NHL weekend rankings: The good, the bad and the teams I can't figure out
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Sean McIndoe
The NHL season is nearly at the halfway mark, which means the early-season weirdness has evened out and everything makes sense. Mostly.
With three nights off last week, we didn’t have as many games as usual this week. That means that our rankings won’t move all that much from last time. And more importantly, it means fewer opportunities to learn anything new.
That’s bad news for me, because there are a handful of teams where I need all the information I can get, because I just can’t figure them out.
I’m not clueless about absolutely everyone. I know the Colorado Avalanche are good, and the Chicago Blackhawks are bad, and that all of this is futile because the Buffalo Sabres will never lose again. But for more than a few teams, I can cram everything I think I know into my hockey fan brain and all that comes out is a shrug emoji.
I’ve narrowed the list down to five. Help me, readers, because I can’t figure these teams out.
Bonus five: Teams I just don’t understand (and why)
5. Los Angeles Kings – They took a step back during the offseason, they’ve already made a seller-style trade in sending Phillip Danault to Montreal, and it feels like every time you check the standings they’re riding a three-game losing streak. But they’re also always holding down a playoff spot, so … they’re good? Or maybe good enough? Or maybe just headed to yet another first-round exit, although maybe against someone other than the Oilers this time. I’m pretty sure it’s that last one, but it would be nice if they could just pick a lane and stay in it for more than a week or two at a time.
4. Detroit Red Wings – This might just be stubbornness on my part. The Wings have been hanging around the top of the Atlantic for most of the season, and at some point we’ll have to accept that they’re a solid 100-point team, and in that division that should be more than enough to be in the running. It’s what they’ve been pretty much since the day Todd McLellan took over. Then you notice the negative goals differential and you start to wonder. Or do you?
3. Boston Bruins – I honestly think part of what makes the Bruins so hard to read is their dedication to not soiling their record with loser points. As fans, we’ve been trained to basically ignore that column, meaning it feels like the Bruins have played way more games than anyone else. They have more regulation losses than any team in the conference, but have also cracked the 20-win mark that teams like the Edmonton Oilers, Washington Capitals and Vegas Golden Knights haven’t hit yet. Are they making the playoffs? No. But they’re going to win more games than some playoff teams, and that’s weird. (In fact, it’s almost as if the whole rationale for the loser point is a big lie.)
2. Utah Mammoth – We all figured that once the Coyotes got out from under the Arizona cloud of uncertainty, they’d blossom into … something. This was supposed to be the year it happened. And it kind of did, early on, and we all wrote about how the Mammoth had finally arrived. But they came out of the break sitting at fake .500 and tied for the league lead in regulation losses. That might still be good enough for a playoff spot in a top-heavy West, but is this team any good? And if not, is there a valid path to get there any time soon, now that all the obvious excuses are gone?
1. Philadelphia Flyers – At some point, I’m going to have admit that this team is good. Not “better than expected,” or even “good enough to sneak into the playoffs,” but just plain good. Today is not that day, because I can’t shake the feeling that any team where Christian Dvorak is the third-leading scorer and Dan Vladar is a stud in goal just might be fake. But we’re almost halfway through the season and they’ve been humming along around .625 pretty much all year long. I already feel like I’m locked in on the Flyers as my “team that makes the playoffs and I don’t accept it until the very last night of the season.”
On to this week’s rankings…
Road to the Cup
The five teams with the best chances of winning the Stanley Cup.
Put the kid on the team, guys.
5. Tampa Bay Lightning (22-13-3, +25 true goals differential*) – Four straight wins, including one over the Hurricanes and another nasty one against the Panthers, was enough to get them back into top spot in the Atlantic for a few hours before Detroit took it back.
4. Minnesota Wild (23-10-6, +17) – They took care of business in Winnipeg, if only barely. That was game one of a two-week road trip while the World Juniors gets center stage in Minnesota.
3. Carolina Hurricanes (23-11-3, +16) – Here’s a stat that surprised me: There are only three NHL defensemen scoring at better than a point-per-game pace this season. Cale Makar is one, obviously. So is Zach Werenski, leading the way in Columbus. But the third is Shayne Gostisbehere, a guy we don’t talk about a ton; he nudged his average over the 1.00 mark with his three-point performance in Saturday’s win over Detroit.
2. Dallas Stars (25-7-7, +34) – It still sounds like Jason Robertson has a tough road to make Team USA, despite his production. As a Canadian, I support this completely.
*Goals differential without counting shootout decisions like the NHL does for some reason.
Not ranked: Montreal Canadiens – They’ve been good, and reasonably consistent about it, just about all year long. There was that five-game losing streak back in November, but they managed to find their footing again afterwards, and in a division that’s been in flux to an almost embarrassing degree, the Habs along with the Wings have been just about the only constants.
They took a big swing in the summer on Noah Dobson, and so far that’s worked out well. They were buyers again before the holiday freeze, bringing back Phillip Danault. And if they decide to load up even more on the way to the trade deadline, they have the assets to do it.
The question I keep coming back to: What’s the ceiling here?
They feel like a solid bet for the playoffs (although the projections aren’t as sure, having them close to a coin flip). But if and when they get there, is there reason to believe their spring will look much different than last year’s, when they were a bump in the road for a Capitals team that couldn’t get any further?
I think there is, even as it’s clear that this team’s window for legitimate contention isn’t quite all the way open yet. Their best players are young and improving, surrounded by an older supporting cast that should largely stay in place for two more seasons. You never know with young players — Ivan Demidov was supposed to have 50 goals by now, but he’s more of an enforcer these days — and even the best young teams will have their ups and downs. You’d like to see the goaltending bail them out a little more often, although maybe Jacob Fowler is the answer there. This team still banks an awful lot of their points in overtime, and they’re basically just a break-even team in terms of goals differential.
So: Would you pick them over a team like Tampa in round one? Florida? Detroit?
And maybe more importantly: Do they need a playoff win for the season to be a success, or are they already on track for the sort of progress that lets you feel good about where they’re headed, even if it’s another quick spring?
We can leave those questions to the fans for now. In the meantime, they come out of the break with a tough week that features road games against a mix of potential contenders, starting with last night’s almost-comeback in a shootout loss to the Lightning. They’ve got the Panthers tomorrow, then the Hurricanes on New Year’s Day. After a stop in St. Louis, they finish the trip with a tough on in Dallas. If the ceiling is already higher than it looks, we might find out over the next few weeks.
From there, we’ll have to wait for the trade deadline and the inevitable Sidney Crosby trade. That one might move the needle, just a bit.
The bottom five
The five teams headed towards dead last and the best lottery odds for the top pick in this year’s draft.
5. Nashville Predators (16-17-4, -21) – Saturday’s loss to the Blues snapped Nashville’s win streak at three, and moved the Blues back ahead of them in the standings. But the Preds have been humming along at “reasonably decent” for a few weeks now, and just miss escaping the bottom five.
4. St. Louis Blues (15-16-8, -33) – Now we see if they can turn that into their first win streak since the opening week of December. They’ll have to earn it, as they’ve got the red-hot Sabres and the first-place Avalanche up next.
3. Calgary Flames (16-18-4, -14) – Both Pierre and CJ have Rasmus Andersson staying in the Pacific. The bigger question is whether an extension will be part of any deal, and how that would affect the return the Flames can get on their top trade asset.
2. Vancouver Canucks (15-19-3, -25) – Hey, look who’s on the board…
Meanwhile, Drance had a good piece on what exactly this retool (that might not be a rebuild) is going to mean for this team.
1. Chicago Blackhawks (14-18-6, -17) – Beating Dallas, even in a shootout, was impressive. It was also apparently exhausting, at least based on that first period against the Penguins last night.
Not ranked: Winnipeg Jets – I didn’t include them in the teams that confuse me, because they’ve transcended that. And I didn’t really consider putting them in the bottom five even though the standings say they should be there, because I really can’t believe that they’re this bad.
But also, they might just be this bad.
Saturday’s collapse against the Wild will go in the books as the Jets’ fifth straight loss. It’s also their eighth loss in nine, tenth in twelve, and fourteenth in their last seventeen. Whichever arbitrary endpoint you want to choose, there’s no way to make this look good. Oh, and now Josh Morrissey is hurt.
And again, these are the defending Presidents’ Trophy champs, who employ the reigning MVP. I’m not sure anyone was expecting a repeat of last year’s 116-point season, but falling all the way out of the playoff picture felt unlikely. Now that result is starting to feel like a sure thing.
We’re not quite there yet, and our projections still have the Jets in the 40 percent range to make the playoffs. Moneypuck is more bullish, dropping them under 30 percent, just slightly ahead of the Flames. And I get the feeling that some Jets fans are already prepared to throw in the towel, jump into a seller’s market and regroup with an eye to the future.
Murat has made the case that they should wait on that, and I think he’s right. But we’re talking about waiting another week or two, because there’s barely any more room to work with here. That makes this week feel crucial, as the schedule serves up some winnable games. They get the Oilers at home tonight, before heading out east for a three-game trip that will bring them a tough matchup with the Wings before easier matchups with the Leafs and Senators.
Bank six or seven points in that stretch, and you’ve got the start of a comeback climb. But with the halfway mark almost here and anything above a wild-card already basically impossible, there’s no time left to figure this out. It has to happen now, or it’s not happening at all.
And maybe that’s ultimately what some Jets fans would want, given how tilted this year’s trade market could be. We’re not quite there yet, just like the Jets aren’t quite in the bottom five yet. But we’re getting awfully close, right?