Are the Fast-Starting Los Angeles Kings, New York Rangers and Vancouver Canucks for Real?
We dig into the truth behind these unexpected NHL leaders, and other surprising storylines across the league so far.
With the NHL skating past the one-quarter mark of its regular season, we can finally begin to separate the signal from the noise in the early results. Here are four trends that have jumped out so far, along with our assessment of whether they will continue.
(All stats in this story are as of Thursday, Nov. 30.)
The L.A. Kings, Vancouver Canucks and New York Rangers are Stanley Cup frontrunners.
According to Hockey-Reference’s Simple Rating System, which applies a strength of schedule adjustment to each team’s goals-per-game differential, the following squads have been the best in the league to this point:
Perhaps the Rangers shouldn’t be too much of a surprise here; they ranked sixth last season and had a solid offseason — including the addition of new coach Peter Laviolette, the eighth-winningest bench boss in NHL history. But it’s certainly unexpected to see Los Angeles (No. 12 in ‘22-23) and Vancouver (No. 23) checking in so highly as well.
The Kings had done a nice job in recent seasons of rebuilding a playoff squad after their quasi-dynasty of the early 2010s fizzled out, and they even did it with members of that old team — specifically, Anže Kopitar and Drew Doughty — still playing important roles. But there wasn’t much to suggest they’d tower over the rest of the league through the first 25% of the season. And for Vancouver, there was even less: The team was fresh off a failed bid to make the playoffs and a change at coach to Rick Tocchet, who spent most of last year as a TV analyst.
Verdict: For real — mostly.
While there are other teams that belong at the top of the odds, too — from the Boston Bruins and Vegas Golden Knights to the Colorado Avalanche and Dallas Stars — this group should remain formidable. The Kings have leaned back into their winning formula from yesteryear, ranking second in their share of unblocked shot attempts at 5-on-5, which insulates them from regression even if the impressive play of goalie Cam Talbot recedes. Likewise, New York has tallied a 16-5 record with its three best players (Igor Shesterkin, Adam Fox and Mika Zibanejad) not even playing to their full capabilities yet. The team to be most skeptical of is probably Vancouver, but that ties into our next topic …
The Hart Trophy battle is between defensemen.
We haven’t seen a blueliner capture the NHL’s MVP trophy since Chris Pronger in 1999-2000, but that could change this year. Here are the league leaders in my Goals Above Replacement statistic so far:
Neck-and-neck at the top of the list are a pair of defensemen, Cale Makar of the Avalanche and Quinn Hughes of the Canucks. Makar has won the Norris Trophy before as the NHL’s best D-man, and Hughes was among the preseason favorites for the award, but MVP is an entirely new conversation for both. And to our previous point about Vancouver’s Cup chances, Hughes’ team will probably need him to continue playing at a superhuman level to maintain its ranking among the top contenders.
Verdict: For real.
Despite the paucity of defensemen winning the Hart in the past, and the fact that both Makar (32 points in 21 games) and Hughes (33 in 23) are unlikely to keep piling up stats quite this prolific — in all of NHL history, Bobby Orr and Paul Coffey are the only D-men ever to average 1.4 points per game in a season — this year’s blueline stars should remain in the mix, if not just for a lack of dominant alternatives. Both Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl (winners of three of the past four MVPs) are having less stellar seasons than usual for the Edmonton Oilers, as is 2021-22 winner Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs, to some degree. And no goalie is playing at an off-the-charts level so far, either. The Hart is right there for the taking.
Elite goalies are struggling.
Goalies can be a tough bunch to predict under the best of circumstances, with so many noisy factors exerting a big influence over their performance. But this season has been especially rough for netminders that appeared to be the best in the game on paper beforehand. Here were the goalies that came into 2023-24 with the highest established level of GAR (based on a weighted average of the previous three seasons), along with the pace per 82 team games they’re producing at right now:
Of the Top 10, a group peppered with recent Vezina Trophy recipients, just one — Dallas’ Jake Oettinger — is exceeding his previously established GAR pace, as are only three of the Top 15. Some of those underperformances are relatively inconsequential: Boston’s Linus Ullmark is splitting starts with Jeremy Swayman, thereby reducing his total value, but his save percentage remains 15% better than league average when he is in net. Others have happened due to injury, such as with Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy, who only recently returned to the Lightning crease. But in other cases, a netminder’s poor play has seriously hurt his team’s chances. Just ask the Minnesota Wild’s recently fired coach Dean Evason if he wished for better goaltending from Filip Gustavsson and Marc-André Fleury this season!
Verdict: Not real.
The good news for the teams of these established great goalies is that, again, performance in net is fickle — and that’s especially true early in a season. When dealing with a sample of roughly 400 shots, the difference between a save percentage at league average versus 15% worse than average is fewer than six goals allowed. This is why many of these aberrant performances are likely to turn around sooner or later. For instance, all Nashville needs out of Juuse Saros — the league’s top GAR goalie over the previous three seasons — is simply a better save percentage on routine chances, and he’ll be right back among the NHL leaders in goaltending value.
These 2023 playoff teams are in trouble.
For every surprising success story like the Canucks and Kings, there are also teams on the other side of the ledger — clubs that made the playoffs last spring but have already seen their chances of returning there dwindle. According to my preferred blend of betting odds and statistical models, here are the 2022-23 playoff teams that have the smallest chance of getting back:
For those hoping the Seattle Kraken would follow a consistent upward trajectory from their expansion year onward, 2023-24 has been a disappointment — this year’s squad looks more like the franchise’s underwhelming first-year effort than last season’s much-improved version, with goaltending remaining a weakness and defending Rookie of the Year Matty Beniers taking a step back. We’ve already mentioned the Wild and Oilers’ problems, and the New York Islanders have become a downright parody of their usual all-goaltending/no-scoring formula. The most startling names on this list might be the Lightning — Stanley Cup finalists in three straight seasons as recently as 2021-22 — and the New Jersey Devils, one of last season’s most exciting young breakout teams.
Verdict: Real for everyone except Tampa and New Jersey.
It’s hard to see the Kraken, Wild and Isles overcoming the early holes each has dug for themselves in the standings. None are even on pace for 88 points by season’s end, and no playoff team made it in with fewer than 92 last year. The Oilers are a borderline case in that regard, too, although McDavid and Draisaitl have the potential to produce so much more that Edmonton still has the upside for a run (though time is seriously running out). The Lightning and Devils are in a different category not only because they have put up more points, but because the respective returns of Vasilevskiy and Jack Hughes give their teams more firepower going forward than they’ve shown all season.
Still, all of these teams need to be better over the remaining three-quarters of the schedule, or they might find themselves on the outside looking in next spring.
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Original story: Are the Fast-Starting Los Angeles Kings, New York Rangers and Vancouver Canucks for Real?