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Since outing of thoughts in the NHL (you realize, relationship back like two lockouts ago), the Western Conference has been appreciably stronger than the East. The teams that aren’t clustered up and down the east coast of the continent lengthy held sway by way of general high quality, even when they’d a basic paucity of really superstar gamers.
While Sid Crosby and Alex Ovechkin and Steven Stamkos had been lighting up the league in a lot of the last several years, five of the last seven Stanley Cup winners got here out of the West, as did seven of the last 9 Presidents’ Trophy winners. When checked out as a complete, the West consistently was producing No. 6, 7, and eight seeds that may have been division winners within the East.
But now, it’s time to ask if these days have come to an finish. Yes, with the shift of the Purple Wings to the Japanese Convention, the West lost certainly one of its giants, however extra importantly it appears that evidently the teams within the East that are actually good have lastly and definitively handed their Western counterparts. Whereas it is not essentially truthful to base such a seismic shift on outcomes from last season, which featured no interconference video games, there was a fair split among prime-10 teams in the league between the East and West.
Five apiece may not sound like a big quantity, and certainly that’s the identical quantity as the 2 previous seasons, however with the Red Wings moving East and doubtlessly pounding on the weaker siblings in its new division (getting Toronto, Florida and Tampa five times a yr every all but guarantees the Wings another playoff look).
Moreover, although, the Canucks appear to be pretty much achieved as a real energy on this league, as they had been for the last a number of years, the Geese look like they will regress arduous, and adding the Jets to the Western picture helps no one however the actual good teams of their division — of which there are two — pad out their stats a bit bit.
Interestingly, due to the imbalance within the number of teams in each conference, it appears very doubtless that individuals will probably be complaining in regards to the variety of crap teams from Conference III moving into the playoffs over these from the East that actually deserved to participate within the postseason. The odds that the third-place crew behind the Blackhawks and Blues — perhaps the Predators, perhaps the Wild — have fewer factors than the fourth-place staff in both the PatrickPlus or Flortheast (or each, I suppose) seems terribly excessive.
Based on what we noticed last season, there’s little reason to believe that Chicago will not be the most effective staff within the league once again. They’re superbly constructed and lost relatively little by way of actual strong contributors this summer season. They might miss Dave Bolland, they might miss Viktor Stalberg, however they won’t miss either a lot that they are not an early Cup favorite once once more.
After that, although, it’s a must to suppose that the true seat of energy is within the PatrickPlus.
Pittsburgh is there, the Rangers look poised to cease enjoying disappointingly now that they have a brand new coach Henrik Lundqvist and some of their skillsier forwards does not actively hate, the Islanders seem to be on an upward trajectory even when their present goaltending state of affairs stays at the least somewhat unnerving, and you may’t think about that the Flyers do as poorly this time around as they did last season.
Columbus is a bit of a wild card, obviously, and I am not sure they can replicate one thing like last season with their solely major addition this offseason having been an injured Nathan Horton.
New Jersey could be truly terrible, and I’m undecided how much I belief Washington to do nicely exterior the Southeast, or Alex Ovechkin to replicate anything near an MVP performance. I suspect the reply is “very little.”
The Flortheast is pretty credible too, although. Boston cannot really hope for rather more mileage than they bought final yr, but that still gets them pretty far. The Senators have improved, the Purple Wings have are available, the Canadiens are seemingly going to complete fairly high despite their best efforts to signal nothing however rubbish this summer time. The much less mentioned about Toronto, Buffalo and the Florida groups, the higher clearly, however nonetheless that’s four out of eight groups I’d charge as being at the least good, and in some instances doubtlessly nice.
The West not so much. Chicago and Los Angeles are the only one’s I might consider robust sufficient on paper to be anything like a Cup favorite, with St. Louis and San Jose a ways back of them. After that, how good anyone is, in an entire 14-group convention, could be very much open for interpretation. The Canucks’ means to succeed beneath a new coach, who’s going to ask the Sedins to block pictures, seems up in the air.
The remaining questions are much more pressing. Can Edmonton take a large enough step ahead? Can Minnesota overcome a shaky goaltending scenario and lack of forward depth? Can Nashville get anybody to score goals? Was final-yr Mike Smith the Mike Smith we at all times thought he was going to be? Can Dallas or Colorado enhance in any appreciable means? I’m unsure there’s any good answer to these questions. Not any that those teams would love to listen to, at any fee.
It will probably be very interesting to see how the convention imbalance affects things going forward; it will be a lot easier to make the playoffs in the West than the East, and that’s not going to vary any time soon (barring an expansion workforce or two being added to the mix, only for fun).
Teams in the East also are usually the ones that make some huge cash, and by and large they look like they are going to have a good amount more cap area in the coming years when the ceiling reaches heights that start to resemble these in a few of Europe’s grander cathedrals.
All of which doesn’t precisely foreshadow good things for the way forward for the Western Conference and its collective Stanley Cup aspirations, however identical to after they needed to offload all their good gamers after the 2010 Final, the Blackhawks do appear to love a problem.
The balance of power has shifted east in NHL
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