At left is Kristian Huselius in a former life. As you can see, he used to be a Florida Panther. And, were it not for the Luongo trade, Huselius would probably represent the worst personnel decision the Panthers organization has made in the last several years. And, were it not for the Kiprusoff trade, he would probably represent Sutter's best work to date.
As most know, Juice was stolen from the Panthers for Steve Montador - a 12 minute/night, depth defenseman. Of course, he was available for a brief period on the waiver wire for nothing, but Sutter decided to dump some salary while acquiring an asset. Thus the trade instead.
And what a doozy it's turned out to be.
Huselius has been nothing short of excellent in Flames colors. Last season, he played at a 65 point pace after coming over from Florida, and led the team in terms of PP point efficiency by the end of the year. In the post-season (his first appearance) he had 6 points in 7 play-off games and was 3 inches away from scoring a break-away goal that arguably would have ended the Ducks Stanley Cup aspirations and sent the Flames on to the next round.
I had a good feeling about Juice coming into this year. I'd really liked what I'd seen from him on the ice - slick stickhandling, great vision, excellent patience - plus some of his basic plus metrics (such as his PPP/60 figure) spoke to production rather than just promise. With the addition of Alex Tangauy to the line-up and the possibility of a bounce back year from Jarome, I thought it highly possible that Huselius would push for 65+ point season, especially if he saw first unit PP time. As such, I managed to snag him in one of the bottom rounds of my hockey pool in October.
Score.
Pool or no pool, Im inclined to think I would have noticed Juice's stellar play either way. During the first half of the year, Huselius looked like a top-notch support player who was reveling in the soft minutes while the the big guns got the job done against the tougher assignments. However, in the second half of the season Huselius has looked like a big gun himself - a drink stirring straw, if you will. In January when Iginla went down, Juice moved up to play with Tanguay and Langkow and he kicked ass - 16 points in 13 games, and a +9. And, despite the Flames struggles through February and March, Juice hasn't slowed down much. He's gathered 29 points in the last 26 games and managed a decent +7. As it stands, he sits 3rd on the team in points behind only Jarome and Tanguay with 74, and is in the top 30 for points (28th) in the league and is a Flames leader in terms of +/- (+21).
Try not laugh when you say it: STEVE MONTADOR.
That's not the extent of Juice's excellence this season, however. Driven by my assertion that Kristian has been "that good" over the last little while, I took a closer look at the game sheets from the prior 8 weeks. Known as a soft-playing defensive liability, it would probably shock many fans (and Florida management) to know that Juice has been on the ice for all of 8 goals against since the start of February. In fact, since the end of December, Huselius has been a minus player in a grand total of 5 games. Five. In contrast, he's been on the ice for 15 ES goals by the Flames and a whopping 22 PP goals over the course of Feb. and March - a sum of 37 positive events, as opposed 8 negative ones. Granted, he gets next to no PK minutes as compared to his ES and PP time, but...those are still some very, very good numbers for a guy who was considered next to useless because he was a "liability" on the ice a mere 1.5 seasons ago.
(I should note, before I go on, that Juice makes $1.4 million/year. That's less than Jeff Friesen.)
It doesn't stop there, either. Juice has 33 PP points this season, which puts him 25th in the league. While his ESP/60 rate is hardly mind-blowing (approx. 2.34 ESP/60), his penchant for collecting points with a man-advantage, particularly in the 2nd half of the year, has caused his PPP/60 efficiency to jump to a staggering 6.67.
To put that in perspective, the top 6 PP point producing forwards in the NHL are, in order, Crosby, Thornton, Savard, Selanne, Hossa and Heatley. Crosby and Thornton exist in a universe all their own when it comes this metric - Sid the Kid has 58 PPP in 423 minutes of ice - good for 8.22 PPP/60. Thornton is even better, managing 50 points in 385 minutes for a 8.37 PPP/60 rate. After that, Savard, Selanne, Hossa and Heater all hover around Juice's figure: 6.81, 6.92, 5.97 and 5.87, respectively.
As you can see, elite company. Juice actually has a superior rate compared to guys like Heatley and Hossa, who have the benefit of playing in the Eastern conference against goalies named Thomas, Raycroft, Ward, Grahame, Denis, etc. all year. Granted, Kristian's played less minutes on the PP than any of them, but, still...credit where credit is due. Wanna know why the Flames PP has been so good lately? With apologies to Iginla and Phaneuf, look no further than the bug-eyed chinless swede sitting at the end of the bench.
Kudos and applause are in order. Huselius has gone from a mid-season low risk "why not?" type of acquisition to an invaluable, offensive team leader. He may look a little like a frog, but there are few players who are more beautilful when they have the puck on their stick than the Flame's own puckhandling, powerplay demon - Kristian "Beetlejuice" Huselius.
