Catching up on an interesting NHL season
This is an excerpt from The Buzzer, which is CBC Sports’ daily email newsletter. Stay up to speed on what’s happening in sports by subscribing here.
From changes to the All-Star Game to future Hall of Famer Patrick Kane signing with Detroit to whatever the hell happened with Corey Perry in Chicago, it’s been a newsy week in the NHL. And, last night, the regular season officially reached the quarter mark.
Seems like a good time to catch up on some interesting stuff happening around the league:
The Vancouver Canucks are the most pleasant surprise.
After missing the playoffs the last three years and burning through two head coaches, Vancouver suddenly finds itself tied for the second-most points in the league, trailing only Stanley Cup champion Vegas. The Canucks (15-7-1) top all teams in total goals and have the individual goals leader in Brock Boeser along with three of the top eight point-getters in J.T. Miller, Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson.
The other two Canadian teams in playoff position at the moment are Toronto (11-6-3) and Winnipeg (12-7-2). Disarrayed Calgary (9-10-3) and disappointing Edmonton (8-12-1) are trying to stay afloat in the Western Conference while rebuilding Montreal (9-10-2) is near the bottom of the East.
Then there’s Ottawa. The Senators look like a mess as they sit dead last in the East after forward Shane Pinto was suspended 41 games for sports gambling and new owner Michael Andlauer fired general manager Pierre Dorion. But they’ve played only 17 games — six fewer than some other teams — and are a not-awful 8-9-0 with a plus-1 goal differential.
So, there’s hope for a big turnaround in Ottawa. But they’ll need the teams ahead of them to buck recent history. In the salary-cap era, only a quarter of the teams who held a playoff spot on U.S. Thanksgiving ended up not making it.
It’s the year of the defenceman.
Back in April, Erik Karlsson put the finishing touches on the first 100-point season by a defenceman in 31 years. Now, two younger blue-liners are tearing up the league.
Vancouver’s Quinn Hughes, 24, became the first defenceman since Bobby Orr to reach the 30-point mark before any other player, doing so in just 19 games. Hughes is currently third in the points race — one spot ahead of Cale Makar, the 25-year-old Colorado defenceman who leads the league in assists. No NHL season has ever ended with two defencemen among the top five in scoring.
Hughes is on pace for 118 points and Makar, who’s played fewer games, for 125. Both totals would be the highest by a defenceman in nearly four decades, and the most by any blue-liner in history besides Orr and Paul Coffey.
Yes, the NHL is in the midst of its highest-scoring three-year stretch since the early ’90s. But that’s some pretty impressive company.
Connor McDavid is coming alive.
After finishing with the sixth-best record overall last season, McDavid’s Oilers have been a massive disappointment. They’re currently 28th in the league and have fallen from the highest-scoring team last season to tied for 10th in goals per game.
Much of Edmonton’s struggles can be chalked up to an unhealthy McDavid, who missed two games with an upper-body injury and was clearly hurting for at least a few more. The world’s best player simply did not look like the same guy who ran away with his third MVP and fifth scoring title last season by racking up 153 points — the most in a season by anyone other than Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux or Steve Yzerman.
But the old McDavid is back. After a goal and two assists in last night’s 5-4 shootout win over league-best Vegas, he has 12 points in his last three games — all wins for the Oilers, who have taken five of eight under coach Kris Knoblauch after Jay Woodcroft was fired.
McDavid still ranks just ninth in the points race with 28 in 19 games — tied with teammate Leon Draisaitl, who’s also off to a slow start by his lofty standards. But would you bet against him rallying to win his fourth straight Art Ross?
Connor Bedard is living up to the hype.
All the Perry-related drama in Chicago notwithstanding, the NHL’s most exciting prospect since McDavid is enjoying an excellent rookie season. With 10 goals in 20 games, Bedard is on pace for 41. That would be the most by a rookie since Alex Ovechkin potted 52 in 2005-06.
A season after saying goodbye to the three-time Stanley Cup-winning duo of Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, Chicago looks poised to pair Bedard with another top prospect in next year’s draft. The team ranks second-last in the NHL with a record of 7-13-0.
Alex Ovechkin might be running out of gas.
Is the Russian machine finally breaking down? With just one goal in the past 17 days, the NHL’s No. 2 all-time goal scorer remains 67 behind Wayne Gretzky’s record of 894. Despite having played in all 18 of Washington’s games, Ovechkin has scored only five times, putting the 38-year-old on pace for a 23-goal season.
That would be Ovechkin’s lowest total ever, even if you include the pandemic-shortened 2020-21 season, when he played a career-low 45 games but still managed 24 goals. It would also leave him 49 goals behind Gretzky, meaning Ovechkin would probably have to play past his 40th birthday to get the record he so badly wants.
