Two teams we all likely thought had at least an outside shot at winning the 2024 Stanley Cup presently sit well outside a playoff position.
And the climb in front of each squad highlights how different the scene in the NHL’s two conferences are this year.
The Edmonton Oilers outscored their opponents 13-2 in two weekend wins. On Friday, they blanked the Caps 5-0 in Washington, then they trounced the Ducks 8-2 back home in northern Alberta on Sunday night.
Despite the victories, Edmonton still sits at 7-12-1 on the season for a .375 points percentage. The Oilers need to jump five squads to bump someone out of a Western Conference wild-card spot.
The New Jersey Devils, meanwhile, are a .500 team after blitzing the Buffalo Sabres 7-2 on home ice on Saturday in Nico Hischier’s return to the lineup. Jersey, though, has to leapfrog six teams to nudge into an Eastern Conference playoff spot.
As it stands, just three outfits in the East — Montreal, Columbus and the Sabres team the Devils just beat — have sub-.500 records compared to seven in the West. At the moment, the final Western Conference berth is occupied by a team with a losing record in the 8-9-5 Seattle Kraken.
Obviously, games played factor into the equation at this point — Seattle is tied for the most in the West right now with 22, while Jersey has played fewer (19) than every East team, save two — but you get the point.
The ask in terms of climbing into a playoff spot are simply two different propositions for Edmonton and New Jersey.
And you wonder how much will change.
The only truly gruesome record in the East belongs to the 6-12-4 Columbus Blue Jackets squad that blew a 2-0 lead over the final 10 minutes of their game versus Carolina on Sunday in a 3-2 defeat. Understanding there’s only so many wins to go around, would you really be surprised if the likes of Buffalo, Ottawa, the Islanders, Pittsburgh and even Philadelphia — a surprising 11-9-1 after Saturday’s win over the Isles — all finished at .500 or just above? Ultimately, you could easily see the list of East teams finishing below .500 after 82 games being Columbus, Montreal and one more squad.
Contrast that with the West, where it seems like eight clubs — fully half the conference — could finished below the even-steven mark.
San Jose and Chicago have been as bad as we expected, Edmonton is trying to pull out of a death spiral, and Anaheim has dropped seven of nine after losing to the Oilers. Throw in the Minnesota Wild — who’ve taken the mantle from Columbus as the biggest mess in the league following a seventh straight loss in Detroit on Sunday — and it’s a pretty rough scene at the bottom of a conference that boasts four legitimate heavyweights — Vegas, Colorado, Dallas and Los Angeles — at the top.
Maybe the likes of Edmonton, Seattle or even Calgary can climb above .500, but it’s also not hard to see teams sitting at that mark right now, like Arizona or Nashville — winners of five straight — slipping down.
The travel may be tougher, but the competition is a lot lighter right now out West.
Other Takeaways
• The very best team in the West by points percentage is the aforementioned Kings, where Trevor Moore and Quinton Byfield are emerging as primetime players. Playing left wing on the top line now, Byfield notched a goal in Friday’s 5-2 win over the Ducks. Even after being held off the scoresheet in Saturday’s 4-0 whitewash of Montreal, the 2020 second-overall pick has 15 points in his past 14 outings.
Moore, meanwhile, is up to 11 goals on the year after the California kid bagged a brace versus the Canadiens on the heels of dishing out two helpers versus Anaheim. He’s a point-per-game player this year and one of the many reasons the Kings look as good as they do.
• The Lightning must be thrilled to have Andrei Vasilevskiy back in the crease. ‘Vasy’ returned from back surgery to make 22 saves in an 8-2 walloping of the Hurricanes in Carolina. The real story, though, was up front, where the Lightning’s eight tallies on 14 shots established an NHL record for single-game shooting percentage at 57.1 percent. (Only two other teams — the Minnesota North Stars in January, 1984 and the Red Wings in February of 1991 — have hit the 50 percent mark since the league began tracking the stat in 1959-60).
Not surprisingly, Nikita Kucherov’s 2-4-6 performance has him atop the NHL scoring charts with 35 points.
• Antti Raanta’s .429 save percentage in that game represents the worst in a game where a goalie saw at least 14 shots. (If you lower the shot threshold to 12, former Red Wing Tim Cheveldae takes the cake with a .417 mark). That dubious distinction notwithstanding, it was actually a pretty good weekend for tenders. No fewer than six guys recorded shutouts, thanks largely to the fact both Samuel Ersson of the Flyers and Ilya Sorokin of the Islanders went 65 minutes without surrendering a goal on Saturday in Philly’s 1-0 shootout victory on Long Island. Pheonix Copley, Connor Ingram, Connor Hellebuyck and Stuart Skinner also blanked opponents during a whitewash-happy weekend.
Weekend Warrior
In past seasons, it felt like we could put Connor McDavid in this spot every Monday. This season … not so much.
Well, his nine-point weekend — including his ninth career five-point game on Sunday — has him back where he belongs.
Red and White Power Rankings
1. Vancouver Canucks (14-7-1) After splitting the weekend with a win in Seattle Friday followed by a defeat in San Jose 24 hours later, the Canucks have played more road games (13) than every team in the league save Calgary (14). They’ll host the Ducks on Tuesday to start a nice stretch of playing seven of eight in their own building.
2. Winnipeg Jets (12-6-2) Mason Appleton has continued to produce, picking up a pair of apples (hey-oh!) in Friday’s 3-0 win in Florida. A guy who has never registered 30 points is on pace for 60 right now.
3. Toronto Maple Leafs (10-6-3) At this time last year, Mitch Marner was in the midst of establishing a franchise record with a 23-game point streak. Yes, Marner — as coach Sheldon Keefe pointed out after Saturday’s 3-2 loss in Pittsburgh — is still the team’s five-on-five points leader with 13, but as much as the coach tried to pump the brakes on questions about Marner and the top line, it’s clear No. 16 has not been his usual elite self.
4. Ottawa Senators (8-8-0) The Sens went from being down 2-1 in the second period versus the Islanders on Friday to 4-1 in the span of six seconds. You can’t pin it all on the ‘tender, but Anton Forsberg — with Joonas Korpisalo dinged up — has not been able to find his ‘A’ game this season.
5. Edmonton Oilers (7-12-1) After overwhelming their opponents this weekend, the Oilers sit second overall in terms of Moneypuck’s expected goals percentage (56.15). Only the Kings (57.99) are higher.
6. Calgary Flames (8-10-3) Friday’s big 7-4 comeback win in Dallas — which featured four third-period goals, including the empty-netter — was huge for Calgary, even if the Flames were dropped the next night in Denver. The team now has a six-game home stretch — albeit against tough opponents — to try and build some real momentum.
7. Montreal Canadiens (9-10-2) The Canadiens did take two of three on their California swing, but the trip ended with a pretty listless performance on Saturday versus the Kings. It’s now 21 games and counting without a goal for Josh Anderson, who is making $8 million against two assists this season.
The Week Ahead
• As of Tuesday, we’ll officially be one-quarter of the way through the 2023-24 season. The game between the Devils and Islanders that night already feels like a big one, while we’ll also get two playoff re-matches as the Panthers visit the Leafs and the Golden Knights glide into Edmonton.
• There’s a lot of tasty action on Saturday night. The Bruins — who celebrate the 99th anniversary of their first game on Friday — are in Toronto, while there’s another Original Six matchup between the Wings and Habs in Montreal There’s a nice all-Canadian showdown out west between the Canucks and Flames in southern Alberta, while we also get our first Keystone State battle of the year as the Flyers visit Pittsburgh.
