If the 2014-15 NHL season were to come to an abrupt (and early) halt, the defending Eastern-champion New York Rangers would not be in the playoffs. The defending Stanley Cup-champion LA Kings would again make the postseason, but they would enter it two spots behind the Calgary Flames. Oh, and the Toronto Maple Leafs would be back in the playoffs, too.
Obviously there are a lot of games to play, but the infant 2014-15 season has brought its share of surprises. Let’s review some of them.
Wow, what’s happening to…?
Calgary Flames
Speaking of statistical anomalies, let’s talk about Calgary. Rationally, there ought to be no reason why the Flames are doing as well as they have been. At writing, Calgary sit fourth in the West, behind Anaheim, Nashville and Vancouver and with a 9-5-2 record. That includes a pretty stellar road record: 6-2. This is a team without any huge stars, and a goaltender who has gone from merely efficient to pretty excellent.
What’s happening? The Flames are quick, young, tough and, unlike their past iterations, seem less willing to sit on an early lead, only to be clobbered in the third period. They are playing a more complete game, perhaps now unconcerned about which star scores, because there aren’t any. And Jonas Hiller is posting better numbers between the pipes in Calgary than he ever did anywhere else. Through nine games, his goals-against average was 1.96, and had posted a .935 save percentage.
Can it last? It’s been a promising month, and as Elliotte Friedman pointed out around this time last year, where you’re placed at this point in the season is more of a determiner of where you finish than one might suspect. From 2005-06 to 2011-12, only a handful of teams who were at least four points out of a playoff berth by 1 November were able to climb into the postseason. Even so, despite a relatively healthy goal differential (+9), Calgary are way down in terms of offensive zone possession (27th overall) and if the Avalanche are any lesson, that might not bode well in the long run. Which means a lot rides on Hiller – perhaps too much.
Rick Nash
When we last checked in on Rick Nash, he was inches away from keeping the Rangers in the hunt for the Stanley Cup.
Had that shot found the back of the net, not only would the Rangers have forced Game 6, but the striking lack of output from Nash in the preceding games would have been entirely forgotten. As it happened, Slava Voynov’s stick intervened and Nash was heading into this season with questions lingering about whether he’d just hit a slump in the playoffs, or whether the magic was somehow gone.
What’s happening? Rick Nash is back to being the Rick Nash we used to know – for now. He’s not at the top of the NHL points pile, but he is scoring. Nash has managed 14 points in 13 games, including 11 goals. How’s he doing it? Nash tried to explain his production turnaround to ESPN’s Pierre LeBrun not long ago, saying:
The puck’s finding me … I go to the net and the puck bounces right there … It’s a funny game. I’ve always found in my career, when I’m cold, I’m cold; when I’m hot, I’m hot.
And, as Katie Baker at Grantland points out, it’s not like he hasn’t been trying. “Last season, Nash, who missed nearly six weeks early on with a concussion, scored four goals in November, three in December, and then 11 in January. But even during his scoring slumps, he was generating plenty of chances – last season, the rate of shots he attempted per every 60 minutes of ice time was the height of his career.”
Nash is still shooting a lot. Of the top 30 points leaders in the NHL, only 10 have taken more shots than Nash and only four have a better shot percentage. And while it doesn’t take much at the moment to be the standout player on the Rangers bench, Nash is certainly the most notable. His personal Fenwick score (shots on goal plus shots directed a the net that missed), is 42. By comparison, Martin St Louis is sitting at 24.
St Louis Blues
So, yes, the St Louis Blues lost to their Western-rival Nashville Predators over the weekend. However, that shouldn’t diminish our respect for what they’ve been doing so far. That loss put an end to a seven-game winning streak, accomplished without Paul Stastny and TJ Oshie, and in which we saw Vladimir Tarasenko do this:
And this:
What’s happening? The Blues just keep finding ways to win, even if most of the time it’s been close. Out of 14 games, the Blues have had nine decided by one goal, including the loss to Nashville (2-1) on Saturday. And in those one-goal games, the Blues are 6-2-1. Whether they can keep winning such close games will likely determine their fate. To maintain their spot in the West against tough rivals, the Blues will want to start finding a few more goals, but for now the formula seems to be working. Having Stastny back in the lineup (he missed eight games prior to Thursday night’s contest against New Jersey) might help that.
Getting Oshie back will no doubt also help, but they may be waiting a while on that. He was placed on the team’s injured reserve list last week for his concussion symptoms, so someone else on the squad (or a few of them) will have to start compensating for that lost potential.
But the bottom line is this: watch out for St Louis. They appear to mean business.
Honourable mentions
Pittsburgh Penguins: the Penguins are riding a seven-game winning streak, sitting with 21 points in 13 games, and one hell of a goal differential (+28). They have all the markings of a very, very scary team. Oh, and they have yet to lose on the road in regulation. The only question people have these days about the Pens is likely directed at their head office, which just rewarded goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury a four-year, $23m contract extension … for some reason. His numbers this year are great – 1.90 goals against average and a .931 save percentage, but we know better than that, don’t we? Why didn’t Penguins’ management? Whatever. They’re winning. Right now, that’s all that matters.
Winnipeg Jets: before losing to the Penguins on Thursday night, the Jets were riding a six-game undefeated streak. The Jets responded to the 4-3 loss to the Pens with a 2-1 win over the Ottawa Senators on Saturday night (in a shootout, yes, but still!). It’s enough to ask: have the Jets turned a corner? The Winnipeg Sun’s answer: Um, sure: “The Jets are trending in the right direction and giving hope to a fan base that is starved for even a taste of playoff hockey.” The playoffs are a very long way off, but there is promise.
Wait, what happened to…?
Montreal Canadiens
Not long ago it was all happy days in Montreal. The Canadiens finished last season with a disappointing Eastern final loss to the Rangers, but given they did it without starting goaltender Carey Price, the belief was they could return this season (with a healthy and rested Price) to give it a better shot. It’s not as if the Habs are floundering near the bottom of the table – far from it, in fact. At writing, they sit atop the East, thanks to a great early start. They won seven of their first eight games, including against the Rangers near the end of October.
Since then it’s been tough going. Montreal followed up the win against New York with a loss on the road in, uh, Edmonton. The rest of their short Western swing wasn’t a lot better. A tight win against Calgary in the shootout was followed by a loss in overtime against Vancouver. Back at home, they lost two straight – against Calgary and Chicago – by a combined total of 11-2. They finally scraped together a shootout win against the lowly Sabres at the end of last week.
So what happened? “Nothing’s been working for us,” Tomas Plekanec told reporters after the loss to Chicago. No kidding. The Habs’ slump was the product of limp and sloppy play. Usually a quick team, they looked glacial. Perhaps it won’t last forever – a 4-1 win over Minnesota on Saturday night helped bring back some of that hope – but with Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay riding hot streaks (they’ve won seven and five games each in a row, respectively), Montreal need more consistency to stay competitive.
Columbus Blue Jackets
An impressive foray into the postseason last spring had the Blue Jackets looking like they were on the upswing. To this point, however, that hasn’t been the case. Columbus sit in a sadly familiar spot at the one-month mark, second-last in the East with just a handful of points, and not much to separate them from the bottom-dwelling Buffalo Sabres.
What happened? First of all, there have been injuries. The Blue Jackets are currently without Nathan Horton, out indefinitely (back); Brandon Dubinsky until mid-November (abdomen); goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky day-to-day (finger); Artem Anisimov also day-to-day (concussion); and Ryan Murray (knee). And that’s an incomplete list. Oh, and defenceman Jack Johnson is suspended for three games after delivering an illegal hit to Jiri Tlusty’s head last week during their game against Carolina.
Over at Puck Daddy, Greg Wyshynski notes that injuries create adversity, “but there’s also something to be said about how a team responds to them”. Losing six straight “isn’t acceptable”, Wyshynski said last week. As it turned out, he was wrong. Losing six in a row was apparently acceptable to Columbus, because they decided to lose two more consecutive contests. We’re at eight losses in a row and counting up. Or down. Depending on how you look at it.
Colorado Avalanche
Colorado was the story of last season: a young team with a new (famous) coach, taking on all comers, beating many of them and rocketing up the standings. They walked casually into the playoffs and abruptly lost, though not without a fight, to Minnesota in the first round. Still, with a good core group of talented young guys, and having added experience in Jarome Iginla and Daniel Briere over the summer, things were looking good. Theoretically.
What happened? The analytics caught up to them. Maybe. The Avalanche rated 27th overall last season (in five-on-five situations) in offensive zone possession and yet, somewhat like Minnesota, they defied the odds. So far this season, the Avs are ranked 29th overall by the same measure. And they are second-last in the conference they dominated last season.
A lot of talent remains on the Colorado bench, but it doesn’t run very deep and nor is it all that strong at the back. It is early days, but unlike Columbus, Colorado don’t have the luxury of a weaker conference. The West is a tough go at the best of times, and the Avalanche are certainly not at their best.
Dishonourable mention
Dallas Stars: From pushing into the playoffs to scraping the barrel. The Stars were a late entrant into the postseason last year, but were looking to build on that late momentum this year. That hasn’t happened. A 5-3 loss to San Jose on Saturday night was their seventh in a row and their fourth in a row in regulation – and that was after they were up 3-1 after the first period. So much for that Jason Spezza point-per-game acquisition, I guess?
