Grab bag: I have no idea what the Spengler Cup is

In this week's grab bag:
- The three comedy stars, which just ends up being an excuse to make terrible Buffalo Sabres rap puns;
- An obscure player whose name was fun to say;
- I admit that I have no idea what the Spengler Cup is;
- The most depressing CapGeek page possible;
- And a YouTube breakdown of the Punch-up in Piestany.

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A midway mark look back at my preseason predictions

The NHL season hits the midway point this week, with most teams crossing the 41-game mark. The season’s first half has provided the usual mix of predictable outcomes, mild surprises, and outright shockers.

I wrote a series of season previews in September, and because of my editors’ unfortunate refusal to delete everything the day after the season started like I asked them to, all my predictions are still there. If you’re in a hurry, feel free to trust me when I tell you that I got everything right. You can go ahead and stop reading now.

If you’re not in a hurry, or you’re not in an especially trusting mood, then a more thorough review might be in order. So let’s take a look back at those preseason predictions and see if we can figure out, halfway into the season, how well I did.

The Bottom-Feeder Division

We led off with this group with seven teams that had virtually no chance of winning anything beyond the first overall pick. Sure, a few would probably get lucky and overachieve, but it’s not like one of them would suddenly become one of the best teams in the league, right?

Teams I was mostly right about: Buffalo Sabres, Carolina Hurricanes, Arizona Coyotes

I thought the Sabres and Hurricanes would be terrible, and they have been. Here’s the list of other experts who got that call right: everyone. Literally everyone knew Buffalo and Carolina would be awful. I award myself zero points.

The Coyotes pick was a little more controversial. They were coming off an 89-point season in which they’d missed the playoffs by just two points, and more than a few fans had them pegged for a wild-card spot. The two big concerns were (1) whether they could score, having lost Mike Ribeiro and Radim Vrbata off a team that was already below-average offensively, and (2) whether goaltender Mike Smith could steal enough games to keep them in the race.

So far, it’s been a resounding “no” to both questions. The Coyotes have scored fewer goals than any Western team besides Edmonton, and Smith has been absolutely awful. That’s added up to the Coyotes sporting one of the worst goal differentials in the league, dropping them completely out of the playoff hunt by midseason.

Teams I was maybe wrong about: Calgary Flames, Winnipeg Jets, Florida Panthers

All three teams are hovering around the wild-card race, so each has overachieved based on expectations. It’s unlikely they’ll all stay there, though. The Flames were a great feel-good story in the first quarter, but their underlying numbers are terrible and they’ve already started dropping down the standings after competing for the division lead early on. They’ve banked enough points to stay out of the race for last place, but they should finish the year closer to the bottom five than to a playoff spot.

On the other hand, the Jets and Panthers could be for real. Winnipeg has weathered a series of injuries that should have torpedoed its season, and the emergence of Michael Hutchinson has bought it insurance against the inevitable Ondrej Pavelec slide. And then there are the Panthers, who can’t score but are riding a strong season from Roberto Luongo and sneaky good possession numbers to stay in the Eastern Conference race.

Team I was super-wrong about: Nashville Predators

All the signs were there. The Predators hadn’t exactly been awful in 2013-14, putting up a respectable 88 points. They’d spent the offseason adding offense, like former 40-goal man James Neal. They still had Shea Weber. And they were getting back a healthy Pekka Rinne after missing him for most of the season. As long as Rinne could get back to his old ways, a playoff spot seemed like a possibility.

I wasn’t sold on Rinne’s hip holding up, but he’s been fantastic. And while Neal has been just OK, rookie Filip Forsberg’s emergence has helped boost the offense. It’s all been enough for the Predators to challenge for the Central title, and while we’ve all been waiting for some sort of regression — they lead the league in PDO — it just hasn’t happened yet.

Quote that makes me look smart: “The Panthers are better than most expect, hanging tough in the playoff race right up until the 75-game mark, at which point they’re considerate enough to step aside and let the good teams duke it out.” The second half of the prediction hasn’t happened yet, but at least I kind of saw Florida’s strong first half coming.

Quote I would like to have back: “Once again, the Flames battle a fellow Canadian team for last place in the West. But this time it’s not the Oilers. It’s these next guys.” (That would be the Jets. Ouch. And yes, we’ll get to my thoughts on the Oilers further down.)

Three predictions for the rest of the way: The Predators slip to third in the Central, but still challenge the 100-point mark. The Flames and Jets miss the playoffs. The Panthers sneak into the East’s final wild-card spot.

The Middle-of-the-Pack Division

Next up were the teams that figured to end up stuck in the middle — not quite good enough to contend, but not quite bad enough to bottom out for a high pick.

Teams I was mostly right about: Detroit Red Wings, Washington Capitals, Vancouver Canucks, New York Islanders

“Middle of the pack” can mean a lot of things, but if we’re looking at teams that fall into the 4 to 6 range in their conference, these teams all qualify. The Canucks looked like a legitimate contender earlier in the year before falling back, and the Wings could still make a push for the top of the Atlantic. I’m not sold on the Capitals hanging on to their playoff spot, but they’ve been better than last year and should at least stay in the mix.

And then there are the Islanders. I liked them a lot, figuring they had fixed their goaltending and had the offensive talent to make up for a weak blue line. I thought I was in danger of pushing the optimism angle too far, but in hindsight I may actually have sold the Isles short. They’ve been neck-and-neck with the Penguins for the top spot in the Metro, and the underlying numbers say it’s no fluke. This is a good team that’s absolutely capable of a deep playoff run.

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Five thoughts on the WJC

I realize many sports fans don’t understand hockey’s World Junior Championship. There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of most of the players. Depending on your level of fandom, it’s possible you’ve never heard of any of the players. It’s a single-elimination tournament in a sport that really needs long series to get any kind of fair outcome, so the odds of the whole thing being won by the legitimately best team are marginal. The very best players in the age group, the ones you’d really want to see in this kind of event, are almost all missing because they’re already in the big leagues. And, of course, these are just kids, so the level of play isn’t exactly pro level, and there are some brutal mismatches.

You know what that sounds a lot like to me? March Madness! You like March Madness, right? Good. Think of the WJC as hockey’s version of March Madness, except instead of everyone’s rooting interests being driven by some tenuous former ties to some school and/or gambling, it’s based on strident nationalism.

You’re onboard with that, right, America? I knew you would be. Here’s the bad news: Team USA went home early, and we’ll get to that in a few sections. But we still wound up with a pretty decent matchup for last night’s gold-medal game, so let’s start there as we run down five key thoughts from the last two weeks of teenage spirit.

1. We got a big rivalry game for the gold …

Canada vs. Russia was international hockey’s original rivalry — the two nations were trying to pulverize each other years before the Miracle on Ice — and it has provided some of the sport’s most memorable moments in the decades since. That’s especially true at the WJC, where Canada and Russia have met for the gold eight times since 1999 (not to mention this infamous debacle back in the Soviet Union days.)

So last night’s gold-medal matchup between Canada and Russia was a worthy one. And it delivered on what we’ve come to expect between the two teams: bad blood, plenty of skill, and an almost unbearably dramatic game.

That last bit seemed like it would get the night off midway through the second period. After Canada jumped out to an early 2-0 lead just a few minutes into the game, Russia fought back to even the flow of play and closed the gap to 2-1 by the end of the first. But Canada took a 5-1 lead on second-period goals by Sam Reinhart, Connor McDavid — more on him in a moment — and Max Domi, shifting the game firmly into blowout territory.

Apparently somebody forgot to translate that memo into Russian, because the visitors stormed back with three goals in a four-minute span to close the gap to 5-4 by the end of the second. It was an admirable comeback from the Russians, and the first real adversity Canada had faced in the tournament. It also brought back memories of the 2011 gold-medal game in Buffalo, played exactly four years ago. That was the final that saw Russia storm back from a 3-0 third-period deficit with five unanswered goals, a loss that still stings Canadian hockey fans.

There’d be no third-period collapse this year, or any third-period goals for that matter. The teams played a furious period with plenty of chances, but Canada held on for the 5-4 win to take home the gold, the country’s first in six years. It was an enormously entertaining game, if you can ignore that anyone with a rooting interest hated every second of it, and put a nice exclamation point on a fun tournament.

2. … but we didn’t get the big rivalry game

While Canada and Russia will always be the old favorite, there’s no better international hockey rivalry right now than Canada vs. Team USA. And that’s especially true at the junior level, where the American program has very nearly caught up with its northern neighbors, winning gold in 2010 and 2013. Games between the two countries tend to be emotional affairs, as the two sides don’t seem to like each other very much.

We did get a Canada/USA matchup to close out the round-robin, with Team Canada earning an entertaining 5-3 win on New Year’s Eve. But there would be no rematch in the elimination round, with the Americans dropping a 3-2 decision to the Russians after drawing a tough matchup in the quarterfinals. That loss sent Team USA home without a medal for the second straight year.

So has the American development program taken a step back? Hardly. While it’s always disappointing to go home empty-handed, the WJC format basically ensures that at least one top team will be out early. That American loss to Canada dropped them down to second place in their group and led to a tough matchup with the Russians, and an undisciplined effort combined with running into a hot goaltender spelled doom.

The loss hurts, but in the big picture the Americans are on the right track. They came into this year’s tournament as one of the favorites and will head into next year’s event the same way. Other than Canada, no nation is producing as much high-end offensive talent as the Americans are these days. Assuming they don’t panic based on a few years of tough matchups and bad luck, they’ll be just fine.

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Weekend wrap: It's getting ugly for two Western contenders

A look back at the biggest games and emerging story lines of the NHL weekend.

Theme of the Week: Western Blowouts Could Signal Change

Three teams have fired their coaches this season: Ottawa, Edmonton, and last week’s bizarre mess in New Jersey. With a pair of struggling Western teams suffering embarrassing blowout losses over the weekend, that number could be on the verge of rising.

In San Jose, Todd McLellan didn’t sound like a guy with any answers after Saturday’s 7-2 loss to the Blues. The Sharks coach is probably used to this by now, since he’s been on the hot seat for years, and everyone assumes he’ll be fired if the team can’t make a deep playoff run. But right now that may not be an issue, because the team is struggling just to earn a playoff berth, sitting tied with the Flames for the last wild-card spot. All signs point to the Flames falling out of contention, but the suddenly surging Stars are just three points back and probably pose the bigger threat.

And then there’s the team right behind the Stars, the Minnesota Wild. They took a 7-1 beating from Dallas on Saturday in a game in which Wild goalie Darcy Kuemper was pulled yet again. That’s a tough loss for a team that seemed to be rounding back into shape following a five-game December losing streak, and it left the Wild five back of a playoff spot with three teams to pass. That’s just not good enough for an organization that’s spent heavily in hopes of building a Stanley Cup contender, and at some point somebody will likely have to take the fall.

That could end up being coach Mike Yeo, even though it’s hard to put too much blame on him. The Wild are one of the league’s better possession teams, but they’ve been let down by their goaltending. Niklas Backstrom has struggled, and Kuemper’s play has plummeted after a hot start. That’s hardly Yeo’s fault, although coaches’ reputations tend to live and die with the goaltenders. It’s also worth remembering that Yeo was very much on the hot seat this time last year before eventually guiding the team to a playoff spot and a first-round upset of the top-seeded Avalanche. But the Wild are one more bad stretch away from being eliminated from playoff contention, so fair or not, Yeo will be under a microscope for the rest of the year.

If there’s one piece of good news for the Sharks and Wild, it’s that at least one of them will be getting back into the win column soon. The two teams face each other tomorrow night in Minnesota.

Cup Watch: The League’s Five Best

The five teams that seem most likely to earn the league’s top prize: the Stanley Cup.

5. St. Louis Blues (23-13-3, plus-19 goals differential): After spanking San Jose, they look well-positioned to bank some points this week. Their next four games are against the Coyotes, Sharks again, Hurricanes, and Oilers.

4. Pittsburgh Penguins (24-10-5, plus-24): At this point, I still like them just a bit better than the Islanders, even though New York has temporarily snuck back into a tie for first place in the Metro.

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Grab bag: The Doug Gilmour trade

In this week's grab bag:
- Three comedy stars, plus one who'll live in your nightmares forever
- Everyone's mad at the NHL for screwing up the new puck-hits-netting review rule. But everyone is wrong.
- An obscure player who was the league's first outdoor hero
- Checking in on Don Cherry, who is under a lot of pressure
- And a YouTube breakdown of a time long ago when NHL GMs actually made real blockbuster trades...

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