Brock Lesnar, NHL All-Star snubs and third jerseys (Puck Daddy Countdown)

(In which Ryan Lambert takes a look at some of the biggest issues and stories in the NHL, and counts them down.)

8 – Brock Lesnar

Seems like the Beast Incarnate made the ultimate hockey faux pas and stepped on the Jets logo, and the whole team yelled at him.

It’s really too bad he beat Toby Enstrom to death with Drew Stafford but frankly the Jets needed to get out from under those contracts anyway.

7 – Keeping John Tavares in Brooklyn

Saw Wysh’s take yesterday on how John Tavares might re-sign with the Isles if they get a decent supporting cast around him. Sure, nice thought. They should definitely do that. But here’s the problem: They can’t.

Look at the contracts on this team. There just aren’t a lot of good values there with the exception of Tavares, who’s about to command at least $9 million and deserves eight figures. They have a ton of bad deals coming off the books in 2018-19 but that’s also two years from now.

Hell, man, Casey Cizikas, Cal Clutterbuck and Josh Bailey make a combined $10.15 million starting next year. That’s inexcusable. It flat-out doesn’t make sense. So how can you build when you’ve got $10.15 million in those three, plus $10.5 million in Andrew Ladd and Mikhail Grabovski, plus no goaltending plan, plus a coach who clearly doesn’t get it? I dunno.

I wish Tavares as well as anyone in the league. This franchise has done nothing to deserve his loyalty. Let him go somewhere he can help a contender. He’s never bringing a Cup to the Islanders because no one can.

6 – Shea Weber

Bro, you put Brendan Gallagher on the shelf for two months? Bad teammate. Habs lose the trade.

5 – Playing until you’re 55

Hey remember earlier this year when Jagr had an on-ice shooting percentage of like 3 percent and everyone thought he was done because he is very old now? Yeah crazy that like three months later he’s got his shooting percentage up above 7 (which is still very low!) and all of a sudden he’s on pace for another 50-point season.

Crazy how it works! He had six points in his first 17 games. He has 19 in his last 25. His shot rate is effectively unchanged. Pretty crazy.

I hope Jagr does play until he’s 55. I could use another 11 years of him in the league. Even if he sucks. He’s seven points away from 1,900. Three more seasons I bet he breaks 2k. Wouldn’t that be a wild-ass thing to see from a guy who played through two separate Dead Puck Eras, whose career predates NHL-tracked time on ice by EIGHT seasons, and who also played from 2008 to 2011 in another league?

I’d love to see him catch Gretzky but another 1,000 points seems pretty extremely unlikely. He’d have had an outside chance if he’d racked up another 250 or 300 instead of going to the KHL.

But he is a blessing to us. Let’s never say a bad word about him. Agreed? Agreed.

4 – Two jerseys only!!!!

Next year the NHL will not have any third jerseys. People were weirdly upset about this. Most third jerseys are very bad. Few talk about this.

With this in mind, here’s me telling you the correct jerseys teams should wear under the new Adidas regime (with the caveat that I still firmly believe there should be no requirement for having a white jersey if you don’t wanna have one):

Anaheim: Go back to the purple and green.

Arizona: Last year’s were among the best in the league. Changing them was stupid. Change them back.

Boston: Current third and current white. They’re perfect.

Buffalo: The late ’80s/early ’90s jerseys are as good as it gets for this club.

Calgary: Go back to Flames Classic and dump the Black Flaming C.

Carolina: Current jerseys are perfect, but use the big logo on the thirds as the primary logo.

Chicago: The jerseys have been the best in the league since 1956 but maybe mix in a logo that isn’t extremely racist???

Colorado: The Avs have never had a good jersey (the color scheme is great) but taking elements from the first ones and simplifying it would be a good start.

Columbus: Their current home and road jerseys are the best they’ve had by far.

Dallas: Don’t change a thing.

Detroit: About the only thing the Wings get right these days is the look, but make the white bottom on the homes just a white stripe.

Edmonton: There’s a rumor they’re going with orange as the primary color. The blues and whites are top-class in the league. Don’t touch ’em.

Florida: If you go back to the beginning I might let you keep that stupid new military logo.

Los Angeles: Go showtime.

Minnesota Wild: Take a page out of the North Stars’ playbook but with your current logo. Not hard.

Montreal Canadiens: There’s simply nothing to change.

Nashville: Their current jerseys are their best ever, but lose the piping.

New Jersey: Christmas trees.

Islanders: Keep it classic. Don’t get any big ideas.

Rangers: Another one that shouldn’t and fortunately won’t change.

Ottawa: Kick it back to the OG design with a modernized version of the logo.

Philadelphia: Current thirds and roads. Ditch the homes.

Pittsburgh: Bring back the powder blues. Go to hell if you don’t like ’em.

St. Louis: Winter Classics.

San Jose: Use the original jerseys with current logos.

Tampa Bay: Perfect as-is.

Toronto: The new ones are perfect.

Vancouver: That third they had a few years ago based on their jerseys from the ’70s were the only ones in team history that weren’t extremely dumb.

Washington: Current thirds at home, 2012 thirds on the road. Or put another way: The unis they wore until the mid-90s.

Winnipeg: Just embrace your disingenuousness and use the current color scheme with the ’90s Jets uniforms.

3 – A definitive ranking of whether guys who made the All-Star team should have made it in my opinion, which is good and correct as always

Well folks, hockey fans sure were mad once again — who saw that coming??? — about a bunch of guys who made the All-Star Game and maybe shouldn’t have I guess. So just to clear up any confusion as to who deserved to go and who didn’t, I’m just gonna tell you. Now you can tell all your friends what my thoughts are and pass them off as your own. I give you my complete and total permission to use my professional insight as though you came up with it on your own, which you of course could not have in real life:

Nikita Kucherov: Yes.

Brad Marchand: Yes.

Austo Matthews: Yes.

Frans Nielsen: No representatives from the Red Wings should have been allowed.

Kyle Okposo. Should have been Eichel.

Vince Trochek: They weren’t gonna force Jagr to go, so whatever.

Victor Hedman: Yes.

Erik Karlsson: Yes.

Shea Weber: No.

Carey Price: Yes.

Tuukka Rask: Yes.

Sidney Crosby: Yes.

Taylor Hall: Yes.

Evgeni Malkin: Should have been Kessel, morally speaking, but yes.

Alex Ovechkin: Yes.

Wayne Simmonds: Yes.

John Tavares: Yes, just to give him the chance to play with decent players for once.

Justin Faulk: Yes.

Seth Jones: Sure I guess.

Ryan McDonagh: No.

Sergei Bobrovsky: Yes.

Braden Holtby: Yes.

Patrick Kane: No.

Patrik Laine: Yes.

Nathan MacKinnon: For lack of better options from that team, yes.

Tyler Seguin: Yes.

Vladimir Tarasenko: Yes.

Jonathan Toews: No but like, he’s Jonathan Toews so what am I gonna say? Should’ve been Panarin but you don’t let Toews stay home unless he has like 15 points.

PK Subban: Yes he is my son.

Duncan Keith: Yes.

Ryan Suter: Nah.

Corey Crawford: Yes.

Devan Dubnyk: Yes.

Connor McDavid: Who?

Jeff Carter: Yes.

Johnny Gaudreau: Yes.

Bo Horvat: Good lord no.

Ryan Kesler: I think they misspelled Getzlaf.

Joe Pavelski: I think they misspelled Thornton.

Brent Burns: Yes.

Drew Doughty: No.

Cam Fowler: Sure.

Martin Jones: Yes?

Mike Smith: Hahahahahahaha c’mon fam.

Thank you.

2 – Alex Ovechkin my big rowdy boy

One day we will talk all about how amazing Alex Ovechkin was and a sizable portion of the hockey media will laugh along like yeah what a pleasure to watch but we will know that they actually badmouthed him at every turn for reasons that were incredibly stupid and for idiots.

Don’t let anyone with a lazy Lazy Russian take tell you they liked him.

1 – USA gold

NCAA hockey did it again folks. Three golds in six years. No one can handle it.

(Not ranked this week: Long winning streaks sending otherwise smart people scrambling for explanations.

You don’t have to go looking for reasons why the Blue Jackets keep winning. They have one of the highest PDOs in the Behind the Net era — currently 102.7 and seventh since 2007-08 — and they’re shooting 19.7 percent on the power play. There, mystery solved. Good lord, this isn’t hard.)

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

(All statistics via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)