The NHL at the 10-Game Mark: Chaos Reigns in the Pacific Division
The Vancouver Canucks and the Anaheim Ducks saw the largest improvement over the first 10 games from last season in the NHL. That's just part of a chaotic Pacific Division with historically bad performances and underperforming squads.
When the clocks fall back to standard time on the first Sunday in November, it's also a sign that we're into the heart of hockey season.
As part of Saturday's busy 15-game slate in the NHL, 10 teams played their 10th games of the year. That puts all 32 squads into double digits, where fans start to get enough data to determine which early-season trends could be true indicators of a team's fortunes this season.
We're now less than three weeks away from U.S. Thanksgiving when those trends will start to be taken very seriously.
Right now, no division is more topsy-turvy in the NHL than the Pacific. The Oilers and Flames are floundering, the San Jose Sharks are all-time bad, and the Vancouver Canucks and Anaheim Ducks hope their early-season surges foretell more good things to come.
With a 7-2-1 record through their first 10 games, the Canucks improved by a league-leading nine points from last season's start of 2-6-2 under Bruce Boudreau. Now, with Rick Tocchet at the helm, Thatcher Demko back to Vezina form, and a dramatically re-worked roster behind stars Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes and J.T. Miller, the Canucks have gotten out to the third-best start in their franchise's history.
It's no small accomplishment to sit second in the Pacific Division, behind the juggernaut Vegas Golden Knights. On Saturday, the Canucks looked poised and mature as they shut out the Dallas Stars 2-0 to move into a tie for third place overall in the NHL standings.
One point behind Vancouver, the Los Angeles Kings also look formidable. After shoring up their center depth with the summer acquisition of Pierre-Luc Dubois, the Kings were four points ahead of last year's pace through 10 games. And like Vancouver, they picked up their third-straight win in Game 11 on Saturday with a shutout — in their case, with Cam Talbot shutting the door on the Philadelphia Flyers.
A little further south — who expected the Anaheim Ducks to have a grip on a wild-card spot after their first 10 games?
Greg Cronin is in contention as the most successful bench hire of the off-season — a 60-year-old who was given his first NHL head-coaching opportunity by GM Pat Verbeek this summer.
Cronin has managed to blend the Ducks' promising young talent with some veteran grit. He has also brought out the best in journeyman Frank Vatrano, who's tied for second in the league with nine goals.
And while it might not be surprising that October's rookie of the month came from Anaheim's prospect-rich roster, I'm not sure many observers had goalie Lukas Dostal ranked above the likes of Leo Carlsson and Pavel Mintyukov for that honor.
But here we are.
On Nov. 1, the Ducks beat the Arizona Coyotes in overtime for their fifth straight win, and pushed their record to 6-4-0. That's a five-point improvement from the first 10 games of last season, second-best in the league behind the Canucks.
One other team is also five points better than last season — the St. Louis Blues. By taking down the New Jersey Devils by a 4-1 score on Friday, then beating the Montreal Canadiens 6-3 on Saturday, the Blues are now 5-4-1 through 10 games for a respectable 11 points — and are sitting just ahead of Arizona in that second Western Conference wild-card spot. Last season, St. Louis won its first three games before going on a terrible eight-game losing streak, kicking off a see-saw pattern that persisted all year and saw them finishing 14 points out of a playoff berth.
And speaking of the Coyotes — credit to them for taking a step forward. With Logan Cooley tied with Philadelphia's Bobby Brink atop the rookie points race, the Coyotes are one of three teams that posted a four-point improvement over the first 10 games, along with the Kings and the New York Rangers under Peter Laviolette.
That's another coaching hire that looks like it's paying dividends, although the Rangers are now being tested as they deal with injuries to Adam Fox and Filip Chytil. On Saturday, they were outshot 40-18 and blew a 3-0 lead as they dropped a 5-4 shootout decision to a determined Minnesota Wild team.
At the other end of the spectrum, as physicists like to say, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
That's not completely true in the NHL, where not every game counts for the same number of total standings points. But it stands to reason that if some teams are getting better, others must be getting worse. And there are still only 16 playoff spots up for grabs.
As mentioned, a lot of this season's early volatility is happening in the Pacific Division.
Over the last three days, the San Jose Sharks have taken the term 'tire fire' to new levels. Per Sportsnet Stats, they just became the first team since 1965 to give up 10 goals in back-to-back games. While the Sharks lost 10-1 to Vancouver on Nov. 2 and 10-2 to Pittsburgh on Nov. 4, those 1965 Boston Bruins lost 10-2 to Detroit on Dec. 2 and 10-1 to Chicago on Dec. 4.
The Sharks went 3-7-0 in their first 10 games last season and finished 29th overall with 60 points. It's not like this year's group had a high bar to clear in order to hold steady or even show a bit of improvement.
Instead, they're still looking for their first win after 11 games (0-10-1), which ties an NHL record. Their minus-43 goal differential is the worst ever for any NHL team through 11 games.
The Sharks will set a new all-time record for losses to start a season if they can't beat the Philadelphia Flyers at the Shark Tank on Tuesday.
San Jose's abrupt implosion has taken some of the attention away from the Edmonton Oilers, who kicked off Saturday's game slate by dropping a 5-2 decision to the Nashville Predators.
The Edmonton squad that came into the season with Stanley Cup aspirations is now 2-7-1 through its first 10 games and sitting 31st in the NHL standings with just five points. That's nine points worse than one year ago when they surfed a five-game winning streak to a 7-3-0 record after 10 games.
Their neighbors to the south, the Calgary Flames, were also 2-7-1 through 10 games. But the Flames picked up a valuable 6-3 win over the Seattle Kraken on Saturday to move into sole possession of 30th place in the NHL standings.
At the 10-game mark last season, the Flames boasted a 5-4-1 record but were smack in the middle of a seven-game losing streak. They ended that streak at 5-6-2, their only time below .500 all season. And while the lingering memory is the playoff miss, Calgary actually finished out the year at 38-27-17 for a semi-respectable 93 points.
Through 10 games, the Flames were six points behind their season-opening pace from last year before they picked up that win in Seattle — with their highest-scoring game of the year. Something to build off?
Having more than 70 games to play still seems like a lot of runway, but reckonings could be coming for the league's biggest underperformers.
Will we see our first coaching change of the year before U.S. Thanksgiving?
