Canucks’ center Ryan Kesler is being compared to the great Mark Messier for his strength, leadership, timely goals and all-around play when the going gets tough. (Frederick Breedon/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

“It’s interesting as you watch the playoffs, there’s lots of nice players during the regular season and they’ve got good skill level and all that but if you don’t got a drivetrain, if you don’t compete at the highest level, you can’t win at this time of the year. It’s all about competition level, it’s all about digging in and winning that simple little battle.” — Mike Babcock (video)

The Red Wings coach was talking about Pavel Datsyuk, who accelerated his play on Sunday night to keep Detroit alive with a 4-3 comeback win against San Jose. But it’s the concept of that “drivetrain” that Babcock was speaking about that concerns us today. It’s a good Detroit automotive metaphor for what moves things forward.
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Goaltender Carey Price is surely a longshot, but it’s hard to imagine where the offensively challenged Montreal Canadiens would be without him. (Scott Cunningham/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

After our usual Tuesday night skate, my teammates and I repaired to the Grill where the TV had highlights of all the NHL action. I noticed the Canadiens had won 3-1 in Atlanta and Carey Price had made 40 saves. Maybe it was the unusually large amount of lime that Eddie O. the bartender put in my club soda, but it crossed my mind that Carey Price certainly could be a legitimate candidate for the Hart Trophy. And then I started to think about who else might be considered. Compared to some of them, Price — who has almost single-handedly saved Montreal from a disastrous season — might be a longshot.

With the regular season entering its final stages — no team has more than 20 games left, the trade deadline has passed and playoff-race ferocity saturates the competition — the time is right to examine the NHLers who have been so crucial that the their teams might well have been a level or two below, if not complete train wrecks, without them.
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Canada’s mood today is reflected by its World Junior Championship team, which fell in stunning fashion to Russia in the gold medal game. (Rick Stewart/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

Let’s take a skate around the hockey world and see what’s interesting today…

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In just seven months as GM of the Tampa Bay Lightning, Steve Yzerman has shown a knack for making shrewd moves and surrounding himself with solid hockey people. (Cliff Welch/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

When Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik hired Steve Yzerman as GM last May, his first hope was that Yzerman’s lofty stature in the NHL would help restore confidence in the franchise among its fans, something that had been destroyed by the unpredictable and underfunded previous ownership group. But Yzerman’s astute moves have shown that he’s more than a stabilizing figure. He’s among the sharpest managers in the game.
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The Montreal Canadiens, who were a big surprise story in last spring’s playoffs, provided hockey with an amusing moment as the curtain was coming down on 2010. (Scott Audette/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

The Hockey Gods must have been very amused to hear a league executive raise the possibility of a rain delay during an NHL game. They responded by making a team take a too-many-men-on-the-ice penalty and, while killing it, take a second too-many-men penalty. For good measure in another game, the gods made a team’s player shoot a puck off the crossbar and into the stands where it hit his wife.
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As great as Wayne Gretzky was in his prime, his overall offensive impact on the Oilers wasn’t as great as Sidney Crosby’s has been on the Penguins. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

Some days it’s a challenge to find something new or different to say about Sidney Crosby, and he isn’t helping. We featured him here 10 days ago, but he just keeps plowing through the NHL and everyone, including SI.com’s Michael Farber, is justifiably raving about his play.

On Wednesday night, Crosby scored two more goals in Pittsburgh’s 5-2 dismantling of the Maple Leafs, who showed their truculence by ineffectively running at him. (He stood up for himself and was not thrown off his game at all.) Then the Leafs got beat and beaten up by Crosby’s teammates.

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