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The NHL regular season officially hit the quarter mark last Thursday. So far, it’s been Colorado and everyone else as the Avalanche have won nine in a row to run their record to 16-1-5 and open up a seven-point lead on the rest of the league. Meanwhile, 25 of the other 31 teams are within six points of each other heading into tonight’s action.
Here’s a look at some other early-season trends around the league:
The injury bug is biting hard.
The list of stars currently out of the lineup with significant injuries includes Toronto’s Auston Matthews, Ottawa’s Brady Tkachuk, Florida’s Matthew Tkachuk and Aleksander Barkov, Vegas’ Mark Stone and William Karlsson, Tampa Bay’s Victor Hedman, New Jersey’s Jack Hughes and Winnipeg goalie Connor Hellebuyck.
Matthews and Brady Tkachuk are expected back this week — the latter after missing all but the Senators’ first three games due to a thumb injury on Oct. 13 that required surgery. But the Stanley Cup champion Panthers will likely be without Barkov for the entire season after the captain tore two knee ligaments during training camp, while Matthew Tkachuk won’t be back until probably mid-December after surgery in August to repair a torn adductor muscle and sports hernia. With its two best players sidelined, Florida (12-9-1) sits 12th in the Eastern Conference.
Along with the Panthers, the U.S. Olympic team has been especially hard hit by injuries, as the Tkachuk brothers, Matthews, Hughes and Hellebuyck are all expected to play starring roles for the Americans at the Winter Games in Italy this February. Hughes is likely out until January after reportedly cutting his hand during a team dinner, while Hellebuyck, the reigning NHL MVP, will miss four to six weeks after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery last week.
Could Bedard, Celebrini or Schaefer make Canada’s Olympic roster?
Meanwhile, the Canadian team is keeping an eye on Stone (wrist) and Vegas goalie Adin Hill (lower body), who are both on injured reserve for at least another couple weeks, as well as young Dallas defenceman Thomas Harley, who’s week-to-week with a lower-body injury.
It’s unclear if anything is responsible for the rash of injuries, but some point to the compressed schedule resulting from the nearly three-week Olympic break.
The Leafs have fallen.
After finishing fourth overall last season (and then, as always, flaming out in the early rounds of the playoffs), hockey’s most talked-about team sits dead last in the Eastern Conference at 9-10-3 and has lost seven of its past eight games heading into Wednesday’s visit to Columbus.
Free agent Mitch Marner’s departure for Vegas robbed Toronto of its top scorer from last season, and the Leafs have also been shaken by injuries to Matthews, rising star Matthew Knies and goalie Anthony Stolarz, among others. William Nylander (tied for sixth in the league with 29 points) and John Tavares (27 points) have helped keep the offence afloat. But there’s a real sense of malaise around embattled coach Craig Berube’s team, which ranks 31st in the league in goals against per game after tying for eighth in that department last season.
The rest of Canada isn’t doing so hot either.
The other six Canadian fanbases’ schadenfreude over Toronto’s misfortunes has been tempered by concern for their own teams. At the moment, the only Canadian club in a playoff position is the Ottawa Senators, who rank third in the Atlantic Division at 11-7-4 despite missing Brady Tkachuk for nearly the entire season.
Canada’s disappointments include Edmonton, which is fifth in the Pacific Division and two points out of a wild-card spot after reaching back-to-back Stanley Cup finals. The Oilers (10-9-5) have just five regulation wins. Last-overall Nashville is the only team with fewer.
Could Sidney Crosby play in the 2030 Winter Olympics?
Just above the lowly Predators are Calgary and Vancouver, who sit 31st and 30th overall, respectively. Toronto is 28th, while Winnipeg (last season’s Presidents’ Trophy winner) and Edmonton are mired in the mid-20s. The young Montreal Canadiens, coming off a surprise playoff appearance, started 9-3-0 but have lost seven of nine since to fall out of the Eastern Conference playoff picture.
But Canadian players are on fire.
The top four players in the scoring race — Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon, San Jose’s Macklin Celebrini, Edmonton’s Connor McDavid and Chicago’s Connor Bedard — all hail from Canada. Plus, Cale Makar of the Avalanche is tied for sixth and leads all defencemen with 29 points — seven more than any other blue-liner.
Celebrini and Bedard are just 19 and 20 years old, respectively. And 18-year-old Canadian defenceman Matthew Schaefer is also turning heads as he’s tied for the rookie lead with seven goals.
On the other end of the age spectrum, old Nova Scotia pals Sidney Crosby, 38, and Brad Marchand, 37, are tied for sixth in the league with 13 goals.
This obviously bodes well for Canada’s chances of winning Olympic gold. After their emotional victory over the U.S. at the spectacular 4 Nations Face-Off last February, the Canadians are slight favourites over the banged-up Americans.
And they should be, considering the remarkable amount of top-shelf talent that Canada boasts across multiple generations. Crosby, the NHL’s No. 1 overall draft choice in 2005, has passed the torch as the league’s best player to McDavid (the top pick in 2015), who may one day hand it to Bedard, Celebrini or Schaefer — the No. 1 picks in the last three drafts.
It’ll be interesting to see how many, if any, from that young trio will be selected when Canada announces its Olympic roster in early January. Historically, the Canadian brass has been hesitant to select very young players (Crosby was left off the 2006 Olympic team in the midst of a 102-point rookie season), but Celebrini and Bedard especially are making it a tough call for GM Doug Armstrong and his staff.
For more on whether the three young guns will make the cut, watch the latest episode of CBC Sports’ Hockey North.
