Weekend NHL rankings: Change in Boston, déjà vu in Ottawa and expected storylines

We’re a quarter of the way through the NHL season, which means it’s time for two things: saying “quarter-pole” around your most pedantic friends just to annoy them and writing pieces about how nothing is going the way we expected.

We’ve been covering that latter ground for most of the season around here, including last week’s reminder that you were wrong about all this stuff, too. So this time, let’s switch it up. Sure, this is a league where almost nothing is playing out the way we thought: The Oilers are bad, the Flames are good, the Predators are terrible, the Capitals and Wild are great, the Jets are dominant, the Avalanche are .500 and the Bruins are collapsing. Connor McDavid is outside the top 10 in points, Connor McMichael is unstoppable and Connor Bedard is regressing in Year 2. None of it makes any sense. But if we dig deep enough, surely we can find a few things that are actually playing out the way we all expected, right?

Of course we can. I’m not sure we can find five, but let’s try.

Bonus five: Early-season stories playing out pretty much the way we all expected

5. The bottom of the barrel — Apart from the Predators trying to nudge their way in, the battle for dead last has pretty much featured the teams you’d expect. The Hawks, Sharks and Habs are all struggling through another rebuild year and are holding a spot open for the mildly surprising Ducks and Blue Jackets.

4. The Leafs are good — While the path has had a few surprises, like an Auston Matthews injury and better-than-expected goaltending, the Leafs under Craig Berube are pretty much right where we would have thought: a little better defensively, a little worse offensively, on pace for home ice in the playoffs and still subject of the occasional freak-out when they lose two in a row. And, as always, good enough to be an early playoff lock but not quite good enough to feel like strong Cup contenders.

3. The Stars are really good — They’re the only team from the West that’s been in the top five each week so far, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate them making my job just a little bit easier every Sunday.

2. The awards races other than the Hart — The MVP race has already thrown us a curve, with Kirill Kaprizov emerging as the early favorite while McDavid starts slow and Matthews falls off the board. But elsewhere, we’re closer to seeing the expected names. The Norris is shaping up to be another round of Cale Makar vs. Quinn Hughes, with a bit of Victor Hedman, Adam Fox and Rasmus Dahlin mixed in. The Calder race has been led by Matvei Michkov, Logan Stankoven and Macklin Celebrini, with a bit of Lane Hutson mixed in. And the Vezina would come down to a battle between the two consensus favorites, Connor Hellebuyck and Igor Shesterkin. Pretty much how we would have drawn it up.

1. The Metro, except for the Capitals — OK, we were all wrong about the Caps, and if you think I’m going to suggest they’re in trouble now that Alex Ovechkin is out for a while, forget it. But aside from Washington, the rest of the division seems about right. The Hurricanes are very good, as always. The Rangers are also good, but leave you wanting more. The Devils are back. The Islanders are OK. The Flyers and Blue Jackets are out playing tough but aren’t playoff contenders. And the Penguins are playing out the worst-case scenario of what felt like a wide range of outcomes.

It’s nice when things work out the way you thought they would, if only for 20 games or so. On to this week’s rankings …

Road to the Cup

The five teams with the best chances of winning the Stanley Cup.

It’s trade board time. Check out CJ’s opening list of the season to find out which players your contending team will no doubt be adding for that one 27-year-old prospect and a fifth-round pick.

5. Vegas Golden Knights (13-6-2, +17 true goals differential*) — Fair warning: It’s a weird week for the top five, with most of the league’s top teams riding mini-slumps. That’s OK for our purposes, where the long term is more important than an occasional two-game losing streak. The Knights had one earlier in the week but shook it off with wins over the Senators and Canadiens. They get Colorado and Winnipeg this week, which should be a slightly tougher test.

4. Florida Panthers (12-8-1, +1) — They dropped the rematch with the Jets on Monday, one of three straight regulation losses that have opened the door for the Leafs to pass them for top spot in the Atlantic. They get their first matchup of the season with Toronto on Wednesday, part of a very tough week that also features the Capitals and a home-and-home with the Hurricanes.

3. Dallas Stars (13-6-0, +21) — They’re the only team in this week’s top five that’s reasonably hot, with regulation wins in five of their last six. They get the Hurricanes tonight in what may be the game of the week.

2. Winnipeg Jets (17-4-0, +34) — They took another regulation loss, their third in their last five games, and this time against a bad Predators team. Nobody should be panicking yet, but a strong performance in a showdown game with the Wild tonight would certainly help settle some nerves in Winnipeg.

In other news, Kyle Connor is a goon now.

1. Carolina Hurricanes (14-5-1, +28) — Two losses aren’t a big concern. But losing another goalie would be, and Pyotr Kochetkov having to come out in overtime after a collision is bad news. We don’t know the extent of the injury, so we won’t count it against the Hurricanes quite yet, but it’s worth watching.

*Goals differential without counting shootout decisions like the NHL does for some reason.

Not ranked: Boston Bruins — So, now what?

We got our first coach firing of the season this week, one that went from far-fetched to inevitable real quick. Jim Montgomery came into the season with the highest win percentage of any Bruins coach ever. But after the Bruins rolled over for the Blue Jackets on home ice on Monday night, it was over. On the podcast, the debate wasn’t whether Boston would make a change but whether it would happen while we were recording. They held out for a few extra hours, for the record.

OK, so they’ve done the easy part. And the Joe Sacco era at least got off to a decent start with a pair of coach’s dream low-scoring wins, 1-0 over Utah and 2-1 over the Red Wings. For all the times a good coach ends up as a scapegoat and a change doesn’t help anything, sometimes you really do need a new voice and a fresh set of eyes. Maybe Sacco is that guy, and can nudge what still seems like a good team on paper back in the right direction. Or maybe the coach won’t matter much, but Jeremy Swayman will finally shake off the rust of a missed camp and start playing like his pre-extension self, at which point everything else solidifies from the net out.

If not? That’s where it gets tough. There really is an end-of-an-era feel about this Bruins start. Maybe we don’t need to overthink it. Maybe this is a team that isn’t good enough down the middle, whose second-best forward is slowing down at 36 and whose blue line isn’t quite good enough to paper over a slumping young goaltender, and it all adds up to a playoff miss nobody saw coming but maybe should have.

This is the part where I’d wonder what Don Sweeney would do in that case, only I’m not sure it would be Sweeney making those calls. The NHL’s fourth-longest tenured GM has had a ton of success in Boston, and maybe this is just the inevitable ending in a league that craves parity and punishes excellence.

But as far as getting this group, or something close to it, back on track? If there’s an easy answer, apart from a new-coach bounce and a goalie snapping out of his funk, I’m not seeing it. Bruins fans, where’s your hope index at as we hit the quarter mark?

The bottom five

The five teams that are headed toward dead last and the best lottery odds for James Hagens, or maybe someone else.

That Bruins coaching story continued when the biggest news of the weekend came out of St. Louis, where the Blues jumped at the chance to hire Montgomery. That meant firing Drew Bannister after only 76 games, just 22 of those without the interim tag. That’s a tough call to make, but clearly Doug Armstrong didn’t want to let an opportunity slip by, especially with his team struggling badly in his penultimate year as GM.

For now, we’ll keep the Blues out of the bottom five until we see what Montgomery can do. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have room for a new entry …

5. Pittsburgh Penguins (7-12-4, -33) — I can’t keep them out any longer. Not after a weekend that saw them outscored 10-2 in a pair of losses. Ah well, at least one of those goals provided a bit of history:

You’ve still got Crosby, Pens fans. Just don’t think about how it’s all going to end.

4. Columbus Blue Jackets (9-9-2, -3) — The whole David Jiricek situation is weird. You’re building a culture of accountability, so you certainly don’t want to hand anything to anyone based on draft pedigree. But you’re also rebuilding, and the development of a guy you spent a No. 6 pick on has to be a priority. Maybe that development is more likely to happen with big minutes in the AHL, and that’s all this demotion is. But it’s led to some trade speculation, and GM Don Waddell didn’t exactly sound like a guy who wasn’t thinking that way when he was asked about it. Let’s see where this goes.

3. Montreal Canadiens (7-11-2, -20) — They played maybe their best game of the season in last Monday’s win over the Oilers, then maybe had too many days off to think about it before a disappointing follow-up against the Knights.

2. Chicago Blackhawks (7-12-2, -14) — You know what, it’s been a rough season, we’ll allow it.

Also, Bedard is a shutdown defensive center now. He also has three goals on the year, and I don’t even want to think about where this discourse is going to go in the next month or two if the puck doesn’t start going in for him.

1. San Jose Sharks (6-12-5, -23) — I thought this was a neat find by Eric: The Sharks are racking up goals with the goalie out, scoring a league-leading six times at six-on-five. Does that mean they should play the whole game that way? No, obviously not, don’t be ridiculous. You’d definitely put a goalie in net if it was late in the third period and you were defending a lead. But should they start every game at six-on-five? Look, I’m just saying that the math checks out.

Also, Joe Thornton absolutely rules.

(And for the record, yes he still would.)

Not ranked: Ottawa Senators — They swore it wouldn’t happen again.

The Senators went into the season expecting improvement. Ideally that would mean a playoff spot, although even the most optimistic fan knew that wasn’t a guarantee. But at a minimum, they’d be in the race, playing meaningful hockey all season long.

The one thing that wouldn’t happen — that couldn’t happen — would be yet another slow start that had them looking up at the race by the end of November. That had been the theme in Ottawa for years: offseason optimism, then almost immediate disappointment, then months of finger-pointing between games that didn’t matter.

But those were Pierre Dorion’s teams, and D.J. Smith’s teams, and even Eugene Melnyk’s teams. This was a new start. This time was going to be different.

So far, it hasn’t been all that different.

Twenty games into a crucial season, the Senators are under .500, sitting at 8-11-1 after dropping their fifth straight, a 4-3 home loss to the Canucks on Saturday. Maybe worse, it’s largely been the same story as the last few seasons: An exciting and talented core has too many lapses at too many wrong moments, and pays for it because of substandard goaltending. That last part was supposed to be fixed by the Linus Ullmark trade, and the Senators have 33 million reasons to hope his slow start is just a case of a veteran adjusting to a new team. But this has been a pattern in Ottawa, where goalies with solid track records show up and immediately get worse. And it can’t happen again.

The season certainly hasn’t been a disaster, and the Sens are one four-game win streak from being right back in the mix. The fall of the Bruins has put an unexpected playoff spot into play, canceling out the one the Capitals seem intent on keeping. The path is there. But with a new owner, a new GM, a new coach and a new starting goalie, there are going to be tough questions if it all plays out the same way it always does. And for once, those questions might have to start with maybe the most uncomfortable of all: Are we sure this young core is actually good enough?

For what it’s worth, Steve Staios is still preaching patience, because he’s an NHL GM and that’s all they know how to do, at least publicly. And the players, especially captain Brady Tkachuk, are still saying all the right things. They’ve certainly had plenty of practice over the years. So have their fans, who have been through this enough times that they’re getting used to reading pieces about their team that lean on words like “scars” and “baggage.”

The next two weeks should be crucial, and if so, it’s at least a decent schedule — after the Flames tonight, they head off for the three-game California trip that features two rebuilding teams, then come home for winnable games against the Red Wings, Predators and Islanders. You’d think that four-game win streak should be in there somewhere. But if it isn’t … well, maybe Julian’s got it right.

For now, we’ve seen this movie before in Ottawa. This time, the remake features a largely new cast. Sens fans are waiting to see if this one is going to finally have a different ending.

(Photo of the Ottawa Senators: André Ringuette / NHLI via Getty Images)



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