Arace: Power in NHL is shifting from East to West
If you’re a consumer of NHL games and you’ve been nodding off on the couch before the West Coast games come on the air, you’ve missed a lot of teams sneaking up on you. It’s essentially the midway point of the season – the Blue Jackets play Game No. 41 on Saturday, and the rest of the league will catch up within a week – and if you take a Google Earth view of North America, you can’t help but notice:
The hockey world has titled to the left. An era that has been defined by the Eastern Conference’s depth and power – the Pittsburgh Penguins, Washington Capitals and a murderous Metropolitan Division, and the Tampa Bay Lightning, Boston Bruins and a brutal Atlantic – is drawing to a close. The West is reestablishing its hegemony with the past two Stanley Cup champions, the Colorado Avalanche and the Vegas Golden Knights, who are being chased by a posse that includes the Dallas Stars, the LA Kings, the Vancouver Canucks and the Winnipeg Jets. And somewhere back there, Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers are beginning to stir.
The scene is reminiscent of the post-lockout decade (2006-2015), when the Anaheim Ducks, Chicago Blackhawks and Los Angeles Kings were winning Cups, and they were being chased by some excellent San Jose Sharks and Canucks teams. The cycle is coming around again.
As the weekend was drawing nigh, the Bruins and the New York Rangers had the top points percentages in the league. The Bruins, who were thought to be overmatched after the retirements of centers Patrice Bergeron (a first-ballot Hall of Famer) and David Krejci, are a nice story. And David Pastrnak is a legitimate MVP candidate. The Rangers, too, are a nice story, and Artemi Panarin is a legitimate MVP candidate.
But out West, even the Avalanche are something of an outlier. They have elite talent in Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Cale Makar, Valeri Nichushkin, et al, but they don’t have the forward depth and the defensive brawn of the Jets, Stars, Kings, Canucks or Golden Knights. And it should also be mentioned here that the Jets (Connor Hellebuyck), Stars (Jake Oettinger) and Canucks (Thatcher Demko) are in possession of top-shelf goaltenders.
It should also be mentioned that the Canucks were plus-45 through 38 games. Remember how for years Vancouver was stereotyped as a clown show, because it was, and suddenly they’re legit? Believe it. There are a number of legit teams in the West, and you realize it if you’ve seen just one Jets game. Does anyone get out of their zone with more alacrity and take care of their own zone with such aplomb? Wonderful team to watch, even without injured Kyle Connor, a legitimate MVP candidate. If you can stay awake, the best hockey is being played into the wee hours of the morning. The only team I don’t watch out there is Vegas, because I hate them.
The wild-card race out there is going to be thrilling. Heading into the weekend, there were seven teams separated by seven points at the top of the wild-card standings, including Edmonton, which started the season 2-9-1 and 5-12-1 and roared back to life. Mark it down: The Oilers are going to sneak in, and nobody is going to want to see McDavid, Leon Draisaitl & Co. in the first round. Wicked.
In the East, the wild-card race will be just as exciting, in the sense that just a few points separate the six teams at the top of the wild-card standings. Among these teams are the Penguins, Lightning and Capitals, aged remnants of an era that is fast fading, like Mike Babcock.
Among the playoff locks in the East are the Toronto Maple Leafs, who have no depth on offense or defense and no goaltender; the Carolina Hurricanes, who have been up and coming for years, but they cannot score and they don’t have a goaltender; and the New York Islanders, who, like the Nashville Predators, are like cockroaches. Do we trust the New Jersey Devils yet? No goaltending.
The best East story belongs to the Philadelphia Flyers, who are currently holding down a wild-card spot, which is to say that John Tortorella might be in line for his third Jack Adams award as coach of the year. Tortorella did not like his locker room during his first season in Philly, 2022-23. Last summer, the Flyers waived defenseman Tony DeAngelo, traded forward Kevin Hayes to St. Louis and shipped defenseman Ivan Provorov to Columbus. Now, Torts loves his room, and they love him. The Flyers are the biggest surprise of the half-season.
As for the Jackets, there is hope for the future. I believe that. Sooner or later, they’re bound to cycle out of bottom. They’re certainly due.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Western Conference teams emerge as NHL balance of power shifts
