The amount of minutes Duncan Keith has logged in this postseason is historic. In the salary cap era, no one has even come close to approaching it.

Wednesday night's contest got him up to more than 500 minutes of 5-on-5 time, making him one of just three guys in the last 10 seasons to clear that milestone. The other two are Dennis Seidenberg with Boston in 2011 (500:59) and Drew Doughty last season (528:59). They required 25 and 26 games, respectively, to get there. Keith got to 506:58 it in just 21. If the series goes three more games, he still won't match their games-played number, but he'll have blown by Doughty. Hell, based on what we've seen so far in this series, he'll probably do it in Game 22.

What's amazing is that he's not just playing all these minutes, but rather that he's playing dominant hockey for all these minutes. By just about any measure, Chicago dominates its opponents when Keith is on the ice versus when he's off — possession, high-quality chances, goals, etc. — and this is despite the fact that, were Keith any sort of actual human being and not a well-conditioned robot, fatigue ought to get to him far more than it has.

Conventional wisdom and even a bit of statistical research indicates that, as you get more minutes, your body starts to break down and you don't do as well. This makes perfect sense. Look at the concerns about Ryan Suter's workload in Minnesota having a negative impact on his numbers (though, y'know, not playing with Shea Weber hurts as well, and the opposite is true for Nashville's No. 1).

Want to know how rare it is that anyone plays this many minutes? Defensemen — and not a single forward — have cleared 450 minutes of even-strength ice time just 20 times in any the last 10 postseasons, and three of those seasons are Keith's alone. Johnny Oduya and Zdeno Chara are the only other guys to show up on the list more than once.

And as you might imagine, Keith is not only gobbling up more minutes than just about anyone in recent postseason history, but is also turning in elite-level performances among this group:

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And not only that, but he's doing it getting some of the most difficult usage ever seen in the postseason. Even before this postseason, he was turning in lots of minutes against high-quality competition (the higher of the bottom two Duncan Keiths in the chart below is from 2009-10, Chicago's first Cup run). But this season takes things to such an absurd level as to be laughable. The distance this year's Chicago team puts between itself and the rest of the field here is absolutely ludicrous.

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