NHL Power Rankings: A storm is brewing

Welcome to our first edition of the NHL power rankings! The plan here is to write these every week but with a different author so it isn’t the same list with a couple of minor changes here and there but rather a fresh perspective of the league as a whole.

A note right off the bat: Most importantly, this is purely for fun. There isn’t anybody in the world with enough time to be well-versed enough on all 32 NHL teams to accurately rank them. There are going to be blind spots for all of us and we may not have as much to say about those clubs. That’s okay. I stress this is for fun.

Another thing is that each author will be including an ‘Honorable Mention’ section each week where they can power rank whatever they want, from TV shows to the most annoying things about owning a house to favorite Thanksgiving foods. This stresses the “fun” aspect but also allows each of our power rankers to have a little extra fun each week.

That’s it. That’s the whole kit and kaboodle. Let’s rank some power.

1. Carolina Hurricanes (8-0-0, 16 points) – When you start the season undefeated, you’re top of the rankings. Jaccob Slavin, who had two penalty minutes all of last year, already has matched that total.

2. Florida Panthers (8-0-1, 17 points) – The Panthers finally lost a game this season with a shootout loss to Boston, making them 0-1 on the year in the skills competition. They haven’t had a record better than .500 in shootouts since the 2015-16 season when they finished 7-3.

3. Calgary Flames (6-1-2, 14 points) – Three shutouts already and a 5-1 record on the road? Good enough for me to be ranked ahead of the Oilers.

4. Edmonton Oilers (7-1-0, 14 points) – The Oilers PP is rocking a breezy 46.2% success rate right now. The best PP in NHL history across a full season is Montreal’s 1977-78 team with a success rate of 31.9%. Interestingly, the second-best PP ever was the New York Islanders also from 1977-78 at 31.4%. The 2019-20 Oilers had the best “modern” power play at 29.5%, suggesting that while this year’s group is obviously due for a big shift, it may not be a major fluke.

5. Washington Capitals (5-1-3, 13 points) – Alex Ovechkin’s chase for Wayne Gretzky’s goal-scoring record will be fascinating to watch as he creeps up on turning 40. So far, so good, however, with nine goals through nine games.

6. St. Louis Blues (6-1-0, 12 points) – A +14 goal differential means the Blues have been downright killing teams, not just slipping by. They’ve already scored seven goals in a game twice this year, something they accomplished three times last season. That kind of offense is a different look for the historically defense-first Blues.

7. Buffalo Sabres (5-3-1, 11 points) – This is a cookie for performance relative to preseason expectations. Craig Anderson had announced his retirement before deciding to take the league minimum to get peppered behind this Sabres group and he responded with a .939 save percentage in his first five starts. Good for Andy.

8. Philadelphia Flyers (5-2-1, 11 points) – You can’t stop me from loving this Flyers group. I don’t know what it is, but I always find myself rooting for them. He might have only two games played but Sharks fans can’t love looking at Philly and seeing Martin Jones rockin’ a .941 save percentage after the last three years of him getting lit up in San Jose.

9. San Jose Sharks (6-3-0, 12 points) – This is my surprise team of the league so far. I’ve always said they have Some Dudes still out there but Timo Meier is on another level right now. His 11 points in eight games might be a sign of the breakthrough so many have thought possible from the big Swiss forward.

10. New York Rangers (6-2-2, 14 points) – I’m disrespecting the Rangers a bit with a ranking this low but I think they’ll get over it. Why am I so low on the Rangers? A 5-1 record on the road is great but they’ve only had an xGF% over 50 three times this year and two of them were the result of score effects in their favor. I think this is an early-season bubble waiting to pop (while writing this, the Rangers blew a 2-0 lead to the Canucks and lost 3-2 in OT. It’s all happening~).

11. Columbus Blues Jackets (5-3-0, 10 points) – This is all about Elvis Merzlikins. 4-1 with a .939 save percentage? Given the awful events of the offseason, seeing Merzlikins rise to the moment like this is a great story. Easy to root for.

12. Detroit Red Wings (4-4-2, 10 points) – I said bias was going to play a part and this is where it gets complicated. I love young players coming out of the gate on fire and Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider are as hot as anyone as the two leading rookie scorers so far this year. Hopefully, this is the last time I say nice things about Detroit.

13. Winnipeg Jets (5-2-2, 12 points) – They’re a really fun, high-event team right now. Those defensive additions haven’t resulted in better defense but Nate Schmidt has eight points in nine games so that’s fun. How much more can they keep winning with Connor Hellebuyck putting up a .899 save percentage?

14. Tampa Bay Lightning (5-3-1, 11 points) – They’re a little banged up but after last season they aren’t about to get even an iota of sympathy from anyone. They have two good wins against Washington but their other three wins are against Arizona, an extremely compromised Pittsburgh, and a 7-6 overtime barn-burner against Detroit. They just aren’t playing great hockey right now.

15. Minnesota Wild (6-3-0, 12 points) – They’re winning games but have a -3 goal differential. That’s because every single win has been a one-goal game (spoiler alert: you won’t go undefeated in those all year) and every loss has been by exactly three goals. To clarify, in wins the Wild are +6 in goals and -9 in losses. Great underlying numbers as a team. Could move way up or down by the next time it’s my turn to write these rankings.

16. New Jersey Devils (4-3-1, 9 points) – They look much better than the completely forgettable group from last year. No Jack Hughes hurts but rookie Dawson Mercer has five points through eight games. He was a favorite among Avalanche scouts in the 2020 draft.

17. Toronto Maple Leafs (5-4-1, 11 points) – A good home team that is just 1-3 on the road, this is a team searching for more from its star players. While Mitch Marner appears on milk cartons, Michael Bunting (six points in 10 games) continues the torrid scoring pace he had with the Coyotes at the end of last year when he scored 13 points in 21 games.

18. Pittsburgh Penguins (3-3-2, 8 points) – The most beat-up team in the league was just trying to survive their early-season injury woes. Sidney Crosby is back, however, and he’s a pretty good tonic for whatever ails a hockey club. The injuries aren’t over in Pittsburgh but they survived what they hope is the worst of it. Just kidding! It was announced this morning that Crosby has COVID and is out again. The Pens might be cursed?

19. Vegas Golden Knights (4-5-0, 8 points) – Why is Vegas this high with a losing record? They are hanging tough despite not having (deep breath) William Karlsson, Mark Stone, Max Pacioretty, Alex Tuch, and Zach Whitecloud in the lineup. This all comes while the players actually in games are dealing with the daily threat of being traded to Buffalo in the inevitable Jack Eichel trade (the trade is inevitable, not necessarily to Vegas). Just giving props to a team fighting through it. 0% on the power play is pretty ghastly, however.

20. Colorado Avalanche (4-4-0, 8 points) – Another team fighting off endless injuries, Colorado weathered a tough early-season schedule and now has the softest portion of their schedule coming up, both in terms of quality and quantity. The only playoff team from last year the Avs face all month is Nashville in their final game of November. They only play four games in the first 17 days of the month. Good time to rest those injured fellows.

21. Anaheim Ducks (3-4-3, 9 points) – I don’t think they’re any good but they’re banking points in games they lose, which is a great formula for being a surprise team to sneak into the back-end of the playoffs. Troy Terry popping off to start the year is the real story after years of the Ducks waiting for him to finally solidify a spot.

22. Boston Bruins (4-3-0, 8 points) – I mentioned above not everyone can know everything about all the teams. I haven’t seen a single second of a Bruins game this year and in digging through their numbers, failed to find anything that popped as “interesting” to me. They’re really good at faceoffs, I guess, at 54.3% as a team. So there’s that.

23. Dallas Stars (3-4-2, 8 points) – This feels about right. They are a sea of mediocrity, a swath of blah, an onslaught of vanilla ice cream. Nothing about them is fun or interesting. They exist.

24. New York Islanders (3-2-2, 8 points) – They’ve actually outperformed their underlying numbers so far, which have them one of the worst teams in hockey. Why don’t I have them at the bottom? Because they open the season on a 13-game roadie while they wait for their new home rink to have the finishing touches put on it. That’s a brutally difficult way to start a season, so I’m giving a little leeway here.

25. Nashville Predators (5-4-0, 10 points) – I’ll be honest. When I was making the list, I was trying to figure out which team I forgot. It was Nashville. I’d say sorry but that’s a pretty accurate state of the franchise right now. They need a fresh injection of life. David Poile’s run has been great. He built a well-loved franchise in a market few believed he could. It’s time, though. Colorado’s own Chris MacFarland would make a ton of sense with his experience in helping to build a cost-efficient team while understanding the importance of analytics and development.

26. Vancouver Canucks (4-5-1, 9 points) – Enjoy this insane save from Thatcher Demko last night against the Rangers.

THATCHER DEMKO pic.twitter.com/I9VgYln0li

— /Cam Robinson/ (@Hockey_Robinson) November 3, 2021

27. Ottawa Senators (3-5-1, 7 points) – They’re fun again, just like last year. Youth makes them worth watching but they remain searching for an answer in net and beyond Thomas Chabot haven’t really found many answers on the defensive side. I like Artem Zub, however, so keep an eye on him.

28. Los Angeles Kings (3-5-1, 7 points) – The Kings aren’t really any good right now but their underlying numbers suggest a team capable of putting some wins together. That’s all good and well, but can they actually win a few? The 95 high-danger chances they’ve created at 5v5 is second-most in the NHL.

29. Seattle Kraken (3-6-1, 7 points) – The Kraken, at least so far, are who we thought they were. A good defensive team that can’t score. What they didn’t expect was the struggles from prized free agent Philipp Grubauer, who has a .896 save percentage so far this year. After last year, you’d think he was a little more comfortable in an environment where he doesn’t see many shots.

30. Montreal Canadiens (3-8-0, 6 points) – Turns out losing Carey Price, Shea Weber, and Philip Danault makes a team worse. Who knew? Jonathan Drouin went to the hospital after taking a puck to the head. Here’s to hoping he’s okay. It was scary to watch.

31. Arizona Coyotes (0-9-1, 1 point) – They’re brutally awful. I told Craig Morgan of PHNX earlier this season that what he was about to go through could border on biblical. So far I’ve been right, but I do like that the veterans on that club aren’t just mailing it in. They’re playing hard for head coach Andre Tourigny. Moral victories will heavily outnumber actual victories in Phoenix (or Glendale, I guess) this year.

32. Chicago Blackhawks (Record irrelevant) – When you get caught having spent a decade lying about covering up the sexual assault of a former player by a former coach, you’re last in the league. Nothing else with this organization matters this week. If you want a hockey reason for them to be last, it’s that they spent a ton of money and draft capital and tried to get better this year. For them to be the second-to-last team to win a game is embarrassing, and still somehow not even in the same galaxy as the most embarrassing parts of that organization this week.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Any longtime reader or listener to the podcast knows I am a huge sucker for romance movies. My Hallmark addiction gave us one of the weirdest podcast episodes we’ve ever done, for example, so why not start our personal power rankings right in my wheelhouse with me rankings my top five romcoms? These aren’t necessarily the best or most influential or any of that, just my favorites. You’re going to disagree. That’s kind of the point.

1. Notting Hill – I’m not even sure why this one stands the test of time for me. The plot is kind of stupid. A travel book store? Surely even in the 90s that wasn’t a good business venture. A roommate that impossibly insanely weird and emotionally draining? Even if Rhys Ifans is hilarious, it’s a tough sell that a dude as well-grounded as William Thacker would put up with that. This all just drives home what a special on-screen chemistry Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts have together. They made a younger version of myself believe any love, no matter how far-fetched, was possible.

2. She’s All That – Another movie with a plot that is, well, dumb, but is driven by fantastic on-screen chemistry between the leads. It’s kind of wild that two of the complementary characters in this movie, Paul Walker and Dule Hill, wound up having arguably the most successful careers of anyone in this movie. The characters are great, the comedy bits still make me laugh. It all holds up decently well 20 years later. This one gives me the warm fuzzies.

3. 10 Things I Hate About You – Everyone remembers the electricity between Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger but there are layers to this. The main stars have a slow burn while baby-faced Joseph-Gordon Levitt comes up with the world’s dumbest plan to woo a girl by pretending to be a French tutor to spend time with her. It’s all wonderfully silly as the antics throughout the movie serve to one-up each other as each character constantly goes for it. It’s all about not holding back and that’s why this stands out.

4. Love, Actually – Stop rolling your eyes. Talk about layers. Every relationship in this movie produced an iconic scene! Holding the cards outside as Christmas carols play (this one is problematic overall but sweet in a vacuum), Hugh Grant dancing through the Prime Minister’s home, Bill Nighy singing that annoying song every 15 minutes, Alan Rickman being both great and awful at the same time while Emma Thompson grapples with the love of her life stepping outside their relationship, Mariah Carey’s royalty check monster getting plenty of screenplay. It’s a love letter to love.

5. Ruby Sparks – I’m still me so I had to have one kind of odd entry on this list. This is a harder watch at times as it’s about a novelist whose struggles to recreate early-career success cause all sorts of mental issues. One of his characters comes to life and he’s able to “control” her by writing pages on his typewriter. It’s an interesting thought experiment on the limits of love, the importance of independence, and how organic relationships can’t be forced and either are meant to be or aren’t. An underrated classic that meant a lot to me as it came out when I was 25 and trying to understand my version of “the one.”

Actual honorable mentions: Sleepless in Seattle, The Proposal, Sweet Home Alabama, Serendipity, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, 13 Going on 30, Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful, Pretty Woman