The holidays are fast approaching and we just passed the quarter mark of the NHL season. So teams around the league are getting a good sense of what they need to improve their prospects for winning. With this in mind, we present you with a holiday wish list—first up: the Eastern Conference.
Boston The Bruins have struggled to score goals, ranking 15th in Goals Scored per 60 minutes at 5v5. This after ranking third, ninth and second the previous three campaigns. This largely stems from Jarome Iginla opting for “greener” pastures in the Rockies. Losing Zdeno Chara and David Krejci for extended stretches also hasn’t helped the team’s production, but they sure could use an elite sniper like that Tyler Seguin kid in Dallas (1.88 G/60, 3rd best in the NHL).
The Bruins should be interested in adding a scoring winger like Chris Stewart, Drew Stafford, Joffrey Lupul, Tomas Fleischmann or Brad Boyes. Now if only they could convince a division rival to help them out in the trade market.
Buffalo Speaking of Stewart and Stafford, the Sabres are hoping they can ship out some of their more expensive veterans as the trade deadline approaches. This is all just a means to improving their chances of getting who they really want: Connor MacDavid.
Carolina I’m not sure “a save” or “a goal” would qualify as holiday wishes, but the Hurricanes are a team badly in need of a few good bounces. Despite ranking a respectable 15th in the NHL in Score Adjusted Corsi For Percentage (CF%), they really haven’t been picking up enough wins.
The goaltenders both have below average save percentages, with Anton Khudobin sporting a particularly atrocious .898 at 5v5. This is more shocking as it is one season after he posted the fifth-highest 5v5 SV% in the NHL at .936. In addition to the poor goaltending, all of the following scorers have bizarrely low shooting percentages at 5v5.
Realistically a regression in Carolina’s PDO is likely in the latter portion of the season, as their 97.0 is 29th in the NHL, barely ahead of Edmonton’s 96.8. In nthe past seven seasons, no NHL team has ended an 82-game season with a PDO below 97.5, so there really isn’t anywhere for it to go but up.
Columbus This team could use a medical miracle. The best way to illustrate that is by using CHIP rankings, which tabulates the combined cap hit of the players lost due to injury.
The Blue Jackets had lost about $6.3 million in cap value as of December 7, about 31 percent more than the next closest team, Anaheim (approximately $4.8 million). This is not a category you want to lead the NHL in. Contrast Columbus with the Montreal Canadiens, who had lost less than $500,000 in player cap value due to injury.
Unfortunately it sounds like Nathan Horton isn’t returning anytime soon (if at all). That being said, if the Blue Jackets can get healthy and stay healthy, this is a team that’s shown it has a decent core of players who can play a possession game (14th ranked Score Adjusted CF% last year) in front of a Vezina-calibre goaltender in Sergei Bobrovsky.
Detroit A healthy Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg for the rest of the year might be too obvious a request. What the Red Wings are really desperate for is a top-four, right-handed D-man. They tried to sign a few in the off-season as UFAs and had no luck, so it’s possible they’ll be pursuing the answer via trade come the new year.
Keep tabs on the likes of pending UFAs Mike Green, Cody Franson and Jeff Petry—all of whom are righties and play decent enough possession games to fit in well with the Wings. Tyler Myers is a younger option who Buffalo may be willing to move in its race to the bottom for McDavid.
Florida Some fans in the stands to bear witness to a potential Calder Trophy season from 18-year-old phenom Aaron Ekblad would be a nice start. It’s early yet, but Ekblad has looked every bit the top prospect of his draft class so far this season.
Despite playing relatively sheltered minutes alongside 35-year-old, 15-year veteran Brian Campbell—one of the most effective blueliners in the game—Ekblad is leading the D-corps offensively. The kid already has 18 points in his first 26 NHL games, and is averaging 21:47 in TOI nightly. The crazy part about his production is that it looks relatively sustainable (no surprisingly high On-Ice SH% blips, or weird strings of goal scoring).
Ekblad is on pace to produce 63 points. The last time an 18-year-old rookie defender produced more than 60 points in a season is also the only time: Phil Housley, 66 points in 77 games for the Buffalo Sabres in 1982-83… a slightly looser era of hockey. In fact, only three other NHL defenceman have broken the 60-point mark under the age of 20. Housley did it again at 19, the other two are Ray Bourque and Larry Murphy who are both in the Hall of Fame. That’s some pretty impressive company.
Montreal An uplifting end to the season after the passing of one of the all-time greats of the NHL and the Habs in particular—10 time Stanley Cup winner Jean Beliveau.
The Canadiens have seen their spot in the standings slip a bit in recent weeks, so a return to winning ways would be a good thing. Additions like Sergei Gonchar and Bryan Allen have helped stabilize the back end a bit, but more playing time for youngsters Nathan Beaulieu and Jared Tinordi might help even more.
New Jersey The Devils only have two requests: A backup goalie to give Corey Schneider a break and directions to the fountain of youth for their aging roster.
New York Islanders A healthy blueline would be a good place to begin. After years of underwhelming goaltending, the team has finally shored up in goal, and added some key pieces throughout the lineup in the off-season. Now injuries are threatening to derail what might be one of the strongest teams in the East. Lubomir Visnovsky’s struggles to remain healthy as he ages have the Isles in need of a second-pair defender later on this year.
New York Rangers More of the magic pixie dust that Rick Nash and Kevin Klein have been covering their hands in all season long. Nash is shooting 19.8% and Klein is sitting at the ridiculous rate of 21.4%. It might help if they actually worked on shooting the puck more as a team though. Nash has 91 shots but nobody else on the team has over 53.
Ottawa A nice bounce from the renowned new-coach PDO bump. Basically the theory goes that coaches often get fired when their teams suffer through a string of particularly bad luck, then when the team PDO regresses back up towards 100.0 the new coach gets all the credit.
Ottawa’s PDO was 97.3 in the five games played entering last Thursday night. However it happens, the Senators could use some shooting luck as their 7.08% 5v5 SH% is currently 24th in the NHL.
Philadelphia The Flyers are holding out hope for some good news when it comes to their blueline. The team had the heart of their D-corps ripped out before the season began when Kimmo Timonen was diagnosed with potentially life-threatening blood clots. He’s on hiatus, at least until the new year when his status will be reviewed. With a family history of blood clots, Timonen may need to be on blood thinners for the rest of his life, which would prevent him from continuing what had been an extremely solid NHL career.
In Timonen’s absence, the Flyers were going to need big years from the likes of Braydon Coburn, Luke Schenn and Andrew MacDonald. None of that has really panned out. Coburn has spent the year in and out of the infirmary, having played only 17 games to date. Schenn has been a healthy scratch repeatedly—largely due to perceptions of poor play thanks to an atrocious On-Ice SV% at 5v5 of only .873.
As for MacDonald? Well, injuries and healthy scratches have combined to see him only play 18 games so far, and frankly that’s about what one should expect from a defender who has one goal all year and lowers his teammates’ average of 47.8% Fenwick to 43.9% Fenwick when he’s on the ice.
Pittsburgh A solid playoff year from recently extended Marc-Andre Fleury would be nice. The Penguins are almost certain to make the playoffs given their season thus far, but Fleury has a combined .891 SV% on 1,197 shots the past five post-seasons. He only managed a .908 SV% the year that he backstopped Pittsburgh to the Stanley Cup.
Realistically, Fleury doesn’t have to be amazing for this team to do well, but he has to be “good enough”—and that means performing under pressure in the playoffs.
Tampa Bay A healthy Steven Stamkos, Victor Hedman and Ben Bishop for the rest of the year would go a long way to helping fans around the NHL appreciate the amazing job Steve Yzerman has done in steering his club back to respectability.
The Bolts boast one of the deepest young rosters in the NHL. The high-flying young talent—Jonathan Drouin, Tyler Johnson, Ondrej Palat and Nikita Kucherov—is well balanced by veterans like Ryan Callahan, Anton Stralman, Valterri Filppula and Brian Boyle. The Lightning are poised to make a serious run in the playoffs, if they can keep their roster healthy.
Toronto While the Leafs are riding high on PDO at the moment, (Where have we heard this song before?) they—and their fans—would appreciate an improvement in their possession game to reward all their new-found concern for “process.” The Leafs have slowly been shifting more and more of the 5v5 workload to the likes of Nazem Kadri and Peter Holland over Tyler Bozak, so maybe Randy Carlyle will decide to tinker with his line up some more over the holidays.
Also since this is just a wish list I’m sure they’d be happy to receive a mulligan on the first 25 games for Jake Gardiner and a magical clearing of cap space to re-sign key cogs such as Cody Franson, Jonathan Bernier and Nazem Kadri.
Washington Coach Barry Trotz has the Caps playing a more productive possession game this season and the top-end talent is generally performing well, but they could certainly use some improved play from their bottom-six forwards and key off-season additions Matt Niskanen and Brooks Orpik.
Jason Chimera was a healthy scratch last week for the first time in years—largely due to an atrocious interference penalty in overtime that eventually led to a game-winning goal for Columbus. Trotz has been leaning on some veterans who aren’t really producing the results expected of them, and patience is wearing thin as time progresses.