It’s a bad year to be a goalie

Welcome to “10 insights and observations.” Every Thursday, I’ll use this space to highlight teams, players, storylines, and general musings around the NHL, and perhaps at times, the greater hockey world.

This week we look at some breakout seasons, Mitch Marner’s point streak, bad goaltending, the playoff picture and much more.

If you look at the top forwards in time on ice per game, you will see a lot of familiar faces, such as Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Leon Draisaitl, Aleksander Barkov and Nikita Kucherov.

One that isn’t expected, though, is Artturi Lehkonen.

The man who scored the goal that sent his team to the Stanley Cup Final in consecutive years is playing 21:35 per night in Colorado. Before this season, he has never averaged more than 16:29 per game in a single season, and that was his sophomore campaign back in 2017-18.

Part of that is due to Gabriel Landeskog not playing so far this season, as he has been given the opportunity to ride shotgun with Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen. That means plenty of ice time and opportunities for points. They aren’t exactly lighting the league on fire as a unit, coming out slightly ahead in terms of shot share and expected goals and outscoring opponents by two. It’s not nearly enough to legitimately challenge Landeskog’s spot on that line but they are still solid enough to consider it as an option should they want to spread out the talent, especially with Nazem Kadri no longer the No. 2 center.

For his part, Lehkonen has long been underappreciated and it’s nice to see him producing and getting some recognition. His 17 points in 20 games puts him on pace to crush his career high of 31 points. This is coming off a great playoff where he scored eight goals and had 14 points in 20 games. He is 27…