Sometimes, one week can be a long time. Anybody who’s rented a vacation house with too many people and too little space can tell you that.
For the most part, though, a week is a blink of the eye. And in the hockey world, it certainly doesn’t represent enough of a sample size to draw anything in the way of firm conclusions.
All we have right now are nuggets, little snapshots that may or may not develop into bigger-picture stories.
So, with the majority of squads still three-or-fewer outings into an 82-game grind, we’re using this edition of the Power Rankings to highlight one thing — a stat, a strong performance, an issue to flag — that stood out from the first week of action.
1. Colorado Avalanche (3-0-0) Low-key, Alexandar Georgiev finished seventh in Vezina voting last season. He’s kicked off his second year in Denver with three straight wins — all on the road — and sports a .941 even-strength save percentage, the second-best mark in the league among puckstoppers with at least two starts. (We won’t spoil who’s No. 1 in that category, but stay tuned, Flyers fans …).
2. Vegas Golden Knights (4-0-0) I keep wondering if Jack Eichel — fully healthy and presumably as happy as he’s ever been during his NHL career — takes his status as a 1C to a whole other, 100-point level this season. He’s 2-2-4 out of the gate on an undefeated team. Second-line centre Chandler Stephenson, by the way, has five points this season and — as a pending-UFA — is going to account for a much higher cap hit 12 months from now than his current $2.75 million.
3. Carolina Hurricanes (3-1-0) Jesperi Kotkaniemi closed last season with 27 points in 35 games and has opened this one with four in four.
4. Toronto Maple Leafs (2-1-0) Auston Matthews’ half-dozen goals total is obviously the headline, but Toronto’s five-on-five team save percentage of .865 — second-worst in the league — highlights the fact there’s nothing open and shut about the blue-ice hierarchy.
5. Boston Bruins (2-0-0) Much talk about the Bruins obviously centred on the retirement of main middlemen Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci. The B’s have played only two games — and won them both — but, thus far, the remaining centres have produced zero goals and just two assists.
6. Dallas Stars (1-0-1) Jason Robertson — who finished ninth in the NHL with 313 shots last season — has put just three pucks on goal through two games. The team leader is actually defenceman Miro Heiskanen, with eight.
7. New Jersey Devils (1-1-1) Dawson Mercer really broke out down the stretch last season — 27 points in his final 29 games — so the 0-0-0 goose egg stat line was probably not how he wanted to fire up this season.
8. Edmonton Oilers (1-2-0) The Oilers’ shooting percentage entering their third game of the season, versus Nashville, was 5.97 per cent. By the end of the night, it had jumped to 10.31. Four goals on 11 first-period shots was just what the doctor ordered for a team in search of its first win.
9. New York Islanders (2-0-0) Honestly, the two-game sample size seems like a perfect microcosm of what the Isles will try to do this season: they’ve scored a total of four goals and surrendered a total of 42 shots — 40 of which were blocked by the brilliant Ilya Sorokin.
10. Ottawa Senators (3-1-0) The Josh Norris injury situation was getting more unsettling with each non-update, so to see him finally return on Wednesday night and notch a pair of goals in his first game in 10 months was beyond encouraging.
11. Detroit Red Wings (3-1-0) Welcome home to Michigan, Alex DeBrincat. It’s five goals in four games for the new Red Wing.
12. New York Rangers (2-1-0) Chris Kreider has scored four of the eight goals scored by Rangers forwards this season in three games. Great for him, but maybe time to spread it out a bit.
13. Pittsburgh Penguins (2-2-0) Evgeni Malkin — who last season played all 82 games for the first time since 2008-09 — is roaring out of the gate, with seven points in four outings.
14. Los Angeles Kings (1-1-1) Goalie Cam Talbot’s second start as a King was a good one, ending in a 5-1 win in Winnipeg. More like that would be wonderful for L.A.
15. Tampa Bay Lighting (1-2-1) Brandon Hagel — who inked a monster eight-year extension in the off-season — has four goals in four games on the heels of his career-high 30-goal showing last season. Nicely done.
16. Minnesota Wild (2-1-0) Minnesota native Brock Faber looked like he belonged in the NHL from the moment he joined the Wild from the University of Minnesota late last season. Now, with Jared Spurgeon nursing an injury, the 21-year-old blue-liner is leading the Wild with 23:06 of average ice time, through three games. They better start cranking out extra No. 7 sweaters for the Wild team store.
17. Vancouver Canucks (2-1-0) The Canucks’ team five-on-five save percentage of .973 is the result of strong play from both starter Thatcher Demko and new backup Casey DeSmith.
18. Winnipeg Jets (1-2-0) Eighty-five per cent of Cole Perfetti’s starts have come in the offensive zone. He’s sitting on one assist, so a nice breakout game would be welcomed by everyone.
19. St. Louis Blues (1-0-1) Two games, one regulation-time goal in each.
20. Philadelphia Flyers (2-1-0) It’s been an awesome start for Carter Hart, whose .944 even-strength save percentage is tops in the league.
21. Calgary Flames (1-1-1) It was obviously a rough debut for Jonathan Huberdeau last season in Calgary, so it’s a nice development to see him with three points after three games this year.
22. Florida Panthers (1-2-0) Props to two Swedish defencemen — Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Gus Forsling — who are doing all they can in the absence of Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour. Ekman-Larsson is averaging 26:02 of ice per night, while Forsling is at 24:34. Both guys are starting virtually every shift in the D-zone.
23. Buffalo Sabres (1-2-0) Goalie Devon Levi has gotten just a bit better in each of his three starts. If that upward trajectory continues, things should be pretty OK in Western New York.
24. Chicago Blackhawks (2-2-0) This rebuild is obviously going to be about more guys than Connor Bedard, and one of the future pillars — defenceman Kevin Korchinski — looks great through four games as a 19-year-old NHLer.
25. Anaheim Ducks (1-1-0) Jamie Drysdale played just eight games last season and then missed basically all of training camp while he and the Ducks hammered out a new contract. So to see the 21-year-old return, play more than everybody on the team save Cam Fowler and register two assists in two games out of the gate is wonderful news.
26. Washington Capitals (1-2-0) No goals in three games isn’t necessarily troubling for Alex Ovechkin, but the fact Ovie has just four total shots this season is downright shocking.
27. Arizona Coyotes (1-2-0) Logan Cooley not only has three points through three games for an offensively challenged squad, he’s also winning over half his face-offs as a rookie.
28. Columbus Blue Jackets (1-2-0) He may not be winning a tonne of draws just yet, but Patrik Laine, NHL centre, does have a goal and a helper in three games.
29. Montreal Canadiens (1-1-1) The Canadiens lead the league with 24 minor penalties and rank in the bottom third of the NHL in terms of effectively killing penalties. That’s a horrible early-season combination.
30. Nashville Predators (1-3-0) The Preds’ underlying numbers are quite good, they just haven’t gotten some of the saves they likely expected from Juuse Saros. It’s hard to imagine that will continue.
31. Seattle Kraken (0-3-1) Last season, Seattle couldn’t get a save in regulation time. This season, the goalies have been OK, but the squad has yet to score more than one goal in any of its four games.
32. San Jose Sharks (0-2-1) The advanced stats tell the same story as the win-loss column, as San Jose’s expected goals percentage (36.54) is 32nd in the league.
