I’m pretty good at denial. Those extra pounds I’ve recently added are probably muscle mass from that time I went to the gym in October, and the thinning hair on the back of my head is just because I’m sleeping on my pillow wrong. What can I tell you, I’m a Leafs fan, and refusal to face reality is kind of a must-have life skill.
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So it shouldn’t surprise you to know that there are a handful of stories unfolding around the league that I’m not quite buying … yet. In some cases, I’m close, maybe even a week or so away. In others, I’m staying stubborn. Remember, I spent all of last year completely convinced that the Golden Knights couldn’t miss the playoffs. Then again, I also wasn’t sold on the Ducks leading the Pacific into January. Sometimes, it’s better not to get out over your skis.
For this week’s bonus top five, let’s run down five stories that I’m not sold on quite yet, ranked based on how strong the evidence proves that I’m wrong.
Top five first-half realities I haven’t accepted yet
5. Montreal as a middle-of-the-pack team — They won’t finish dead last for a second straight year, and Martin St. Louis deserves a ton of credit for leading them to a respectable 12-11-1 start. I’m just not sure how long it can continue. I agree with Arpon that the focus is on development over wins and losses, and that means that this season is already shaping up as a success. But it feels like the big comedown is right around the corner.
4. The Panthers as a non-factor — This one’s a bit weird because I wasn’t a fan of their offseason coaching change from Andrew Brunette to Paul Maurice, so in that sense maybe I should be taking a premature victory lap. And no, they’re obviously not going to have another 120-point season, because you need absolutely everything to go right for that to happen. But a middle-of-the-road team that struggles to make the playoffs, looking to fend off teams like the Red Wings and Habs? No way. There’s too much talent here, and as they move towards the Spencer Knight era in goal, I think they start looking scary again.
3. The Central Division as a three or four-team race — The standings say that the Jets and Stars are both better than the Avalanche, and the Wild are in the mix too. My rankings say otherwise, and have all year. Yes, the Jets looked dangerous in beating up the Ducks, and the Stars at least got a point out of an inspired comeback against Minnesota. If you’re a Winnipeg or Dallas fan, you could reasonably ask when you get to move ahead of Colorado in the top five. The answer: Not yet, because the Avs are still the Cup champs, and they’ve earned some early-season benefit of the doubt. For what it’s worth, the oddsmakers still agree with me, so if you’re going to yell at me make sure you find them too.
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2. The Rangers missing the playoffs — I get that it’s bad, we covered that last week, and since then we saw them blow a late lead to lose to Ottawa and then get thumped by the Hawks. This is a team that, in the words of their captain, needs to “wake the f— up”. I just don’t buy that they won’t, and that it won’t happen in time to still salvage a playoff spot in a Metro that’s not exactly slamming the door on them.
1. The Kraken being this good — You know what, this one probably needs its own column someday soon. Stay tuned, Seattle fans.
Off to this week’s rankings, and out of all the things I do know for sure, or at least think I know, or maybe might. Honestly, these are probably wrong too, but I’ll deny it.
Road to the Cup
The five teams with the best chances of winning the Stanley Cup.
If you’re lucky enough to root for one of the good teams, be sure to check out Dom’s awards watch piece. It’s your chance to celebrate your team’s best players and/or be furious that they’re not all ranked at the top of the list for every award.
5. Carolina Hurricanes (14-6-5, +3 true goals differential*) — Four straight wins are enough to get them back into the top five, holding off a Maple Leafs team that will have a case if they ever figure out how to win an overtime game. The Hurricanes have only won five of their last 10, but they also have points in nine of their last 10, because this is the NHL and you get points for trying hard and having fun. They’re still on the road for the next three, including a chance to pick on the woeful Ducks tomorrow.
4. New Jersey Devils (20-4-1, +36) — They lost again this week, which is always newsworthy with this team, although they still got a point in that one. The Hawks are up next, and then an interesting matchup with an Islanders team they haven’t faced since early in the season, before either team emerged as a Metro contender.
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Also, Devils fans: I owe you an apology. I’m sorry I didn’t list John Marino as a successful offseason move in last week’s column. Please stop pelting me with beer cans when I go out in public.
3. Vegas Golden Knights (18-7-1, +22) — They’d been wobbling before beating the Red Wings on Saturday, with just one win in four games (and that one was a shootout, so it barely counts). How high you rank them might depend on whether you think they’re locked in at the top of the Pacific, or if you’re starting to worry about the Kraken.
2. Colorado Avalanche (13-8-1, +12) — I’m still clinging to them, although they’re not making it easy. They lost to the Bruins this week, which everyone does so who cares. But they also lost to the Jets, who remain ahead of them in the Central standings. They’ve got a rematch with Boston coming later this week.
1. Boston Bruins (19-3-0, +39) — The week served up three of the league’s best teams in Carolina, Tampa and Colorado. The result: Three Bruins wins, continuing a start that’s gone from “great” to “historically great.” The tough stretch of their schedule continues, with the Knights and that Avs rematch up next. We’ll see if the Bruins can bank four of four points, or if they completely collapse and have to settle for three.
*Goals differential without counting shootout decisions like the NHL does for some reason.
Not ranked: Pittsburgh Penguins — If you followed this column last year, you might remember the running joke about how I couldn’t figure out the Penguins. I went into the season thinking they might be Cup contenders, but also seeing a possibility that their window would be slammed shut and they would plunge into long-term hopelessness. I bounced back and forth all year, never feeling confident enough to plant my flag. In the end, neither scenario really played out and the Penguins were fine, they made the playoffs with just over 100 points, and then lost a close series in the first round.
Are they any easier to figure out this year?
I’m not doing the schtick again, because I don’t recycle bits. (Please ignore all the times that I totally do that.) But the Penguins remain a tough team to figure out. They signaled that to us right away, in the first week of the season, when they beat the Lightning and lost to the Habs in a span of 48 hours. Go back even further into the offseason, and they looked like a team that wanted a fresh start but couldn’t quite bring themselves to do it, with Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang both headed to new homes in free agency until they suddenly weren’t. They’ve been in my top five, back in week two when they were 4-1-0. They lost seven straight immediately after. They’ve also had a five-game winning streak. They’ve beaten the Leafs and the Knights and have lost to the Sabres and Canucks, and spent Saturday stomping the Blues, which may be the only team that’s as hard to figure out. Sometimes it looks like Mike Sullivan is the best coach in the league, and sometimes they look like his players are trying to get him fired.
Does anyone want to take a crack at explaining this?
It’s possible that it’s not as complicated as I’m making it out to be. You could certainly make the case that the Penguins are just a talented but old team, one that’s in a race against diminishing returns but could still make the playoffs and be at least a reasonable threat when they got there. You could say that they need Sidney Crosby to still be elite, and he has been, and that they need at least a few of his older running mates like Malkin and Jeff Carter to be right there with him, and that hasn’t really happened so far. You could say that like most teams, a lot of it just rides on good goaltending, and that Tristan Jarry was bad during the losing streak but great before and after. Maybe that’s just it: Mediocre team wins when the goalie is hot, loses when he’s cold, and we’ll find out if that ends up being enough in a top-heavy East.
The big news this week wasn’t about wins and losses, but the health of Kris Letang. The veteran defenseman suffered a stroke on Monday, and while the situation isn’t considered career-threatening at this point, the team says he’s out indefinitely. It’s obviously a scary situation, and here’s hoping he takes as much time as needed to get the best care he can before returning.
If and when that happens, it’s hard to say what kind of Penguins team he’ll be coming back to. They might be safely holding down a playoff spot and they might be sniffing around the lottery. Pretty much the only sure thing is that I’ll be the last to figure it out.
The bottom five
The five teams that are headed towards dead last, and the best lottery odds for Connor Bedard.
Look, I’m not saying that Jordan Binnington’s tough guy routine is out of control, but when Craig Berube thinks you’re spending too much time punching dudes, it’s possible that you’re spending too much time punching dudes.
In Binnington’s defense, he does seem to know how to skate, which is more than we can say for certain other Blues goalies.
5. Columbus Blue Jackets (8-13-2, -25) — Their win over the Jets was impressive. but last night’s loss to the Wings dropped them back under .400 and earns them this spot over the Flyers. I’d ask whether that could continue, but I wouldn’t want to be accused of asking dumb questions.
In other news, Aaron reports that the concussion suffered by Jakub Voracek a month ago could be career-ending.
4. San Jose Sharks (8-16-4, -19) — I had a few Sharks fans take issue with my decision to drop them out of the bottom five last week. That’s probably fair — no team has lost more games than the Sharks, and this week that includes dropping one to the Senators. Their next four bring the Sabres, Canucks, Ducks and Coyotes, so it’s a chance to either bank some points or really solidify their lottery odds.
3. Chicago Blackhawks (7-13-4, -25) — They snapped their eight-game losing streak on Saturday, then immediately lost to the Islanders last night. They’ve got the Devils tomorrow, so good luck with that.
2. Arizona Coyotes (7-11-4, -17) — They’ve lost four straight and eight of their last nine. The only win was a shutout over the top-five Hurricanes, because this is the NHL and nothing makes sense.
1. Anaheim Ducks (6-17-3, -46) — If you missed it last week, Eric has a good look at a question you may have been wondering about: With the Ducks holding down dead last and getting lit up almost every night, why isn’t Pat Verbeek making a coaching change? The short answer is that the focus is on developing young players, and Verbeek is happy with the work Dallas Eakins and his staff have done there. A cynic might point to other reasons, but it sounds like Eakins should be safe as long as all the losing doesn’t start weighing down the young core.
Not ranked: Vancouver Canucks — We had some capital-d Drama in Vancouver over the weekend, all of it centered on Brock Boeser. The former 29-goal man has struggled to find the net this year, and it all seemed to come to a head on Saturday morning when he was skating with the healthy scratches. Coach Bruce Boudreau confirmed the move, calling it tough love, and Elliotte Friedman upped the ante by reporting that the Canucks had granted Boeser permission to explore a trade. Having it all play out on Hockey Fights Cancer day only added to the unease, as Boeser had lost his dad to cancer earlier this year.
But then! A late-breaking injury to Dakota Joshua opened a spot in the lineup, and Boeser was playing after all. Late in the game and trailing by one, the hockey gods knew what had to come next:
The Canucks ended up winning that one in overtime on Bo Horvat’s 19th of the season, as the Vancouver captain continues a career year that’s going to make him a lot of money as he heads toward UFA status. Losing to the Coyotes might have put the Canucks back on our bottom-five radar, but instead they stay off the list for the second straight week. Progress!
As for the Boeser story, Drance has a deeper look at what this all might mean for all involved going forward.
(Top photo of Brett Pesce, Martin Necas and Andrei Svechnikov: Charles LeClaire / USA Today)