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Greg Wyshynski, ESPN
The start of the NHL season is rife with panic and overreaction — and not just in Edmonton.
Players get benched. Teams get called out. Fans start to wonder if their championship dreams have been shattered after a month of hockey. Others fans hope surprising starts are more inspiration than aberration.
Not all of these reactions are going to turn out to be unwarranted. Every season, a trend or two established early becomes a through line to the end of the season. Like the Boston Bruins‘ hot start or Connor McDavid‘s early point production last season. Or, on the flip side, the slow starts for the Pittsburgh Penguins or Jonathan Huberdeau that would inform the rest of their campaigns.
That established, here are 10 trends from the 2023-24 season thus far that we’re testing with our patented (OK, patent-pending) “Trend-O-Meter” to see how valid they are — from certain to stick (10) to probably just a blip (1).
Man, look at the Oilers! What a mess! Can’t score, can’t defend, they panicked and put one of their starting goaltenders on waivers!
What kind of an idiot would have picked them to win the Stanley Cup? Twice in two years, I mean?
Putting a veteran on waivers is another signpost you find during a team’s march to disaster. It’s usually sandwiched between an intense players-only meeting (not sure if that happened yet) and a trade that “shakes up the roster.” If none of that works, then you walk into practice one day to find Gerard Gallant or Bruce Boudreau using Jay Woodcroft’s office.
Entering Thursday night, the Oilers are 2-8-1 on the season for five points in the standings. That seems insurmountable, and yet it is only eight points away from the final wild-card spot, with a game in hand.
I was talking with an NHL insider the other day at the rink and they made this point: Out of all the teams hovering outside the playoff picture, aren’t the Oilers are the one you could most imagine rolling off a 10-game heater to throttle back into it? Like how they finished last season with 16 wins in 19 games?
To do that would mean reversing course on their “death by a thousand cuts” level of play, as Connor McDavid recently put it, undoubtedly revealing himself as a Swiftie.
That starts with the goaltending. Maybe Stuart Skinner rebounds. Maybe Calvin Pickard becomes their Adin Hill. Maybe they find a solution outside of the organization.
But I think some other things will sort themselves out. Take McDavid’s game. He had 10 points in nine games. Through 10 games last season, he had 23 points. That’s quite a difference.
He’s still doing good things. According to Stathletes, McDavid is first in the NHL in primary assists that lead to shots on goal. The problem is that he’s also 182nd in primary assists on goals — after being second last season. So he’s creating chances for others and they’re fumbling the bag,
Consider this: NHL EDGE splits up the offensive zone in 15 quadrants. The Oilers have a lower shooting percentage year over year in 10 of them.
They’re third in shots per 60 minutes at 5-on-5. They’re fifth in shot attempts. One would expect the goals to come. It’s basically impossible for them not to, given all of these underlying numbers.
Look, when you pick a team to win the Cup, you’re ride-or-die until they’re eliminated. I’m not giving up on Edmonton. Even if they’re giving up pretty much everything else this season.
TREND-O-METER RATING: 4
I recently asked Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde if he could feel the vibe change in Detroit, as fans start to believe the “Yzerplan” rebuild had turned the corner for a return to the playoffs.
“I have felt it from the fan base,” he said. “Obviously, I want to be realistic with it. There is a reason there wasn’t single projection from anyone having us make the playoffs.”
The Wings haven’t made the playoffs since 2015-16, and haven’t won a playoff series since 2013 (when they were still in the Western Conference). Their rebuild has been somewhat laborious, given that they haven’t had much NHL draft lottery luck during these wayward seasons — the highest they selected was fourth overall in 2020, selecting forward Lucas Raymond.
But they’ve collecting foundational players along the way like Raymond, defenseman Moritz Seider (sixth overall in 2019), forward Michael Rasmussen (ninth, 2017), center Joe Veleno (30th, 2018) and a few other high picks gestating in their system.
The veterans GM Steve Yzerman imported are the reason Detroit could make the leap to contender this season. Chief among them winger Alex DeBrincat, whose instant chemistry with captain Dylan Larkin has been palpable. Versatile forwards like David Perron, Andrew Copp, Daniel Sprong and J.T. Compher have produced. While goalie Ville Husso is trying to find his game, free agent signing James Reimer has been solid.
The question before the season was which team would break out of the Atlantic Division non-playoff pack to return to the postseason. Buffalo is searching for consistency. Ottawa has made more news off the ice than on it. The Red Wings have sprinted out ahead of them, but it remains to be seen how many laps their motor is good for this season.
TREND-O-METER RATING: 6
When the Tampa Bay Lightning lost goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy to injury before the season started, there were dire questions about how the team might respond without a suitable replacement. The best remedy, apparently, was to let their offensive stars cook like they’re on an episode of “Chopped,” as the Lightning were third in the NHL in goals per game during their first 13 contests of the season.
Leading the way is Kucherov, their 30-year-old star winger, who tallied 22 points in his first 13 games to lead the NHL through Tuesday night’s games. That’s after crushing a 113-point season in 2022-23, tied for third in the NHL with David Pastrnak but trailing Art Ross Trophy winner Connor McDavid by 40 points.
McDavid is off to a much slower start this season, which creates a lane for Kucherov in the points race. He won the scoring title in 2018-19 with 128 points, including a league-high 87 assists, in the same season when he won the Ted Lindsay Award as NHLPA player of the year, and the Hart Trophy as NHL MVP as voted on by the writers. He notched 48 points on the power play that season for the Lightning. Already, 10 of his 22 points this season have come with the man advantage.
Kucherov has the benefit of playing with dynamic center Brayden Point, who has 17 points already this season. Given that Kuch has already secured one scoring title, if he’s healthy he’s clearly a threat to do it again.
TREND-O-METER RATING: 7
The Bruins have a better record (10-1-1) than they did after 12 games last season (10-2-0), when they set new NHL standards for regular-season wins (65) and points (135).
Which has to be a bit scary for the rest of the Eastern Conference.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way, of course. The Bruins were humbled in the first round of the playoffs by the Florida Panthers, theoretically closing their window to win the Stanley Cup after the retirement of centers Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci. More talented players left Boston due to salary cap constraints. It wasn’t a matter of whether they’d take a step back, but how far.
And yet, here they are, atop the Eastern Conference entering Thursday night’s games and outpacing that history-making team from a year ago.
They’re still a masterful defensive team under Jack Adams-winning coach Jim Montgomery, with a 1.92 goals-against average to lead the NHL. They lost Bergeron but haven’t lost the ability to kill a penalty, leading the league at a 94.0% conversion rate. The foundation for all of this remains the best goaltending tandem (and celebratory huggers) in the NHL with Linus Ullmark (.926 save percentage) and Jeremy Swayman, who is 6-0-0 with a .952 save percentage.
Meanwhile, David Pastrnak is following up his season as a Hart Trophy finalist with nine goals in 12 games.
They have unfinished business from last season, when they tried to send Bergeron and Krejci off with a Stanley Cup. Instead, captain Brad Marchand told me before the season that they’ll try and honor their legacy by building on the tradition of excellence they helped maintain.
Boston teams are always more compelling when they’re punching from underneath. Counting the Bruins out might have been the best thing for them.
TREND-O-METER RATING: 8
Alex Ovechkin will score fewer than 30 goals
The Washington Capitals star started the season trailing Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL goals record by 72 tallies. After 10 games this season, he trails the The Great One by … 70 goals.
Ovechkin’s two goals in his first 10 games are uncharacteristic but not unheard of during his stellar career. It took him 12 games to get his third goal in 2008-09. By the end of that season, he had amassed 56 goals in 79 games, the second highest total of his career. It took him 11 games to score his third goal in 2012-13, finishing that 48-game lockout shortened season with 32 goals — the fifth highest goals-per-game average of his career (0.67).
There haven’t been any major deviations from the norm in his shot metrics this season, which are in line with previous campaigns. But the Capitals’ offense as a whole has been moribund to start — second to last in the NHL, with a 1.90 goals-per-game average through 10 games. Their power play was clicking at just a 9.7% conversion rate, which would easily be the lowest in franchise history since the NHL started tracking that stat.
Are the Capitals worried about Ovechkin?
New head coach head coach Spencer Carbery has discussed tweaking some things to get Ovechkin better looks, especially on the power play. GM Brian MacLellan was even less concerned, telling reporters “I think he’s getting looks and I think they’ll eventually go on in for him.”
Which is to say that he’ll eventually shoot better than 4.7%. And that he’ll probably outpace his projected 16 goals this season. And that the Russian Machine will get the gears turning on that Gretzky record chase again soon.
TREND-O-METER RATING: 1
The Vegas Golden Knights will repeat as Stanley Cup champions
As they steam-rolled through the first 13 games of the season with an 11-1-1 record and a plus-24 goal differential, an obvious question about the Golden Knights emerges:
Why didn’t we all rush to predict that they would win a second straight Stanley Cup?
Three members of the 24-person NHL experts panel picked Vegas as the 2023-24 champ before the season. Almost three times as many predicted the Carolina Hurricanes to win. Because they were “due” of course.
So what was the reason for ignoring the Knights? The unavoidable correlation between Vegas and hangovers? The fact that so many teams fail to repeat as champion, despite having seen it happen in the NHL twice since 2016? The Adin Hill of it all?
The fact is that this is essentially the same team that won the Cup last season, minus Reilly Smith and with a little more Paul Cotter. Bruce Cassidy is still the head coach. William Karlsson, Jack Eichel and Mark Stone are still 200-foot players and difference-makers. Alex Pietrangelo and Shea Theodore still gobble up around 80% of the ice time in any given game.
We might owe the Western Conference, as a whole, an apology. There are nights when it feels like the Knights are trying to make a declarative statement about their greatness. About their dynamic offensive. About their stifling defensive structure. About how the Stanley Cup still goes through Sin City. And about how the championship party may have actually never ended in Vegas.
TREND-O-METER RATING: 9
Rick Tocchet will be a Jack Adams finalist
Jack Adams Award voters traditionally love two things more than anything: The coach of a team that “comes out of nowhere” to earn a playoff berth, and one whose impact on that team is thuddingly obvious.
For example, Jim Montgomery led the Boston Bruins to a record-setting regular season in 2022-23 to win the Jack Adams. Jon Cooper did much the same with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2018-19 but finished second to Barry Trotz of the New York Islanders. Why? Because Trotz made the Isles a playoff team again after two seasons out, and brought them from the bottom to the top in goals against. Cooper simply made a great thing better.
Even though the Bruins made the playoffs the year before Montgomery arrived, he orchestrated the same kind of defensive turnaround as Trotz did: 29th in goals against to first overall last season. It was a tangible improvement hat solidified his candidacy for coach of the year.
The Canucks have been outstanding to start the season. Yeah, their numbers are slightly inflated by having played the hapless Oilers three times already, which at this point is like Ohio State getting Youngstown State in the first three weeks of the NCAA football schedule. But thus far, Vancouver has gone from 22nd in the NHL in team defense to second. They’re rolling teams offensively and carrying play.
But the tangible “Tocchet Effect” is also found off the ice. He called his team “soft” three games into the season and never wavered on that call-out. He benched J.T. Miller for an early message sent. Voters eat that stuff up.
Oh, and about those voters: The NHL broadcasters vote on this award. You can already hear the chants of “ONE OF US, ONE OF US!” as they look at recent Turner analyst Tocchet.
TREND-O-METER RATING: 10
The New Jersey Devils will finish with the NHL’s best power play
The best power play in team history was in 2000-01 when it clicked at a 22.9% conversion rate. It was fueled by star winger Alexander Mogilny, adding another chapter to a Hall of Fame story that’s been disgracefully ignored by the Hall’s clandestine selection committee.
The Devils have scored 20 power-play goals this season. Through Wednesday night, that meant they’ve tallied more with the man advantage than the Capitals (19) and Sharks (14) have in all situations. While that might be an indictment of those struggling teams, it’s also an indication that the Devils are scorching on the power play.
Obviously, New Jersey isn’t going to ride a 41.7% conversation rate all season. The best power-play season in NHL history was the Montreal Canadiens in 1977-78, at 31.9%. Only three teams have finished above 30% on the season in NHL history, and all of them from 1977-79. The Oilers just missed in the COVID-shortened 2019-20 season, converting at 29.5% in 71 games.
All that established … the Devils are going to continue to roll on the man advantage.
Jack Hughes, who is out “week to week” with an upper-body injury, had 12 power-play points in 10 games. Jesper Bratt has 14 points in 12 games. Dougie Hamilton is an outstanding conductor at the blue line but can also rifle the puck when necessary. He’s got four goals. The additions of Tyler Toffoli (three goals) and Luke Hughes (five points) have bolstered the group. That’s not even mentioning Timo Meier, Ondrej Palat and, when healthy, Nico Hischier.
This unit took a jump last season under associate coach Andrew Brunette. After he left to coach the Nashville Predators, new associate coach Travis Green took the baton, tweaked a few things and made this group really sing.
Can it continue? If the team doesn’t improve its 5-on-5 play when healthy, it had better.
TREND-O-METER RATING: 8
The San Jose Sharks will be the worst team in the modern era
Watching the Sharks and the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday night was like watching the worst Game 7 ever. Instead of winning the Stanley Cup, the drama surrounded whether a team could an NHL game in its 12th try this season.
Congrats to the Sharks on their victory. (Hashtag #DoYouBelieveInMiraclesYes.) Only the 1943-44 Rangers have gone winless in their first 15 games. But San Jose’s minus-41 goal differential does set a new NHL record for 12-game futility, surpassing the 1924-25 Boston Bruins (minus-40).
In the NHL expansion era, starting in 1967-68, the 1974-75 Washington Capitals have the worst points percentage (.131) followed by the 1992-93 Ottawa Senators (.143) and the 1992-93 Sharks (.143). The Capitals and Senators were first-year expansion teams while the Sharks were in their second season — all putting together rosters before the NHL wisely decided to set up new owners for success rather than failure for their generous expansion fee payments. Note: This is the 32nd season for San Jose hockey.
Entering Thursday’s showdown with the Edmonton Oilers — the “Brawl for the Basement” or the “Rumble of the Bungled,” your choice — the Sharks have a .125 points percentage with a 1-10-1 record. They are a perfect organism of terrible, constructed as such to land a player like Macklin Celebrini or Cole Eiserman at the top of next year’s draft to refocus the franchise and reverse the atrophy in their fan base.
The problem is that GM Mike Grier created a monster, saw it maraud the countryside and is left screaming “what have I done?!” inside an empty laboratory.
As Ray Ratto of Defector pointed out on The Drop this week, San Jose might have been a little too good at building a bad team, veering off in the realm of unwatchability. Not great for fans. Pretty awesome for a Shark tank. Potentially historic in the context of the worst teams in NHL history.
But as Tuesday night showed, occasional nights of good goaltending will stand in the way of that history, along with fits of pride and the existence of other rebuilding franchises in a 32-team league. They’ll be bad. But maybe not the worst.
TREND-O-METER RATING: 7
Drew Doughty will lead all defensemen in average ice time
The Los Angeles Kings‘ lack of playoff success in the last several years has sort of taken the shine off of Doughty’s career, which is as Hall of Fame-worthy as any defenseman of his generation.
He’s got the two Stanley Cups. He’s got the Norris Trophy (and four total times as a finalist). He’s got two gold medals with Team Canada at the Olympics, and proudly hoisted the giant paperweight at the end of the 2016 World Cup of Hockey as well.
But if there’s one defining trait about Doughty — besides his incredible hockey smile and general disdain for Tkachuks — it’s his status as the NHL’s preeminent workhorse defenseman of the last 20 years.
Since 2005-06, Doughty has the highest average ice team in the regular season of any blueliner. He’s averaged 26:14 per game in 1,106 games. That’s more than Hall of Famer Scott Niedermayer (26:07 in 371 games in that span), Hall of Famer Chris Pronger (26:07 in 445), Hall of Famer Sergei Zubov (25:55 in 548), Hall of Famer Nicklas Lidstrom (25:31 in 548 games) and … well, you get the idea.
This season Doughty is averaging 26:07 per game through 11 games entering Wednesday night, just ahead of John Carlson of the Capitals (26 minutes on average), who’s clearly trying to make up for lost time last season.
Again, he’s a next-level minutes muncher. Doughty’s current average ice time would rank ninth overall in his 16-season NHL career, right behind last season’s average (26:14).
Doughty, 33, played 81 games last season after missing time to injury during the previous few seasons. He’s feeling good, and the Kings are looking like contenders. If he’s healthy, it’s easy to imagine he’ll outpace the field here.
TREND-O-METER RATING: 8