The San Jose Sharks are quietly hanging with the big boys in the NHL as we get set to come out of the Olympic break and resume regular season play on Tuesday night. The Sharks are in second place in the Pacific Division, trailing only the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, who have the league’s best record. San Jose is also right on the heels of the Chicago Blackhawks and St. Louis Blues for seeding in the Western Conference playoffs.
Who’s the best team in the NHL as we prepare to resume regular season play after the Olympic break? It’s not the 2013 Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks. It’s not the star-laden Pittsburgh Penguins, nor is it last year’s finalist and 2011 champ, the Boston Bruins. The best team in the NHL right now is in SoCal…only it’s not the 2012 Stanley Cup winner Los Angeles Kings either. No sports fans, the team with the most points in the NHL is the Anaheim Mighty Ducks.
The St. Louis Blues have lived through postseason disappointment in both 2012 and 2013. While it’s too early to say if the same fate awaits the Blues this spring, they are putting together an outstanding regular season. St. Louis is tied for first place with last year’s Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks in the Central Division—in fact, given the Blues have played three fewer games than the Blackhawks, St. Louis is, for all practical purposes, in first place. Let’s take a look at how they’re doing it.
The Chicago Blackhawks are in pursuit of their third Stanley Cup title in the last five years, and the effort is going well as last year’s champs prepare to come out of the Olympic break. Chicago has accumulated 84 points in 60 games. The Blackhawks are tied for first in the Central Division with the St. Louis Blues (albeit having played three fewer games), and have the look of a team that can again run through the NHL postseason.
The Boston Bruins reached the Stanley Cup Finals in 2013 and came within a minute of reaching the seventh game. The Bruins won the Cup in 2011 and their goaltender, Tuuka Raask, has led Finland into the semi-finals of the Olympic tournament on Friday. Boston leads the Atlantic Division with a 37-16-4 record and trails only the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Eastern Conference overall.
The Pittsburgh Penguins are rolling along to another big regular season. The Pens lead the Metropolitan Division by a whopping 16 points and are on track to be the #1 seed in the Eastern Conference. Pittsburgh has spent the portion of the regular season prior to the Olympic break shoring up some of the problems that tripped them up in last year’s playoffs, but also just got some bad news on the injury front.
The NHL has been off since February 9, as its players compete in Sochi on various Olympic teams around the world. The league will resume play on Tuesday, February 25. TheSportsNotebook is going to be running a series of articles between now and then to get us ready for the final portion of the regular season, leading into the playoffs in April. We’ll start here with a review of the Stanley Cup betting odds…
The Anaheim Mighty Ducks are leading the NHL’s Pacific Division, and have moved past the Chicago Blackhawks in both the Western Conference, and the league overall for the best record in hockey. The smart money in Las Vegas has taken notice, with Anaheim now at 5-1 to win the Stanley Cup, narrowly better than defending champion Chicago, at 11-2. Is it time to take the Ducks seriously as one of the league’s elite?
Right now though, the Red Wings are kind of puttering along. They have 50 points, which puts them as one of a group of eight teams jousting for five playoff berths in the Eastern Conference (Pittsburgh, Boston and Tampa Bay having separated themselves at the top).
Are the Red Wings destined for mediocrity in 2014, or will we see a turnaround? Let’s take a closer look at what they’ve done and speculate on what might lie ahead.
Tampa Bay has stepped up and become the third-best team in the Eastern Conference coming into Tuesday’s games, trailing only the conference powers, Pittsburgh and Boston, and being only two points back of the Bruins at that. How has this come about?
The NHL season hits what I would consider its first real breakpoint of the regular season, and that’s New Year’s Day. The league’s new tradition of the Winter Classic will feature the Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs playing outdoors at the University of Michigan football stadium on January 1, and its good a vantage point as any to see how the new season is shaping up.
This year was supposed to be different for the Edmonton Oilers. The franchise that had fallen on hard times since the dynasty run of five Stanley Cups from 1984-90, was poised to return to the playoffs. The fans of Edmonton haven’t seen so much as a single postseason appearance since a surprise run to the Finals in 2006, and it looked like an improving young team would make this the year. Instead, Edmonton is nowhere close. What’s the problem?