[Author's note: Power rankings are usually three things: Bad, wrong, and boring. You typically know just as well as the authors which teams won what games against who and what it all means, so our moving the Red Wings up four spots or whatever really doesn't tell you anything you didn't know. Who's hot, who's not, who cares? For this reason, we're doing a power ranking of things that are usually not teams. You'll see what I mean.]

6. The hit debate

Brooks Orpik went out there on Sunday and did what Brooks Orpik does: Hit someone hard and made everyone mad at him.

This time it was Jonathan Toews whom he clobbered in the corner, and sent to the dressing room with a shoulder injury, and boy was everyone out for blood. Namely, the people who were out for Orpik's blood were idiots — like Blackhawks fans who claimed that if Duncan Keith had hit Sidney Crosby like that, he'd be suspended — or notable national TV analysts — like Mike Milbury — or both — like Eddie Olcyzk.

This was a clean hit but because of who it was thrown by, and the circumstances surrounding an earlier incident in which he was involved this season (i.e. the clean but violent concussing of Loui Eriksson, and his subsequent unclean and ultra-violent by Shawn Thornton, who was “just defending a teammate”) have led Orpik's intentions to be called into question once again.

There is no debate here, by the way, that NHLers hit to hurt, insofar as no one besides Zach Stortini has ever hit to hug. But hitting to injure? One has to really doubt it.

So we had to have The Debate again, and it's baloney. The people who are calling for Orpik to be led through downtown Chicago in chains so schoolchildren could throw rotten vegetables and rocks at him are the same people who would be screaming for him to be benched if he pulled up on any check at any time for any reason.

This is, of course, ignoring the Real Hockey Guy insistence that players who hit hard should have to fight after doing so, because it's asinine and for complete dinosaur morons who want to live by Hammurabi's Code.

Grow up.

What people really want out of this is simple: Star players never getting hit hard enough to injure them. If Orpik had crushed Brandon Bollig and put him out for the season, we're not having this conversation.

5. Nonsense awards candidacy

At this time of year, awards candidates are discussed heavily because most teams' playoff lives are all but decided and there's not a lot to talk about. I've discussed before who should win the Hart trophy and the Jack Adams as the league's MVP and coach of the year (Sidney Crosby and Jon Cooper, respectively).

But because people have short memories, this is consequently also the time of year when players are mentioned in conjunction with awards whose candidacy must in some way be early April Fool's jokes. Take, for example, that of Gustav Nyquist, who has been shredding defenses for the last month and a half. In his last 21 games he has he has 17 goals and 10 assists and that is obviously a ton. He's singlehandedly kept the Red Wings in the playoff conversation — as long as you ignore the stellar efforts of the Maple Leafs to clear a space for them over the past few weeks — and thus is getting the late-season bump enjoyed recently by Alex Ovechkin and Corey Perry.

However, unlike those two players, he doesn't lead the league in anything, and even having 17 goals in 21 games only gets him to 27 for the year, and thus places him firmly behind other definitive Hart candidates like Ryan Johansen (30), James van Riemsdyk (29), and Zach Parise (28). For real, Nyquist is a good “young” player — that is, by Red Wings standards, because he's getting his first full season in the league at 24 — but he has 45 points this year. Mark Giordano has 44, and he's a defenseman. On the Calgary Flames.

Which brings us to the other positively ludicrous candidate that's being brought up constantly of late: Ryan McDonagh. His name is being thrown around a lot for two reasons: He's been really good for the last two weeks, and the Rangers have been winning. That's it. Those are the reasons he should be considered for the Norris. And it's dumb.

No one is saying McDonagh, or Nyquist for that matter, is having anything less than good seasons. But the Rangers' best defenseman is having maybe the seventh- or eighth-best season of any blueliner in the NHL right now. He has 43 points on a relatively low-offense team, and is playing some fairly tough minutes, and over the last several games has really made a push. But he's not driving play as effectively as Zdeno Chara or Giordano or even TJ Brodie, and he's not getting their tough assignments either.

Story continues