Pro: The defending Norris Trophy winner has seven points in seven games, and his coach is publicly praising him.

"As far as I'm concerned, he's playing his best hockey. His focus is at the right place," Michel Therrien after the Canadiens win over Devils Monday night. "He's doing a fabulous job for the team. We're putting him out there against top players, game in and game out. And he loves that challenge. And it's not a coincidence that we're having success, that we pick up wins.

"He's certainly one of the best defensemen right now."

Con: Basically everything TSN’s Bob McKenzie said on Tuesday evening. Plugged into the situation as anyone on earth, McKenzie said that Team Canada’s management doesn’t fully trust Subban’s defensive reliability.

"I would put P.K. on the team but I don't know if the powers that be would," McKenzie said, adding that he also believed that Duncan Keith, Jay Bouwmeester and Marc-Edouard Vlasic would be the top three defensemen on the left side.

Subban, presumably, slots behind Drew Doughty, Shea Weber and Alex Pietrangelo on the right side. Kris Letang is also in the mix.

We've been over this before: Subban makes plays that seem risky, and would be for others — he's just talented enough to pull them off.

Verdict: Inexplicably trending downward. Come to America, P.K. We want you. We need you.

BOBROVSKY INJURES LEG


Things haven't quite gone according to plan for Sergei Bobrovsky or the Columbus Blue Jackets this season. On Tuesday, they got a little worse.

Bobrovsky, the defending Vezina Trophy winner, left Columbus' game against the Tampa Bay Lightning with a little less than 16 minutes in the the third period. He made a glove save, slid backwards into the post, and needed help off the ice. He'd stopped all 18 Tampa Bay shots to that point.

Bobrovsky, 25, is 9-11-2 with a .906 save percentage and 2.81 goals-against. Columbus is 10-14-3 overall in its first season in the Eastern Conference. The Blue Jackets made a surprising, unsuccessful playoff push last season, largely because of Bobrovsky.


TRADE RUMOR


Since the NHL trade deadline is a mere three months away, here's something worth remembering: When a player is scratched, that doesn't mean he's about to get moved.

Example A: Florida Panthers defenseman Dmitry Kulikov, who didn't play on Tuesday night against the Ottawa Senators. That's not surprising; Kulikov, 22, has struggled in certain areas for most of the season, and he made enough turnovers to annoy coach Peter Horachek.

Horachek was asked on Saturday, after Kulikov created a Pittsburgh Penguins goal, whether it was time to sit him down: "I think we’re at that point."

So Tuesday didn't come out of nowhere. Kulikov isn't sitting out to prevent an injury that would wreck his value to, say, the Toronto Maple Leafs. His coach didn't like the way he was playing, said so, then made the move.

"I think most of this is mental. The mistakes I have made weren’t forced," Kulikov said on Tuesday. "I shouldn’t have made them. What happened, happened, just work hard to get it out of me and not worry about it."

As for Kulikov's actual game: he's got just three points in 27 games, partially because of an atypically low shooting percentage (2.7 percent), and he plays lots of even-strength minutes against fairly tough competition while keeping the ice tilted in Florida's direction.

No, his development hasn't been as quick as anticipated — he's in his fourth full NHL season after Florida picked him 14th overall in 2009. Yes, he makes his share of mental mistakes, but he's talented and valuable enough. He's just not on the move. Yet.

Contributor: Sean Gentille