As we draw closer to the NHL preseason, it comes time for us to look ahead and think about the rest of the Pro Hockey world’s chances at the Playoffs or, heaven forbid…the Stanley Cup.
We continue our pre-season tour by making our way out west with our divisional neighbors in the Central Division, and it is….lopsided.
I get the impression looking at the Central that the top 3 will largely remain the same as it did last year, and all others are scratching and clawing for a wildcard spot that will probably go to a Pacific Division team anyway. The division is in a time of transition and flux; many of it’s mainstays are either rebuilding, bad, or about to be bad, and the new powers don’t seem to be in any significant danger of a big drop-off.
All that said? There are one or two teams that could be endlessly interesting to keep an eye on; even if everything your gut tells you says otherwise.
Let’s get into it.
Definitely Making it
1st. Dallas Stars
The Kraken and Stars fought like demons, neither made it to the Finals, only for the Stars to reap the benefits of their division basically collapsing around them months later, while we have to sit through a Vegas banner-raising ceremony on day one of the season.
Gag me with a spoon.
The Stars still have a lot of the same question marks regarding their performance; they play alright at evens, are set to be a world-beater on the power play, and are taking some flyers on some older names like forward Matt Duchene and goalie Matt Murray.
Not much of that matters when you’ve still got Jason Robertson, Wyatt Johnston, Miro Heiskanen, Jake Oettinger, and now Logan Stankoven, all of whom are well under 30. That’s a sharp core that can seamlessly transition the old one out without much trouble down the line, and right now is supported with a number of vets like Jamie Benn, Joel Pavelski, and Tyler Seguin.
Will they be perfect? No. Are they the most dynamic team in the Central? Absolutely. If you wanted to bet on anyone coming out of this division alive, the Stars are my bet.
2. Minnesota Wild
This team makes weird moves, nobody really pays them much mind, and then wins like 58% of their games and punches their ticket to the postseason in January.
Just what are they cooking up there in St. Paul?
Minnesota fresh off of their early finish has had some issues to work through; they’re one of the many teams on their hands and knees praying for cap relief thanks to their infamous buyout of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter, and thus really couldn’t do a whole lot as Free Agency started. They did the smart thing of re-signing Filip Gustavsson, but other than that…not a whole lot has changed. There’s no Ryan Reaves, Matt Dumba or John Klingberg anymore, but in Reaves’ place is Pat Maroon, so the truculence quota has been more than filled.
Really, I think the smartest thing for the Wild to have done this offseason was basically nothing, and they’ve done that. The Wild remain, even with their losses, a formidable team most nights just from their pure defensive acumen and puck-possession prowess. That first line of Kaprizov, Hartman, and Zuccarello is no joke, and following that up with Boldy, Eriksson-Ek, and Johansson is rough for most teams to deal with. If they can add Boldy’s scoring acumen to Kaprizov’s dynamism full-time on the power play?
There’s a division winner in here somewhere. They just have to not stymie that dynamic scoring talent to do that.
Probably Making it
3-4. Colorado Avalanche
I’m less bullish on the Avs than most because of a number of major questions that, in my opinion, really haven’t been answered by Colorado’s offseason. After our boys in Deep Blue sent them home, the beaten and bruised Avs mostly spent the offseason hemorrhaging players and only kind of replacing them wherever they could, as their cap situation made that a difficult prospect to do without sacrificing major parts. It doesn’t help that Val Nichushkin is still dealing with uh…whatever the hell it is he got involved with, so an already fragile core looks to have been shaken and shaken badly by the hard reality that eventually, even the best teams in the league fade; especially if they’ve been stuck in cap hell for like two years.
They’re still unambiguously talented. but I don’t think they’re going to be great in the same way they were a couple of years ago. Adding Jonathan Drouin from Montreal and Ryan Johansen as reclamation projects feel like decent calls on offense, picking up Miles Wood definitely makes their attack faster, even if it doesn’t make them better, and that top pair of Toews and Makar are pretty solid! But their big guns can only do so much, and the modern NHL is all about your depth being able to press even half as well as the stars. This year, that’s not a sure thing for them like it was a couple of years ago, and it could break them…but they’re also at a base line of talent that means they could merely tumble all the way out into 4th in Division and still squeak in.
4-6. Winnipeg Jets
The only reason they are here and not like 7th is because as much as I despise this team on a philosophical level, I cannot in good conscience say a team with Connor Hellebuyck in net is in any significant danger of missing the playoffs.
God knows they tried last year.
They are here however, because I am enormously spiteful to the coddling the Winnipeg Jets receive from the larger media apparatus in hockey, in spite of the team being a goddamn mess and has been a mess for a good 8 years. They did the right thing and got rid of Blake Wheeler, but he was far from the only toxic element on that team. Wheeler wasn’t the first guy out there whining about how mean Rick Bowness was in his objectively correct estimation of them having no pushback in an all-timer post-loss press conference, and almost none of those criticisms seem to have been taken to heart. We’re probably going to continue hearing about this team being hours from imploding altogether for months and then it’ll all be swept under the rug until they get hot again, roll back ass-wards into the playoffs again, lose badly again, and then start the whole damn cycle over until someone finally says they’ve had enough and blows them up. Because they’re a Canadian team and are under no delusion that they need to try, that will happen sometime around 2029.
But yeah, it’s great for the game that they’re back in Winnipeg. Good for you, Manitoba.
It’s a shame too because, if you completely ignore that Mark Scheifele is getting carried like a backpack nightly in his own end by Kyle Connor, this is a team you could easily root for! Hellebuyck could represent the USA in the Olympics one day! Nikolaj Ehlers remains one of the premiere forwards in the NHL! Getting Vilardi and Iafallo for PLD deal was a coup! Their defense pairings actually look really good if a little lopsided on one side! Winnipeg shows out for these guys and shows out big!
It’ll all be shot in the foot by team leadership that is at each other’s throats, and a front office that’s otherwise not going to fix that unless forced to.
I am so irrationally annoyed by this team existing. The Thrashers didn’t need to die for this.
Might Make It
4-7. St. Louis Blues
Here is what I know about the Blues. They are either a Wildcard team, or going to be in the running for the 1st overall pick of 2024. The Blues are taking a super risky bet that they’re going to be good, that Kevin Hayes and…well…not much else is all they’ve needed to return to being contenders.
But a lot has to go right for them.
For one thing, they can’t get hurt much. Shocking, I know; a team needs to be good by having players, but a lot of the woes they had last year came from injuries derailing potentially important career years from a number of their better players, and further, they need for the slumps they kept running into to be just a thing of the past, otherwise they could find themselves in real danger. Is Torey Krug really just going through it? Or is he just washed? Is Kasperi Kapanen really a top 6 guy? Or is he only one out of necessity?
Also, Jordan Binnington has graduated from “obnoxious but useful” to just “obnoxious”, and they don’t really seem to have a solid answer for that? They’ve settled on Joel Hofer as a replacement for Thomas Greiss, who was…interesting; but he’s retired and set to be away from the US, where he’s free to all the places Retired Germans with his particular belief-set go (such as Argentina, for example) and now their hopes rest on the young man from Winnipeg to back up the most volatile numbskull in net. No pressure!
If they can pull it together, good on them, because guys like Jordan Kyrou and Rob Thomas are pretty good and deserve success…but they’d also make excellent trade pieces if this all goes sideways again.
I really hope Doug Armstrong knows what he’s doing.
Maybe Next Year
5-7. Arizona Coyotes
Okay, Okay. I know, I know. No, trust me I heard about that too.
Just hear me out.
Ignore the name for a second. Let’s all just do a thought exercise and just…look at what their offseason was like, divorced from the name and everything that goes with it:
- In spite of very reasonable concerns that their star would leave town, it appears he will be returning. (Clayton Keller)
- Made strong and reasonably quick signings of their strong young talent who had good years both in the pros and in junior. (Maccelli, Hayton, Cooley)
- Made shrewd bets on veteran players run out of their old markets, whether by cap or by bad fit, that could either turn out to be good for them or great ways to get draft capital. (Kerfoot, Zucker, Durzi, Dumba)
- Kept their good goalie. (Vejmelka)
If we completely ignore the name of the team that is doing it, I can’t see how this is anything beyond a rousing success for a team that had 74 points last year and plays in a non-traditional market. Now, let’s reapply the name and…well?
I don’t hate the Coyotes chances this year at a Wildcard spot? I think they could sniff the edges of being competent for a couple of months?
Do I think they will get pummeled into dust if they do get to the postseason? Oh most definitely. Do I think they’re even going to be great most of their games? Well; they spent a lot of time in their own end last year and personally I don’t see them changing that, but they could have a half-decent defense corps and a strong enough transition game to get out of the basement! The Coyotes are on the rise! I will be reading every single thing Zaiem writes about betting, because I am great at backing terrible horses!
It’s just…man, I want them to just be stable for like ten minutes. Can we get ten minutes? Can you buy that plot of land in Mesa and we can just forget about this whole ASU thing? People of Mesa, Arizona…can you just agree that land wasn’t gonna be used for anything normal and give it to them at quarter price?
5 or 7. Nashville Predators
The Preds still have work to do, and they know it.
They just lost Ekholm to the other division, they have almost zero high-end scoring outside of maybe Luke Evangelista, and none of their offseason moves really addressed that.
Are they making play towards being the hard-nosed, tough to play, shit-kickin’ Smashville they used to be? Picking up Ryan O’Reilly and Luke Schenn definitely feel like that’s a hard yes.
While there are a lot of fires to put out in the land of bachelorette parties and corporate country, Nashville’s most pressing concern for the last few years has been trying to find a way to overcharge their offense; getting O’Reilly definitely helps, and guys like Luke Evangelista getting a whole 80+ games in the show will go a long way towards building a stronger attack for the Preds. Otherwise, it’s definitely looking towards the future to see who manages to stick around for good and for ill, because while Joakim Kemell, Matthew Wood, Philip Tomasino, and Zach L’Heureaux (when he isn’t doing something preposterously stupid) definitely look to be intriguing, they’re gonna need to establish themselves as threats quick, because otherwise Thomas Novak and Ryan O’Reilly will have to drag the husks of Denis Gurianov and Gustav Nyquist up and down the ice, and their depth doesn’t appear to be improving at any spectacular rate, which is deeply upsetting! Cody Glass seems to be working out as a pure defensive third-liner though. That’s good, I was deeply afraid I would have to praise the Knights for giving him up.
Their defense looks solid (though the loss of Ekholm is rough), and their goaltending is honestly pretty good. I think the biggest questions for Nashville boil down to “how many games can you win playing for that 2-1 score?” If they can make it work? Easy wildcard threatener.
Otherwise? Wait for a prospect to start popping off goals and then wait for other youts to show up and establish themselves.
Why Are You Like This?
8. Chicago Blackhawks
Cool, you got Bedard. Congrats.
The rest of your offseason beyond that didn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence and fans don’t have much to look forward to, and we know exactly why you are like this, and most people aren’t terribly keen on trying to be nice about it.
Oh well, you knew this was going to be a rebuild anyway.
The Hawks are going to be bad. They have Taylor Hall and Connor Bedard and maybe Nick Foligno if you’re into the more pugilistic side of the game, but they’re now well on their way from the Tank Hard for Bedard train to the Lose Cleanly for Celebrini train. Everything they do now is to convince Bedard that he’s gonna be a world breaker by the time he hits his prime by surrounding him with any sort of vet they can find.
Until then, do not consider the Blackhawks a threat to anything but two hours of your night being exposed to some red and black jerseys. Two points is never a guarantee, but we can be reasonably sure they will do what they can to give them to Seattle.
The Central down! For all the grief the Pacific gets out of conference, I’m gonna be real and say this is the division that honestly feels the weakest out of all of them; there’s a lot of this group of teams that are waiting for better times or are just about to come up on rough ones.
Next up? We finally bring it home to the Pacific Division.
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