace the entire season. If Ray's honest with himself, he knows that he's streaky too. He also knows that his main objective this year is to prove to NHL clubs that he still has gas left in the tank. He doesn't want to hit the downslope of his streakiness as badly as Blackhawks fans want to avoid it. As soon as the good times end, he'll be glad to let Corey take over for a while.

In the meantime, Corey Crawford will work to earn his starting role back. And when he does we'll all be saying, "What controversy?"

Losing Credibility

It's not an easy job to have. Colin Campbell called it a thankless job. No matter what you do, you won't please everyone. As the head of the NHL's Department of Player Safety, one must watch all serious hits or penalties and decide whether supplementary discipline is necessary. If you give a player a suspension, half the fans will say that you're turning the NHL into a Pansy League. If you decline to suspend a player, the rest of the fans will say that you don't care about player safety or that you favor big market teams, etc. And forget about giving someone a fine, because no one will be happy with that. It really is a lose/lose situation.

I was psyched when Colin Campbell was replaced by Brendan Shanahan this summer. I had grown tired of Campbell's terrible inconsistencies. It seemed the times that most required a suspension, none would be given. Other times, when he did give a suspension, you couldn't tell when or why he'd throw the book at someone. One of the dirtiest, most dangerous hits we've seen in recent memory was dismissed by Campbell as he labeled Marc Savard "a little fake artist" and allowed Matt Cooke to skate on, delivering more dangerous head shots. Other famous inconsistencies include the lack of a suspension on either hit that put Sidney Crosby on the shelf for nearly a year, the lack of suspension to Zdeno Chara after nearly decapitating Max Pacioretty, and the lack of suspension to Raffi Torres after he shouldered Brent Seabrook in the head during the 2010-11 Playoffs.

I was looking forward to a change from the supposed "Wheel of Justice" approach by Campbell. And I wasn't disappointed as the new suspension liaison, Brendan Shanahan, began a new tradition of issuing a video breakdown of each suspended play. The videos brought a level of transparency to the suspension process that NHL fans had never experienced before. The videos had their critics, but I felt that Shanahan's videos gave the league more credibility. However, Shanahan's most recent decisions might be the beginning of his loss of credibility.

About a month ago, Milan Lucic plowed into Ryan Miller as Miller came out of his crease to play the puck. One might argue that if Lucic had his head down, he wouldn't have seen Miller come out to play the puck or that Lucic only brought his arms up to protect himself in the collision. Lucic's explanation wasn't as bad as Ndamukong Suh's delusional tale of losing his balance as he stood up, but I'm still not buying it. The play resulted in a concussion to the Sabres franchise goalie (although Buffalo might have been happy to have an excuse to play Jhonas Enroth more), but apparently that didn't factor into Shanny's decision. Shanahan withheld the hammer and decided that Lucic's hit wasn't suspendable. If he knew what was coming next, he might have changed his mind.

On Miller's first game back, he was drilled with yet another hit. This time, Jordin Tootoo was driving hard to the net, when he was stripped of the puck and was cut off by Christian Ehrhoff, leaving him nowhere to go but the crease. To his credit, Tootoo jumped in an attempt to avoid collision with Miller, but that didn't matter to the Sabres, who after being roasted for merely giving Lucic a stern talking-to after he hit Miller, jumped Tootoo (how brave...).

Shanahan put himself in a bad situation. He had to either stay the course, recognizing that Tootoo's hit was significantly less violent than Lucic's (I should also mention that this hit didn't result in concussion), but also send the message that plowing over the goalie is acceptable. Or he could suspend Tootoo, trying to fix the precedent he had already set, but effectively contradicting himself. A lose/lose situation, in which he chose the latter option. No matter what he chose, his credibility would be damaged. And Shanahan probably found out why everyone hated Campbell, and if he hasn't found out by now, he will in the next few days.