Have you ever wondered what your favourite hockey player would look like if they just had some aspect from someone else’s game? Sure, Jarome Iginla is great, but what if he was as fast as Michael Grabner.

Well, what if we combined the best talents from a group of current players to create a super player – an unstoppable force of hockey juggernaut?

What would the ultimate hockey player look like? If we could take the best aspects of current players in the NHL whose talents would we plunder?

I'm solely looking at current players because it wouldn't be fun to just take Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Bobby Orr, and Gordie Howe and be done with it.

Some notable players don’t show up here and that’s not a knock against them. Some of the league’s best players are supremely good in a lot of important areas of the game, but aren’t the best in any one particular area.

I proudly present The 600 Million Dollar Hockey Player (because that’s the type of contract the New York Rangers would throw at this man, except probably over 100 years to keep the cap hit low).

Ron Wilson about to punch his penalty killers in the face.

For the 6th straight season, the Toronto Maple Leafs own one of the worst penalty kills in the league. The high-water mark for the team was in 2005-06, when they were only the 7th worst team in the NHL with a nice, round 80% mark. Flash-forward to the present day and they are only killing off 73.5% of all penalties taken, the absolute worst rate in the league.

This atrocity isn’t even uncommon. This is the third time since the lockout that they have owned the dubious distinction as league worst and they haven’t killed off more than 80% of their penalties in eight years.

The Leafs have employed a rotating collection of players over the past few seasons, except none seem capable of getting the job done in even a mediocre way. Sure, the goaltending has been atrocious, but that surely isn’t the only reason the Leafs are so patently bad.

On a team that is scoring in bunches, with the first legitimate playoff chance since the glorious time of middling success before the lockout, the penalty kill is a legitimate concern, waiting to derail springtime hockey in Toronto.

In a previous post I was going to make a blanket statement that no team with a bad penalty kill has a shot at making the playoffs. I was just going to throw it in without checking because it just sounded true and I like when I come up with those bold statements. But I thought better, lest the stats police call me an idiot on the internet. And that’s when a somewhat curious stat popped out.

Not every team with a bad penalty kill will live a playoff-less life. In fact, some actually go to do quite well for themselves.

After 33 games, the Leafs are who we thought they were. They are in a dog fight for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, sitting tied with Ottawa (Ottawa!) for 7th place with 36 points. That puts them one point behind New Jersey for 6th, but only one point ahead of Washington, Buffalo, and Winnipeg. It’s a log jam that will likely continue for the rest of the season.

Toronto’s fast start fooled fans into thinking the rebuild was a little ahead of schedule, but a mediocre November (7-6-1) and an awful start to December (2-4-2) has dropped the Leafs from their once lofty perch among the Eastern Conference élite.

Claude Giroux just might be the best player in the league not named Sidney Crosby.

Giroux is currently leading the league in scoring with 39 points, despite missing the last four games with a concussion. His 16 goals are four behind league leader Steven Stamkos and he is the best player on the Eastern Conference's second best team.

His ascension to élite status is even more impressive considering the Flyers placed enormous pressure on the fourth year forward to lead their team after they shipped out Mike Richards and Jeff Carter - their best defensive forward and their best goal scorer. Giroux, at the ripe old age of 23, has effectively replaced both Richards and Carter in all aspects of the game. Why pay over $10 million for two players to do the job one can do?

One might argue that another 2006 draft choice, Chicago's Jonathan Toews, is a better player than Giroux and that would be a totally defensible position. Toews has 18 goals and 35 points and plays in all situations for the best team in the Western Conference. However, Giroux's production combined with the role he plays for the Flyers gives him the edge over the former Conn Smythe winner.