Lawless: Hanifin on Watchlist for Team USA

When it comes to decisions, the hard ones are usually when the choice is between good options. Bill Guerin has too many positive options and Golden Knights defenseman Noah Hanifin seems intent on adding to that headache.

Guerin has a long list of very good defensemen to choose from for his Team USA roster. Four Nations Faceoff rosters will be announced on Dec. 2 and his play of late has pushed Hanifin into the conversation.

The buzzword for management groups is ‘watchlist.’ Teams have their locks and then a group of players they are monitoring to fill the remaining positions. Hanifin is a watchlist player for Team USA.

Quinn Hughes, Adam Fox and Charlie McAvoy have already been named to the American blueline.

Then comes a list of players still needing to push themselves over the line. Jaccob Slavin, Brock Faber, Zach Werenski, Jake Sanderson, John Carlson and K’Andre Miller are all regularly mentioned as strong possibilities. Hanifin was considered a longshot entering the NHL season but those odds continue to improve for the Boston native.

Guerin was interviewed by NHL.com recently and discussed the difficulty of picking when the field is filled with excellence.

“We find ourselves laughing sometimes because we’ve been nitpicking over players we’d all kill to have on our NHL rosters. I mean, we’ll be looking over guys saying, ‘He does this, he does this’ while, in reality, we’d kill to have that guy on our [NHL] teams, you know what I mean?,” said Guerin. “The depth is incredible. And this is something we’ve been talking about the whole time about Canada, that they can put two teams out. Well, we’re kind of at that stage ourselves where we could put out multiple teams that are really good. It’s unbelievable.”

Hanifin has seven points in his last nine games and is a plus nine over that stretch. On Wednesday he scored a pair of third period goals to push his Vegas team over the Edmonton Oilers with the entire hockey world watching a marquee matchup between two Western Conference behemoths.

One of the keys to being a successful player on an all-star national team is the ability to play with elite players. Hanifin was recently paired with Alex Pietrangelo and both have enjoyed a subsequent uptick in their games.

They’ve played together for seven games and Hanifin has seven points over that stretch. Pietrangelo has nine points and the duo are a plus 5 scoring 13 goals while allowing eight against at 5v5 which ranks fifth in the NHL among all D pairs. As a pair they also rank eighth in scoring chance differential.

Barbashev-ed wire: Ivan Barbashev is having a tremendous offensive season but has not forgotten his fourth line roots. Barbashev continues to be an intimidating presence on the ice and a dangerous man around the net.

Barbashev set up the winning goal on Wednesday winning a physical battle for the puck with 6-5 and 225-pound Oilers defenseman Mattias Ekholm. Barbashev outmuscled Ekholm and then whipped a perfect pass to Hanifin who then potted the winner behind Edmonton goalie Stuart Skinner.

Earlier in the third period, Barbashev decided he’d had enough of Oilers forward Mattias Janmark cross checking VGK captain Mark Stone in the back and delivered a crushing body check which sent the Edmonton winger to the dressing room for a spell.

Barbashev is having the best offensive start in his career and now has seven goals and eight assists for 15 points through 13 games.

Barbashev is second in the NHL in points at even strength with 15 (tied with Nikita Kucherov and Kirill Kaprizov). He is tied for fifth in even strength goals with seven and tied for 24^th in points in the NHL with 15. Barbashev is one of just three players in the top-35 in points to also have 25+ hits (the other two are Alex Ovechkin and Brady Tkachuk).