The NHL went into the weekend in a weirdly streaky mood, with four teams owning win streaks of at least eight games. The Winnipeg Jets and Florida Panthers lost, while the Edmonton Oilers and (spends several seconds staring at notes in confusion) Seattle Kraken remain unbeatable. Also, the Carolina Hurricanes are good again, the Detroit Red Wings are getting everyone’s hopes up, and the Vancouver Canucks are going to eventually have a game where their PDO is over 200 and they don’t really care about the math saying that’s impossible.
Also, several teams should be very worried right now.
We’ll get to the good and the bad down in the rankings, but first, let’s take a look at five teams either in a playoff spot or trying to get there that are not having a fun time these days.
Bonus five: Playoff bubble worry index
5. New York Islanders — They’ve lost 7-0 more recently (Dec. 27) than they’ve won back-to-back games (Dec. 13), and by points percentage they’ve already coughed up their spot. It’s close enough that there’s still a clear path to the postseason here. But at some point, figuring out a way to bring some consistency out of these guys has to be the priority for Lane Lambert and/or whichever coach Lou Lamoriello randomly replaces him with.
4. Washington Capitals — They’ve beaten the L.A. Kings, New York Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins recently, and nobody else. Their goals differential is far worse than teams like the Ottawa Senators or Buffalo Sabres but they’re still sitting at a respectable .570 points percentage. Absolutely nobody thinks they’re making the playoffs, and rightly so because they’re not good. But their next four games are the Anaheim Ducks, St. Louis Blues, Blues again and the Minnesota Wild, so who knows? Add it all up and I’m pretty sure their recent 3-6-2 stretch spells the end of them, but who knows?
3. Vegas Golden Knights — An OT win over Boston was impressive, but any momentum dissipated immediately with a loss to the Calgary Flames. Their playoff spot doesn’t seem to be in any immediate danger, but they’ve let the Canucks run away with the Pacific’s top seed, and haven’t looked like true Cup favorites in over a month. And now that Jack Eichel is out with a mysterious injury he was initially allowed to play through, this one feels like it could still go badly.
2. Los Angeles Kings — What is going on? The Kings held down a top-five spot for most of the first half, but they’ve completely switched lanes since the holiday break. They’ve now lost eight straight, and have basically squandered all of the Pacific ground they spent three months building up over the Kraken and Oilers. Oh, and now they’ve got the Hurricanes and Dallas Stars back-to-back, and a playoff miss now feels like it’s legitimately on the table.
1. Minnesota Wild — The only hesitation with putting the Wild here is that we said this was about playoff contenders, and you could argue Minnesota has already bailed out of that category. The Wild were holding down a spot two weeks ago, so I’ll allow it, but man have they ever fallen apart since then. Joe has all the details of their latest disaster in which they got booed off the ice after getting crushed by the Arizona Coyotes.
The only good news for Wild fans is that it can’t possibly get any worse. I think.
On to the rankings, where I’m going to try to settle things down after last week’s overhaul …
Road to the Cup
The five teams with the best chances of winning the Stanley Cup.
The final All-Star rosters were released, meaning there will only be room for about a dozen more selections after the initial 32 get to work on figuring out how to get out of going. We also got a look at the jerseys, which are fine. This is my fashion take for the week.
5. Florida Panthers (27-13-2, +25 true goals differential*) — I really thought this was going to be the Canucks’ week, but I just don’t have room. Sit tight,…
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