Last season, the Pacific Division only sent three teams into the playoffs, with five going to the Central. It was a close, with the Calgary Flames tying the St. Louis Blues. The Blues went on their wildly improbable run and beat the Flames by the narrowest of margins. The Minnesota Wild finished only one point higher.
It's not just that the Vancouver Canucks ended the season six points back. Three teams were all ahead by that six or seven - and the Utah Mammoths were only one back of Vancouver themselves. It seems unlikely that the Canucks will make any major moves between now and the start of the year. If they want to make the playoffs, the only guarantee is getting into the top three of the Pacific. Can they?
Starting at the top:
Mitch Marner brings a lot of firepower with him. The sign-and-trade gave Vegas the opportunity to lock him up for eight years, but cost them a very good centre in Nicholas Roy. "Very good" is a relative term, of course. Roy is a bottom-six centre, and moving him to Toronto means Alex Pietrangelo's $8.8 million can go onto the long-term injured reserve list and make the team salary cap compliant.
Roy wasn't the only player the Golden Knights lost, moving out long-time defender Nicolas Hague in exchange for Colton Sissons and Jeremy Lauzon. Hague had dropped to the third pair last year, and replacing him with the $3 million cheaper Lauzon doesn't hurt much. Hague is better offensively, but that's not what they're missing. Sissons replacing Roy is a much steeper drop.
Adin Hill being backed up by Akira Schmid is a perfectly decent pairing. And that's the weak point. The forwards are extremely dangerous, and their play style gives their goaltenders plenty of support. This is not going to be an easy team to catch.
The Kings have apparently decided that if they reached 105 points last year, they don't need to change anything this year. Someone should have introduced them to the 2023-24 Canucks.
Not entirely true, perhaps, but signing Corey Perry and Joel Armia isn't scaring anyone. For the most part, it looks like they are hoping for continued growth from Quinten Byfield and Alex Laferriere. It's not an outrageous gamble, but sooner or later Anže Kopitar is going to actually age. We just don't know when, but I suspect someone will find a painting in his attic one day.
The Kings spread their ice time pretty evenly among their top three lines, which limits their top-end talent. On the other hand, the opposing coach needs to decide who to try to stop. There are rumours of some players not liking the team's playing style, especially after their third straight first-round exit. But if they win, those complaints will vanish.
That style - pulling the forwards back to support their defence - is used for a reason. How bad is their defence? They lost Vladimir Gavrikov, their top defenceman, and traded away Jordan Spence. They filled those spots with... Cody Ceci and Brian Dumoulin? Oof.
If Drew Doughty is healthy all year, 22-year-old Brandt Clarke leaps forward, and Michael Anderson and Joel Edmundson tighten up their games, and Dumoulin and Cecei aren't forced into second-pair roles, they can be decent. Putting question marks on all six of your starting defencemen isn't a great sign.
Darcy Kuemper was excellent last season, though again behind Jim Hiller's defence-first style. Veteran Anton Forsberg is a new face backing him up, and having Pheonix Copely and Erik Portillo in reserve is good enough to work.
Very good forwards, good goaltending, and a lot of hope in between.
Not a lot changed here, either. And why should it? The Oilers reached the Stanley Cup Final two years running. That's worth a lot. The biggest issue with a team like Edmonton is that it is very top-heavy. Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid are not going to be underpaid, which means a limited amount of money left over for everyone else.
That shows in their ice time. Four forwards averaged 19 minutes or more, and no others passed the 15-minute mark. Victor Arvidsson left, and Andrew Mangiapane is coming in. Mangiapane is fine, but is he the solution for a reliable finisher to go with Draisaitl? Because it sure ain't Curtis Lazar.
The forwards are pretty much a known factor. McDavid, Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and Zach Hyman are going to do their thing. Beyond them, the most important player on the ice might be Mattias Ekholm. Evan Bouchard needs the stable Ekholm beside him as a safeguard. Bouchard is a very good offensive defenceman, but boy howdy, does he forget his job on defence.
That leaves very little for the goaltending. And it shows.
Now, I'm not going to jump on Stuart Skinner, here. He isn't as bad as his reputation suggests, but the Oilers' play style does him zero favours. He and Calvin Pickard are the likely pair going into the season, because they cost the team less than $4 million combined. There isn't much cap room to improve, so they did the next best thing and changed the goaltending coach.
If we're going to talk cheap goaltenders, Calgary has no goaltender making a million dollars. Dustin Wolf proved himself last season, coming second in Calder Trophy voting. Hard to tell how much of a risk it is to rely on him this season, but they certainly want a veteran. The Flames are sitting on $15 million in cap space right now, and they won't need that much to sign Connor Zary.
They could use some of that space on the defence. It's open speculation that Rasmus Andersson is getting moved at some point this year, and that's going to hurt. Frankly, the 19-year-old Zayne Parekh should probably be a coin flip to get 20 games this season.
Up front, getting Morgan Frost re-signed was needed, because there just isn't much else there. Jonathan Huberdeau getting some of his mojo back is nice, but Nazem Kadri as your top centre speaks volumes. They need Zary to step up to finish anywhere close to a playoff spot this season.
If anything, this is a team to watch out for. Perhaps their least surprising move was changing Greg Cronin for Joel Quinneville behind the bench. The team improved by 21 points between his first and second years, but there was also a rebellion in the ranks. Anaheim's been out of the playoffs for a long time now, and they need a push before fan interest vanishes.
They made some big moves, too. Stalwart John Gibson is gone from between the pipes, leaving the net to Lukáš Dostál. Behind him is probably Ville Husso, though Petr Mrázek will make his case. Who knows - maybe Edmonton will offer to take one of the two in some expressed wishful thinking.
Centre of the Future(tm) Trevor Zegras was also shipped out, bringing draft picks and Ryan Poeling back from Philadelphia. He was saying some of the right things under Cronin, but is an excellent example of a team not quite knowing how to treat a young star. Let him be free and feed his creativity? Put clamps on so he learns defence and structure to go with it? Neither team more player seemed to be having much fun.
Poeling has been finding some scoring touch with the Flyers, but he's not the player Zegras is. But maybe him, Chris Kreider, and Mikael Granlund can fill in the blanks. Sure, Kreider and Granlund are older, but they have plenty of youth coming around, too. Leo Carlson proved he's already at an NHL level, and if they can get Mason McTavish's name on paper, then their centre depth looks solid.
On defence, the name on everyone's lips was "Who?" As in "Who the hell is Jason LaCombe?" They brought in Jacob Trouba in case Radko Gudas got injured, and they need someone to buy the beer. That's going to be interesting to watch.
We want the day when both Seattle and Vancouver are good teams. We really do. But they aren't going to be the reason the Canucks miss the playoffs just yet.
Andre Burakovsky is out for cap space, which they still have. Frédérick Gaudreau is a nice pickup for cheap as a bottom-six centre. Ryan Lindgren is fine as a middle-pair defenceman. But most of this year isn't going to be about anyone brought in. Though getting Matt Murray in case Phillip Grubauer has another disastrous year isn't a bad net.
They want - need - their young forwards to all take another step. Matty Beniers, Shane Wright, and Kaapo Kakko are talented guys, as befits their relative draft positions. But one of them needs a real breakout year, and not just for now, but for the future. Otherwise, this is a team loaded with middle-six guys, middle-pair defence, and a 1B netminder in Joey Daccord.
Here's to hoping we can get a good hate on with our neighbours!
Last, but not... Well, probably not least. The San Jose Sharks finished nine points back of Chicago and sixteen back of Nashville. There is a strange juxtaposition here, though, highlighted by those cities. San Jose had fun. Yes, it was a terrible end result, but the fans were warned well beforehand, and the future was visible on the ice.
Two of their star kids led the team in scoring, but you could make an argument that their MVP was Tyler Toffoli. The Sharks did everything a "tanking" team should: lots of one-year deals, signing veterans to trade them, testing a LOT of their AHL players, and playing their youth. And in the middle of it all, Toffoli was out there with Macklin Celebrini and William Eklund and Will Smith, keeping the kids on an even keel.
They had a massive amount of turnover and are clearly aiming for at least one more year of entertaining, if not completely successful, hockey. I don't know if anyone in the league likes scoring more than Adam Gaudette. Jeff Skinner's career is on life support after FINALLY getting a taste of playoff hockey and deciding it was overrated. Ryan Reaves is, well, Ryan Reaves. Will Philip Kurashev help? Hey, why not?
The defence looks more interesting, too. Grabbing Nick Leddy off waivers is an easy decision when you can afford it - and these guys can afford a LOT. Dmitry Orlov is a serious pick-up, even at 34 years old. John Klingberg is looking to rebuild his value so he isn't best known as an agent's horror story for recalcitrant signings.
In net, five goaltenders got into eight or more games, and I don't blame them one bit. This year, stability should be the rule. Yaroslav Askarov is an excellent prospect, and getting backed up by/splitting time with Alex Nedeljkovic will give the Sharks a chance most nights.
Vancouver has more top-end talent than enough of these teams to make the playoffs. But the game requires more than talent. The Canucks can have one or two things go wrong and still make it, so long as those things going wrong aren't one of three players. So we're ending up with Schrödinger's Playoffs, either making it or not, and we won't know which until we look.
I suspect the team will add a player, specifically at centre, before the season is done, but probably not before it starts. They have a nice chunk of cap space right now, and they'll let that accrue until the trade deadline looms. Not at the deadline, of course, because this is still Jim Rutherford and Patrik Allvin. But maybe in late January.
As for the rest, Anaheim can take Calgary's spot, and Edmonton can take LA's. Heck, if it is a good year for the Canucks, they could well bump the Kings to fourth. But the top stays at the top and the bottom stays there. It's gonna be interesting.
