Eddie Lack: All-Rookie Team front-runner?

Lack is exceeding all expectations this year. And maintaining his entire
team's fading dignity in the process.

His numbers are among the league's elite. With a 2.22 GAA and .922 save percentage, Eddie Lack is tied for eighth and ninth in the NHL, respectively. Yet with a 8-8-3 record, he is one of only two goalies with a .500-or-worse record among the league's top 15 in GAA. The other goalie? Cory Schneider.

That speaks volumes. Because unlike the dispatched ginger in his tenure here, Lack has accomplished his top-level stats on what is now a truly mediocre team. The next-highest ranking goalie without a winning record is Justin Peters at 7-9-4 with Carolina.

Pavel Bure, Alex Ovechkin and other All-Star voting fallacies

Counting down to Bure night, this is the third in a 10-day series of posts that I now regret promising chronicling the Russian Rocket's career.

With Bure night exactly a week away, the Canucks are returning home from their road trip where they'll await Alexander Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals on Monday. Ovie's pure skill and goal-scoring ability have drawn him comparisons to Bure ever since he broke into the league.

This past off-season, Ovechkin made headlines when he was dubiously voted to both the First and Second NHL All-Star Teams. Thanks to a collective balloting error from the Professional Hockey Writers Association (PHWA), he was named to the First Team as a right wing and the Second as a left. As you can imagine, it was the first such All-Star deuce in NHL history (I feel like somewhere Roberto Luongo's ears just perked) and effectively cheated Taylor Hall out of a Second Team spot.

So what does this have to do with Pavel Bure? Well, the Writers Association does in fact have a history for this sort of thing. Only the reverse happened to Bure following his rookie campaign in 1991-92.

Bure, the victim of voting error, and Ovechkin, the beneficiary.

What you (probably) didn't (care to) know about Zac Dalpe

Zac Dalpe is a little over 24 hours into his new tenure with the Vancouver Canucks. And sadly, Wikipedia remains devoid of interesting tidbits to sate my inner hockey geek. As pointed out by The Province shortly after the trade, the 23-year-old Ontario native is already familiar with BC, having played for the Penticton Vees back in 2007-08.

But caman. We can do better, internet! As far as obscure Google finds go, Pass It To Bulis got the ball seriously rolling with these NHL Award predictions from 2011-12. According to two out of five Hockey Prospectus analysts, Dalpe was your surest bet for the 2012 Calder Trophy. Take that, Gabriel Landeskog. 

But what else? I don't know about you, but when Dalpe gets that first call-up, I wanna be well-stocked with some truly mundane facts to casually toss into pre-game conversation. How else are you supposed to signal your superiority of unnecessary hockey knowledge?