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NHL Western Conference

The NHL’s Race For #8: Phoenix, Colorado & Calgary

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The race for the final playoff spots is on in the NHL, and today TheSportsNotebook will focus in on the Western Conference, where three teams are packed within three points for #8. Phoenix holds the spot down if the season ended today, but Calgary and Colorado are hot on the heels of the Coyotes. Here’s a look at the strengths and weakness of all three teams…

Phoenix (8th, 63 points): The Coyotes are doing it with goaltending and killing opposing power plays, two directly related strengths. Phoenix is 8th in the league at preventing goals, but it’s not because of a great team defensive effort. Goaltender Mike Smith gets hit hard with shots, but he’s stood up with a 92.5 percent save rate. That’s not anything that’s going to put him up there with names like Henrik Lundqvist in New York, Tim Thomas in Boston or Detroit’s Jimmy Howard, but Smith’s performance is enough to take a basically lousy defense and push it into the playoffs. Particularly if he gets some help offensively.

The Coyote offense is fairly mediocre, with both strengths coming on the wings. Ray Whitney is a good passé, while Radim Vrbata is a finisher. There’s not much in the way of depth, nor do defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsen or Keith Yandle contribute much from the backline. Phoenix is playing good hockey right now, having picked up 14 points out of a possible 20 in the last ten games, but there’s still enough time for the cycle to turn back down and they put too much pressure on a goalie who’s not elite-level.

Calgary (9th, 62): Calgary’s also in good form right now, with 14 points out of the last 20 possible. Mikka Kiprusoff does good, albeit not great work in the goal, and while the offensive performance overall is poor (24th in the league) there are some individual pieces that make a run possible. Center Oli Jokinen and right-winger Alex Tanguay are each very good at passing the puck and Jarome Iginla is the best offensive player overall, both finishing and passing. The inability of these individual parts to coalesce into better team performance doesn’t reflect well on the coaching staff of Brent Sutter and the NHL is the most trigger-happy league when it comes to canning coaches. I am hardly attuned to Calgary media, but just based on what you see in this team, one would have to think Sutter needs to make the playoffs.

Colorado (10th, 60): A proud franchise in a good hockey town missed a chance to gain ground last night against Vancouver, but still might have the best chance of making a late-season push. The Avalanche have a bizarre statistical disparity—they rank 8th in getting shots, but 23rd in actually scoring. At this point in the season that can hardly be written off to bad luck, so we have to question quality of shots. But at the very least, it does suggest some activity on the offensive end that Phoenix and Calgary don’t have. A lot of what happens with Colorado will also depend on how games are officiated. While their 5-on-5 game is terrible, they do a credible job killing penalties and an even better job cashing in their own chances on the power play. When you evaluate teams at a championship level I don’t like to see this much dependence on power play scoring. But when you’re talking about mediocre teams just trying to steal wins, this type of strength is a nice X-factor to have in your back pocket.

Phoenix is my home team, at least for a month, while I escape the winters of Wisconsin and chill out here until mid-March and I’m looking forward to going to the Vancouver game when the Canucks come here on February 28. I’d like to say I’ll be following a playoff team. But if the race comes down to these three (Los Angeles is at 65 points and Chicago seems bound and determined to play their way back to this level), I think Colorado is the one that will pull it out.

 

Vancouver & San Jose Chase Rematch In NHL’s Western Conference

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A year ago, San Jose and Vancouver met in the Western Conference Finals, with the Canucks winning in six games.  Both teams are leading their divisions again this year as the NHL approaches All-Star Weekend.

The Canucks, hungry to get back to the Finals after losing in seven games to Boston, are atop the Northwest and their 62 points would get them the #2 seed. The Sharks are at 58 points and would currently slot # in the playoff bracket. One thing to keep in mind is that both Chicago and St. Louis have more points than either Vancouver or San Jose, so if either of the latter loses the division lead and automatic seeding in the top three, it’s a drop down to the bottom of the bracket. This is evidenced by the fact that Los Angeles moved into tie for first last night with San Jose in the Pacific Division, at 58 points apiece, but the Kings are seeded seventh.

Can San Jose and Vancouver overcome the Central Division’s power trio of current #1 seed Detroit, Chicago and St. Louis? Let’s take a closer look at last year’s conference finalists…

Vancouver: The Canucks remain an overall sound hockey team, with no obvious stand-out strengths and with the exception of maybe allowing a few too many shots, no obvious weaknesses. Vancouver ranks near the top of the league in goals scored and goals allowed. Their power play is the NHL’s best and they’re close to the top in the penalty kill.

The Sedin brothers, Daniel and Henrik, remain the core of this team. Henrik is at center, while Daniel operates on the right wing, and both are adept at scoring and passing. You also can’t overlook Alex Burrows, who’s a Top 30 scorer himself—that benchmark being chosen because it suggests that if talent were equally distributed, Burrows is good enough to be the lead scorer for somebody.

This core group is enough to get Vancouver where they are right now and that’s contention. They had problems defensively in last year’s Cup Finals though. Roberto Luongo can go back-and-forth from being a championship-caliber goalie to being a train wreck—against Boston last June he managed to do both in the course of a seven-game series. Backup Cory Schneider is capable, but any team with designs on the Cup clearly wants one guy they can count on for a shutdown performance in the postseason. And the fact the Canucks rank 16th in shots allowed suggests that the work of the defensemen, led by Alexander Edler and Kevin Biecksa, needs to be called into question.

My impression of Vancouver is that this is a fundamentally good team that can win a title if all breaks right, but is probably more likely to lose in the playoffs. Although Canucks fans, take heart—that’s the same description you can apply to the New England Patriots and they’ve made their own version of the Finals.

San Jose: The Sharks’ strength is their defense, and in particular the work of defenseman Marc-Eduoard Vlasic and Dan Boyle, who lead up a group that provides good depth and does solid work in preventing shots on goal. San Jose gets respectable goaltending work from Antti Niemi. While in an ideal world you might like to see a stronger goalie, Niemi is good enough to go deep into the playoffs with.

Where you have to be concerned with San Jose is on offense, and in particular, how well they’re working together to get shots. A strange statistical anomaly has the Sharks as producing the most shots in the league, but only ranking 13th in goals scored. Huh? Maybe in one game, or even a series, you can write that off to a hot goalie. When it’s the cumulative result against everyone after more than half a season. It suggests something isn’t right.

I don’t get to see the Sharks play, so I can’t answer the question definitively. But looking at the numbers makes me wonder if these are just shots wildly launched at the goalie that draw oohs and aahs from the crowd, but have little chance of finding the net. Are there rebounders and screeners in position? I don’t know. What we do know is that the talent level on San Jose’s frontline is down, as center Joe Thornton is now 32 years old and there’s no other reliable scorers out there.

You can never say never about anyone in the NHL playoffs, least of all a pair of division leaders. But San Jose definitely doesn’t like a championship team this year, and Vancouver appears maybe a notch off the pace.

Hot Winter Race In The NHL Central Division

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The race of the NHL’s Central Division title is red-hot, with St. Louis, Detroit and Chicago all within one point of each other. All three teams are right near the top of the conference overall, with only Vancouver joining them among the West’s leaders. With the Midwest trio likely to battle this all the way into spring, the Notebook takes a look at their strengths and weaknesses.

For those who don’t follow hockey regularly, here’s a general statistical guide. If we look at the middle of the league as a benchmark, you can see an average goalie gives up 2.41 goals per game and has a 91.9% save percentage. If you look at the 30th spot in the individual rankings for goals and assists, you would see 17 goals and 24 assists. I chose 30 as the cutoff point, since that can presume you’re capable of being the #1 option for a team if talent were equally distributed.

St. Louis Blues:  The Blues do it with defense, ranking 2nd in the NHL in goals allowed, and when you talk defense here that’s not a code-word for “goalie.” Jaroslav Halak is average in when it comes to making saves, but defenseman Alex Pietrangelo and Carlo Colaicovo lead up a team that is the best in the league at preventing shots. You can beat Halak, but you’ve got to find a way to test him first. This speaks well of St. Louis as a team, but in terms of the playoffs, there’s usually a few key moments when a goalie has to put his team on his back and put them over the top. Right now it’s fair to be skeptical of whether the Blues can win it all with Halak in net. And the offense will not carry them, not even in the regular season. They get a decent number of shots per game, but the relative lack of punch makes one wonder about the quality of those shots. Are they getting good screens on the opposing goalie? Are they getting rebounds shots off the goalie, ones that have a much higher chance of success? When a team is 7th in the NHL in shots taken, but only 19th in goals per game, those are the questions that come to mind.

Chicago Blackhawks: Chicago is the reverse of St. Louis in that the 2010 Stanley Cup champs rely on their offense, especially on the right wing, where Marian Hossa and Patrick Kane keep steady pressure on opposing defenses. Hossa is a solid all-around offensive player, while Kane piles up assists. Center Jonathan Toewes is productive both scoring and passing. Defensively, the Blackhawks are the league’s best at preventing shots, but they are subpar in the bottom line of keeping the puck out of the net. Goalie Corey Crawford is what’s standing between the Windy City and another championship run. If you think a team can overcome problems at this spot, take a look at last year’s Philadelphia Flyers, who eventually imploded because they couldn’t get stability in goal.

Detroit Red Wings: Hockey’s perennial power is the most complete team in this group, even if they’re the one that’s one point behind right now and headed for a #5 seed in the playoffs if the season started today (Division winners are locked into the 1-2-3 spots). The Red Wings get excellent goaltending from Jimmy Howard and the defensemen, led by veteran Nicklas Lidstrom makes sure Howard isn’t overly taxed. Detroit is outstanding in 5-of-5 play when no penalty is in effect, and they’re also among the league’s best at cashing in power play opportunities. Their biggest flaw is a poor penalty-kill team, something that leaves them vulnerable in tightly officiated games and the lack of a clear # 1 scoring option offensively, although isn’t nearly the problem it would be for a basketball team. While this writer is a Boston fan, Detroit is a team I’ve always liked and I not only hope they’ll win this division, but I believe it will happen.