Why Clitsome suddenly has value; thoughts on Vasilevskiy and oh so much more …

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Jacob Trouba is out until February with a UBI, per the Jets Twitter account. I have to say – and I know this is extremely early – but I’m done with him. Done. Two years, two injuries. Usually that’s nothing to be alarmed about in a young player, but something about him tells me that the right move here is to get a proven guy for him who stays healthy. And let someone else worry about whether or not my Band-Aid Boy hunch is right. And so a-shopping I will go. And I’ll take the best offer. I’ll let you know how I do.

With Dustin Byfuglien already back playing defense, now what do the Jets do? Grant Clitsome will obviously draw back in. And we’ve seen Clitsome have spurts of production, and the spurts usually come as a result of ice time. And his ice time is given when the team doesn’t have a choice. Which is now. So my hunch is that we’ll see Clitsome put some points on the board over the next month.

(Update: I wrote the above thought prior to the game starting. Clitsome picked up an assist and saw 2:36 on the power play – so yeah, go get him)

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Nathan MacKinnon has two points in his last eight games and is minus-6 in that span. I’m getting a lot of emails and Tweets about him, and I’m seeing a lot of activity in the forum from panicking managers. So I want to share my thoughts here.

Now is the absolute worst time to trade MacKinnon. It’s like if you owned oil stocks a couple days ago – should you have sold? Like oil, MacKinnon’s value will spike back up. And it will be quick. I’m not convinced that’s he another Nugent-Hopkins or Yakupov. I’m convinced that he’s a Stamkos. And Stamkos has had runs of two points in eight games before. And he almost always follows it up with 10 points in seven games or something like that. No matter how good the offer is right now, you sit on MacKinnon. Let him get rolling again and if you’re so desperate to trade him, do it at that time. I can’t offer you a guarantee that MacKinnon will rebound and get 65 or 70 points this year. I wish I could. But will have some hot streaks and that’s when you trade him. Not now. And for what it’s worth, with 52 games left, I think he’ll get at least 40, which will put him at 59 points to finish.

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A 20-round shootout would get me more excited if shootouts happened once every three or four weeks. But there’s a shootout every other day, so they bore me. Big deal, 20 rounds and 11 goals. Bound to happen when you have 300 shootouts per season. When the league implements the four-on-four followed by three-on-three overtime, and shootouts become a rarity – then my interest returns.

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Andrei Vasilevskiy in his first career NHL game stopped 23 of 24 shots. A little preview of what’s to come…in four years. Yes, I’m down on the guy who is probably the best prospect goalie in the world, but I speak the truth. The only way Vasilevskiy becomes a stud starter within the next four years is if Ben Bishop suffers a long-term injury during that time. A healthy Bishop? Well, that will mean another Cory Schneider. Or another Jonathan Bernier. That is to say that a stud prospect goalie will spend too much time in the minors, and then too much time as a backup, before either getting traded or getting his shot. Sorry, that’s just how it is. Bishop is 56-24-10. Do you think he’s losing the starting job anytime soon?

Bishop, by the way, believes he’ll be back for the weekend. Vasilevskiy will probably get one more start.

It’s amazing that 33 games in and Tyler Johnson is still keeping up with Stamkos. He has 33 points, just two behind Stammer. I would have thought he’d fall off the pace by now and had him pegged for 60 to 65. But he’s looking legit for 70. Especially with the chemistry he has going with future star Nikita Kucherov. You want your next Tarasenko type of superstar, look no further. Kucherov hasn’t stopped being an offensive stud since birth. Look at his numbers every league he was in. He’s only 21!