Well, what a difference five weeks make.
On Dec. 1, neither the Calgary Flames nor the Vancouver Canucks were giving anyone much to be positive about, ranked 10th and 12th respectively in the West and spinning their wheels. Today, as the two teams mark their season’s halfway point with a home-and-home Friday and Saturday, both are edging towards contention — especially Calgary.
Vancouver has won five in a row, and a sweep of Calgary will move them ahead of the Flames by a point. Calgary has won five of its past seven games — 11 of its last 15 — and since Dec. 2 they lead the NHL in powerplay (35.7%) and are fourth in penalty killing (89.1%). This from a team that was ranked dead last on the PP early in the season.
If the Flames sweep both games they would be, at worst, within a point of Edmonton, a team they’ve been chasing since Day 1 this season. Calgary gets Edmonton on Hockey Night in Canada the following two weekends, but it’s these two games against the Canucks that could really separate the Flames from the bottom half of the Pacific.
So there is some irony that, as the two teams clash in an early head-to-head, Vancouver’s most productive player has been former Flames first-rounder Sven Baertschi, who leads Vancouver with 8-5-13 since Dec. 1. Baertschi, traded to the Canucks in March of 2015 for a second round pick (Rasmus Andersson), will surely set new career marks in goals and points this season, with 11-12-23 in 37 games thus far.
(Hunter Shinkaruk, the Canucks first-rounder who went to Calgary in February of ’16 for Markus Granlund, has spent all but seven games in AHL Stockton. Granlund, meanwhile has become a useful part in Vancouver, with 7-7-14 in 40 games.)
The biggest change in Calgary has been Mikael Backlund’s continued growth. Talk about a late bloomer, he was the Flames first round pick 10 drafts ago in 2007 and only in the past two seasons has emerged as productive centre. His line, with Matthew Tkachuk and Michael Frolik has carried Calgary at times, and Backlund’s 25 points are three more than No. 1 centre Sean Monahan.
Also, Dougie Hamilton had a poor start to the season. Right about the time the trade rumours revved up however, he was paired up with Mark Giordano. Hamilton has been lights out good ever since, a necessary component to any Flames success.
Watch for Henrik Sedin — he’s at 996 career points heading into tonight’s game. The Canucks have never had a 1000-point player before.
Parsons Project
It should also be noted that, just as Chad Johnson cooled in the Flames nets, Brian Elliott upped his game. Elliott has won his last five starts with a saves percentage of .922.
It will be fascinating to see where Calgary goes this summer, with both Johnson and Elliott as pending unrestricted free agents. I could see GM Brad Treliving signing the local boy Johnson at a reasonable number, and hoping to get 50 games out of him. The question is whether farmhand Jon Gillies (just 18 games so far in Stockton this season) is ready for the other 32 games, which seems doubtful.
Remember, Calgary also has 19-year-old Tyler Parsons, who heroically beat Canada Thursday night in Montreal in the U.S. nets. He’s a few years away from the NHL however, still playing for the London Knights.
Oil Workhorse
Let’s stay with goaltending, where Cam Talbot has had just four nights off in 40 Oilers games this season. Talbot leads the NHL in games played/started (36), shots faced (1,100), saves (1,011), goals against (89) and minutes (2,151). He’s a respectable 11th among starters in saves percentage (.919), and ranks 13th in goals against average (2.48).
Remember, he has only been a No. 1 for two seasons now in Edmonton.
A full 40 percent of Talbot’s career NHL minutes have come in the 2016-17 season.
"I love it," he told the Edmonton Journal this week. "You work your whole career to be the go-to guy and when you get that chance you want to make the best of it. I don’t feel overly taxed. I’ll play 70 (games) this year if they want me to."
Still, Edmonton needs a proper backup, and it’s mighty clear that head coach Todd McLellan doesn’t have any faith in current No. 2, the much traveled Jonas Gustavsson. This is where Winnipeg comes in:
The Jets have Ondrej Pavelec sitting on the farm collecting $4.75 million with an AAV of $3.9 million. Gustavsson makes $800,000). Both have expiring contracts.
Come Feb. 15, with the season three-quarters done, there’s got to be a deal to be made.
Hall Pass
Edmonton gets New Jersey and Taylor Hall for the first time on Saturday night since the blockbuster, one-for-one trade for defenceman Adam Larsson. Clearly, that trade was only part of the puzzle in Edmonton, but you can’t argue with the product at the halfway point of the season compared to where Edmonton was after 40 games last season. (Read: irrelevant.)
Through 40 games, the Oilers record was 16-21-3 last seasons, and 20-13-7 this season. They’ve got more points (47-35), are ranked higher in the league (10th to 28th), they’re closer in the West (5th to 15th) and only the Rangers and Blue Jackets have more than Edmonton’s 11 road wins in 2016-17.
How much of that is due to Hall’s absence and Larsson’s presence? The same way Shea Weber for P.K. Subban is still debated in Montreal, that trade will be a hot topic for seasons to come in Edmonton. Then, many Oilers fans felt for Hall, who got traded away after years of playing on a dysfunctional Oilers team. Now they’re getting somewhere, and he’s gone to New Jersey, which is floundering.
"You never want to see a guy like that leave, and you can understand the frustration of him not being here, and maybe wanting to be here," McLellan said. "But, if Wayne Gretzky can be traded, and Scotty Bowman coaches in different places, then it can happen to anybody at any time.
"We do feel for him, but life has to go on for everybody."
Blue Christmas
St Louis gave up on Ty Rattie, losing the No. 32 overall draft pick in 2011 on waivers to Carolina this week. The simple answer is that St. Louis chose to keep fellow right-winger Nail Yakupov instead, and that is part of it. But it wasn’t quite that simple.
St. Louis has two centremen at AHL Chicago who are starting to pan out: their second round pick in 2014, Ivan Barbashev, and Wade Megan, a dark horse fifth-rounder who has wormed his way into the heart of the Blues front office.
You know the kind of hockey St. Louis plays: a hard, big, 200-foot, defensive game. Well, Rattie’s game is pretty much the opposite of that, while Megan — a left-shot centreman — has simmered in the AHL and might just find a way to begin an NHL career at age 26.
He scored in his only NHL game on Dec. 22. Remember his name.
