The NHL’s playoff picture starts to take shape just as the league takes a pause
Welcome to the rare edition of Sunday Monday Standings, where we take a look at the Eastern Conference at the time of the NHL’s pause for their international appetizer known as the 4 Nations Face-off.
Team are on hiatus until the 22nd, and have completed between 54-57 games. That means there’s just about 25 (or sometimes slightly more) games left for everyone in the season still to be completed. now that about 70% of the results are in, the picture is starting to clarify.
Let’s take a look at it, starting with the top half of the East.
It remains Washington’s world. The Capitals are 10 points up in the division, and in even better shape for first overall, since they are nine points up on Florida and have three games in hand. The good news is that the Caps have shown how to nail a rebuild on the fly, the bad news is that the series of unlikely best case scenarios (and, friendly finishing/goaltending inputs) to get to that point. Still, no matter how you want to try and slice and dice a team chugging along towards a 110+ point season, the results alone are regrettable enviable to see them achieve late-stage relevancy.
The Atlantic Division has been predictable, at the top if nothing else. Florida won the division last season (among other things) and is a reliably consistent team at this point. No one can be surprised that Toronto is right up there with them. Tampa has been hanging around and gotten it in gear lately.
Overall, the Atlantic looks more exciting and just plain stronger from No 1 to 3. Friend of the blog Coach T, a Devils expert summed New Jersey up to me as just slogging through the season at this point, and maybe even picking up some bad habits and not always playing the right way. We’ll see if they shake that and pickup more attention to detail and focus as the games start to count, because as the Caps will hope to not find out – there’s no reward or prize for peaking 40 or 50 games into the season.
The Wild Card picture never fails to bring surprises and twists and turns. That’s how the system was designed in order to keep as many teams as close as possible for as long as possible (or at least give the perception), and while you can say what you will about the format, it’s impossible to say it doesn’t work as intended.
The Senators may have finally taken that next step! (So, of course they lose three-straight games going in to the break when they finally were about to exert some control on a playoff position). The crazy thing is, the Sens aren’t even going that well, they’ve only averaged 2.35 goals/game in their last 20 games. They’re in a good position now, but it’s tenuous at best. Ottawa hasn’t been in the playoffs since Chris Kunitz’s OT Game 7 goal, it’s been a while. It’s going to take a lot to get back.
The Red Wings, however, might be the best bet right now for a team trending towards the Wild Card. Detroit is 15-5-1 under new coach Todd McLellan, who has fixed some things under the hood and gotten the Wings playing better. The break comes at a bad time for them, can they pick up the hot streak when the games start?
The Bruins find themselves in sixth place in the Atlantic. They haven’t finished so poorly since being fifth (in a five team division) back in 2006-07. Every year a big question will be if this will be the season that Boston drops off, and every time before now they have been able to push it off. They might not be able to do that this year, despite the best efforts of David Pastrnak (26 points in a 13-game point streak!)
As far as the Rangers go, who the hell knows. They lost in a dreadful effort on Friday night to a Penguin team that didn’t have Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin and barely looked interested in playing. With all evidence pointing to bad, they of course come back the next day and make a spirited comeback against Columbus for a very important win before the break. On any given game they can win or look like the worst team around. They are in big danger of running out of runway with the games remaining quickly evaporating and teams like the Red Wings and Islanders on big heaters is very bad news on Broadway.
Speaking of that, the Islanders were down near the bottom of the conference before reviving their season with a seven-game winning streak recently. All streaks come to an end, and NYI dropped two in a row before the break to settle back towards the lower middle, but they at least have reason to think that they have a chance. Montreal, meanwhile, pulled a reverse Islanders and had a stretch to fall way back to the pack over their last 10 game stretch.
In a sense, the Wild Card race is like that old school electric horse racing game. One horse will jump out in front of the pack for a bit, then comically lose power and fall way back as another horse or two surges up only to repeat the process. To a degree it’s been OTT, DET and NYI surging lately with BOS, CBJ, NYR and MTL falling back. But who knows, by mid-March it could reverse to the opposite happening.