NHL Standings Chat

Happy Monday morning, friends!  Hope you had a good weekend – it was a beauty in PHX, minus my double bogey on 18.  More on that tomorrow..

*****

NHL standings talk!  First, the West:

Since none of us believe that Detroit is going to miss the playoffs – y’know, cause they aren’t going to – the real number for Calgary, St. Louis, Anaheim, Minnesota and Dallas to shoot for is the Avalanche’s 86 – ten points ahead with ten games to go.  We could very well be looking at the exact same teams above the cutoff line ten games from now.  In fact, I think we will be.

Because of that, this is the first year I’m thinking more about the playoff seeding of our eight qualifiers than who they actually are.

For San Jose, the best thing that could happen to their Cup chances would be to finish fourth, and play at least one of the “happy to make it this far” teams – that being Los Angeles, Nashville, and Colorado.  All three of those teams were predicted to miss the playoffs at the start of the season, and when contrasted to their expectations, I think they’d be far more likely to roll over and die (or better put, be too content with their over-achieving regular seasons) than, well, any of the other four opponents in the West.

Will Phoenix finish above San Jose?  It’s gonna be close – Phoenix has a tough road ahead with six of their last nine on the road (road gmes: Chicago, Nashville, Vancouver, Calgary, Los Angeles and San Jose), but I’ve finally learned my lesson on betting against them.  The best part, as demonstrated in parantheses above, is that the last game of the year is San Jose versus Phoenix, and it could very well have huge who-plays-who implications.

As for the East….

A few things surprise me:

1)  To teams on the bubble that have been trying to crack playoffs and be taken seriously for years (Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Florida…. okay, you too, New York teams):  How bad do you need the other teams to be?  They’ve done everything they can this year to lose and fail.  Perennial playoff teams like Boston and Philly CANNOT be any worse than they’ve been.  At some point, you’re gonna have to grab the bull by the horns and win some big games.  To quote Floyd Mayweather, “step ya game up”.

Ooo, almost had it.

2)  As far as I know, neither Boston or Montreal has played consecutive good games this year.  I’m amazed they’re in 7th and 8th.  And poor Philly – better than Buffalo at every position, if you entirely ignore the fact that they have to play with AHL goalies.  AGAIN.  

Yep.  Poor, poor Philly.

3)  The crazy divide between the top four teams and the bottom four in the East is weird – it basically means the top four teams get a first round bye, which is nice in the NHL playoff marathon.  The only team I’m not fully sold on that’s up there is Buffalo, simply because if Miller has a couple bad games, they can be beaten.  Actually, y’know what might be fun?  A Philly/Buffalo playoff series where Philly beats Buffalo like a drum for 50 of the 60 minutes every game, and loses 3-2 and 2-1 four straight times (after Biron Eche Cechmanek Boucher lets in a few soft ones).

*****

Kudos to Teemu Selanne for scoring 600 goals…. crazy that I’m old enough to remember his amazing rookie year.

*****

Even crazier?  Kudos to ME for crawling from 16th out of the Bourne’s Blog Hockey League 20-team alley-fight (yes, that’s even crazier than Selanne’s 600 NHL goals, apparently), and climbing into a playoff spot the last week of the year.  I chipped all the way up to seventh, and it’s a new season kiddies, look out!

Only five more days til Friday.  And only a few more pounds til I go on Drew Magary’s twitter public humiliation diet.  Dude is down 45 pounds so far.

Western Conference Playoff Spots

The battle for playoff spots in the West is always a little more intriguing when some unexpected teams blow up and have good seasons, and this is one of those years.  Phoenix, Nashville and LA are all better than I expected, and I think better than the rest of the West had hoped.

So without really any ado, here’s how I see the bubble teams finishing up:

4th, Vancouver Canucks, 52 games played, 66 points

The only reason the Canucks get a blurb in the “bubble teams” section at all is their upcoming road trip.  They set an NHL record by being gone for something like six weeks, and playing 14 straight road games (Olympic preparation in Vancouver).  They’re 22-7-1 at home, but below .500 at 10-11-1 on the road this year.  If they survive the trip at .500, they’ll be in great shape.

{Only Washington, Pittsburgh and San Jose have scored more goals than the Canucks this year, and only New Jersey, Buffalo and Chicago have given up less.  Not bad, VanCity.  Not bad.}

5th, Phoenix Coyotes, 52 games played, 63 points

The ‘Yotes have played the majority of their games to date at home in the friendly confines of Jobing.com Arena (29), where they’re a dominant 19-8-2.  On the road, the Coyotes are an even 10-10-3 (23 games), sort of how your record is supposed to look.  With a third of the season left to play, they’re in position to push for a quality playoff spot.

Have you noticed a trend in the teams that are “overachieving”?  The Coyotes, Sabres, and Avalanche all have similar team builds, to some extent.  They’re fast over big, mostly young over mostly old, they’ve got great goaltending and most importantly, their top six forwards are almost all interchangeable as ”first line” guys.  Instead of the NBA method – pay one player to be your star and build around him – they all seem to be deeper teams without “that guy” to watch out for (the top two scorers from the teams I just listed are Tim Connolly and Paul Stastny, both below a point a game at 48 points in 51 games).

The Coyotes are going to make playoffs this year, but to have any hope of moving beyond a quick round one exit, they need to finish in 5th or 6th – 7th or 8th (versus San Jose or Chicago) would be hopeless.

6th, Los Angeles Kings, 51 games played, 61 points

The Kings seem fragile, don’t they?  Points are always easier to come by before Christmas, just like wins.  When Anze Kopitar has Ryan Smyth to help him out, he’s useful, but his production has seriously slowed down.  He just doesn’t seem like a guy who can get it done when his opponents key on him, they way the real elite stars can.  That says to me he’s not ready to be “the guy” on a team that needs one.  They’re good enough to win even with him struggling, so they’ll hang on to playoffs, but you certainly get the impression they aren’t headed the right direction.

7th, Nashville Predators, 51 games played, 61 points

I almost included the Preds in the group of “overachieving teams with the same build” from the Coyotes paragraph, but in the end, I didn’t think their Dan Ellis or Pekka Rinne deserved to be in the same class as Bryzgalov, Miller and Anderson.  Nashville could be the best team to miss playoffs this year… and I see it happening.

8th, Detroit Red Wings, 51 games played, 58 points

The depressing part for the teams on the wrong side of the playoff cutoff line looking in right now is, you’re not trying to catch Detroit’s 58 points, you’re looking at Nashvilles 61.  Detroit has played with half a team all year.  They’re the best coached team in the league, with some of the best names in the entire NHL in their dressing room (even with all they lost from last year).  The Canucks and Avalanche can start stressing now about which one of them is going to get unfortunately stuck in a (4) vs. (5) battle with Detroit.

9th, Calgary Flames, 52 games played, 58 points

What the hell happened to the Flames?  I feel like I fell asleep for an hour and they dropped a half-dozen spots.  Hmm.  1-8-1 in their last ten, with six straight losses.  By all logic, the Flames should be okay:  great goaltender, maybe the best defensive trio in the league, and a couple of guys up front who can score.  For me, the major difference between their offensive firepower and the teams “overacheiving” this year, is that their goal scorers aren’t young and energetic.  They don’t have that legs churning, relentless effort type threat right now – they’re scary in the “HolyCrapDon’tLetHimShootFromThereAWww.  They scored.” type of way.

10th, Anaheim Ducks, 52 games played, 55 points

This is the difference between the Eastern and Western conference.  The 10th and 11th place teams in the West are still really good (so are the Isles, but um, I just…. crap).  The problem is, they can’t all make playoffs, and Anaheim didn’t get off to a great start.  I don’t think they’re good enough to have a huge second half and make up for it.

11th, Dallas Stars, 52 games played, 55 points

I was waiting for them to end up in this spot in the conference, and here they are.  Dallas is a good team, but when teams like Phoenix and LA are good too, it toughens up their usually soft division.

12th, Minnesota Wild, 52 games played, 54 points

I don’t know a lot about Minnesota this year, and that’s not a good sign.  I do know when you’ve pinned a chunk of your offensive hopes on Chuck Kobasew and Andrew Ebbett, you’re in a whole heap of trouble (both are good enough players, but very shutdownable.  Yep, I can make up words on my blog.)  I guess their go-to guy is Havlat, I’m just not sure what else they’ve got.  I’m sure my oddly heavy Wild readership can fill me in on them, but from what I can tell, they don’t have a hockey teams chance in Phoenix snowballs chance in an oven.

13th, St. Louis Blues, 52 games played, 54 points

I’m sticking to my guns on the Blues, especially with the addition of Davis Payne.  They’ve got good top six forwards, good goaltending, and hopefully enough D to get into contention during the last few weeks.  I still think they’ll make a push.