Ten players to watch as the season winds down

With less than four weeks left in the regular season, which players are under the spotlight as we head down the home stretch?

Well, all of them. That’s kind of how the last few weeks of the season works, after all. If you’re an NHL player and nobody is paying any attention to what you’re doing these days, something has gone horribly wrong somewhere along the way.

But it’s also true that some players get more attention than others. So today, let’s take a look at 10 players from around the league who’ll be under an even brighter spotlight than usual over the season’s final weeks.

Brad Marchand

Marchand has always been a favourite in Boston. But his recent leap from "guy everyone else kind of just wants to see get punched" to legitimate NHL star has been an interesting development. And this year, he seems set on taking another step, joining the discussion as one of the league's best forwards, period.

I'm sure there are some Boston fans who'll claim to have seen this coming. But for the rest of us, Marchand's transformation from talented pest to dominant force has been a surprise. Last year's breakthrough 37-goal season felt like he'd reached his best-case. Then came the World Cup, when he looked every bit like an elite player and scored the winner. But hey, he had Sidney Crosby on his line, right? Let's see him do it for a full season.

Well, here we are. And with Marchand scoring at better than a point-per-game, he's somehow right in the mix for what would have to go down as one of history's most unexpected Art Ross wins. Heck, he might get the Rocket Richard, too. And that even has some especially feisty Bruins fans wanting to know if he's now in the Hart picture.

For now, let's worry about him getting the Bruins to the playoffs. But if he can lead them to home ice or maybe even the division title, who knows what comes next. We might be one strong finish away from seeing a very punchable face show up all over the annual NHL awards show.

Devan Dubnyk

We could fill this entire list to starting goaltenders, since no position comes under more scrutiny down the stretch. But we'll resist that urge, and limit ourselves to just Dubnyk, because he's shaping up to be an especially interesting case.

Call this one the tragedy of high expectations. Through the first half of the season, the Wild goaltender was running away with the Vezina, posting a .941 save percentage through the end of December. That put him on pace to challenge Tim Thomas's all-time record for goalies with at least 40 starts, which was set in 2010–11 and stands at .938.

But since then, Dubnyk has looked human. The Wild have lost each of his last four starts, and when we last saw him, he was getting pulled after allowing two goals on two shots in a key showdown against the Blackhawks.

To be clear, it's not like Dubnyk's numbers have plummeted. He's posted a .914 save percentage so far in March, which is only slightly down from the .917 he had in both January and February. Numbers like that, over the course of a full season, would be good enough to rank in the league's top dozen or so goaltenders. It would be above-average work.

But "above average" feels like a slump when you've set the bar as high as Dubnyk did in the season's first three months. And it changes the look of a team like the Wild, who'd emerged as the favourite in the Western Conference based largely on having some of the league's very best goaltending.

Maybe they still do. But if Dubnyk continues to look like he's merely very good instead of historically excellent, that changes the mix in the West, where the Blackhawks have already pulled ahead of the Wild for the top seed and the Sharks are right behind. That's a lot to put on one guy; probably too much, if we're being realistic. But since when have hockey fans ever been that?

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Are the 2016-17 Avalanche the worst team of the cap era?

The Colorado Avalanche are the worst.

That's not a controversial statement. It's not even an insult, really. It's just a statement of fact. This year's Avalanche wrapped up the title of the league's worst team sometime around December, and they cemented that status over the weekend by being the first team eliminated from the playoffs. On Monday, they faced the league's other worst team, and lost to the Coyotes 1-0 in what may have been the saddest game of the season.

But just how bad are the Avalanche? They're not really in the "worst team ever" discussion; in this age of parity, we'll almost certainly never see a team anywhere near as bad as the 1974-75 Capitals, 1991-92 Sharks or 1992-93 Senators.

But what about the salary cap era, dating back to the end of the 2005 lockout? That's a tougher call. You could make a case on either side of that one, so let's break it down five ways to see where we end up.
 

1. The wins and losses

That's what matters, right? The NHL is all about whether you win or lose. Well, that and how often you lose but it's close so you still get credit for half a win for reasons nobody fully understands. But yeah… wins and losses.

Right now, the Avalanche are sitting at 19-46-3 for 41 points through 68 games. That's good for a points percentage of just .301, which ranks dead last among all teams in the cap era. It's not even all that close; the next worse team is the 2013-14 Sabres, at .317, followed by the 2014-15 Sabres (.329) that same year's Coyotes (.341), and the 2006-07 Flyers (also .341).

That's bad.

In fact, it may be even worse than it looks. Generally speaking, bad teams tend to get worse as the season goes on. That's partly because they have nothing to play for, and partly because they typically ship veterans out at the deadline and ice a weaker lineup down the stretch. The Avalanche didn't do much of that for some reason, but it would seem optimistic to expect them to suddenly hit their stride now that they're already the laughingstock of the league.

What's worse, the schedule won't do them any favors. They face the Red Wings in back-to-back games this week – remember when that was a rivalry? – then close the season with 11 of 12 against playoff teams. They'll see a lot of backup goalies over that stretch, and it would only take a handful of unexpected wins to nudge them out of 360^th spot in the cap era standings, but right now it isn't looking good.

Verdict: Score this one solidly in the "Avalanche are the worst" column.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

NHL stock watch: March

With one month to go in the regular schedule, it’s time for another portfolio check as we take a look around the league to see which stocks are rising and which are falling.

We’ve been doing this every month since the season started, and it’s helped us identify some trends along the way. Some of those have stuck around, like the league-wide youth movement and the rise of Canadian teams. Others faded quickly, like when it seemed like a safe year to be an NHL coach. The markets are volatile; invest at your own risk.

Here’s who things are looking as we head down the home stretch.

Stock falling: The Western Conference playoff race

So, uh, about all that parity...

You remember that, right? This time last month, we were living in a world where 28 out of 30 NHL teams had at least some shot at a playoff spot. There were even some worries that all that parity would torpedo the trade deadline, since nobody other than Avalanche and Coyotes would be selling. Everyone else was still right in the thick of it.

And that wasn't all hyperbole – as late as the second week of February, everyone outside of Arizona and Colorado was no more than eight points out of a playoff spot, with enough time left to make up some distance with a hot streak or two.

Fast forward to today, though, and the season of parity turned into the season of reality real quick. Heading into action tonight, only two teams in the East are within five points of that last spot. And that's a traffic jam compared to the West, where only two teams are fighting over the final spot, and that fight may already be over.

Those two are the Blues and Kings, a pair of teams that both came into the season as Stanley Cup hopefuls. So there will be some drama watching them duke it out for one spot, knowing that missing the playoffs will spell disaster for the loser. But after last night's Blues win in Los Angeles, the Kings are five points back and in big trouble.

Unless somebody like the Flyers or Panthers can make a late push, we're left with 19 teams still in the mix with a month to go. And in both conferences, plenty of teams don't have anything to worry about beyond matchups.

Luckily, some of those matchups might be pretty good...

Stock rising: Rivalry matchups

It's too early to think about first-round matchups. Every year, we get excited about two teams that seem to be on a collision course, only to have it all fall apart on the final weekend.

So we won't go too far down this particular path when there's still a month to go. (Check back in a few weeks for a full roundup.) That said, there are some potential matchups in play that we haven't seen in a long time, and it's hard not to get at least a little bit excited about the possibilities.

Take the Atlantic, where the Senators, Canadiens and Bruins are holding down the top three spots. That means two of those teams would face each other, giving us a good shot at something like a classic Montreal/Boston matchup or a more recent rivalry like Montreal/Ottawa. We could also get the Sens and Bruins, which has never happened before and would give us our first look at Zdeno Chara facing his old team in the post-season.

But as interesting as those matchups could be, things get a lot more fun if the Maple Leafs can make up some ground and crash the party. The Leafs and Bruins have some recent playoff history, as you may have heard. But we haven't had a Battle of Ontario matchup since 2004, the last of four meetings in five years. And while the Leafs and Habs have met 13 times over their history, we somehow haven't seen them pair off since 1979.

There's a similar – and maybe even better – situation shaping up out west. The Flames' recent win steak moved them out of the wild-card bubble and into second spot in the Pacific. That means they could end up facing the Oilers, reigniting a Battle of Alberta that's been dormant for 26 years, at least as far as the post-season is concerned. The Flames and Oilers faced each other five times in nine years beginning in 1983, with the winner going to the Cup final in four of those. But after 1991, nothing. This could be the year that changes, and don't think fans in Alberta haven't already noticed.

Mix in a shot at some classic old-school rivalries like Blues/Blackhawks and Islanders/Capitals along with some relatively recent ones like Ducks/Sharks, and this year's playoffs could be shaping up as a rivalry showcase. Let's enjoy that possibility now, before some random Predators or Lightning game on the final weekend ruins everything.

>> Read the full post at Sportnet

Weekend wrap: You can't touch a Flame when it's red hot

Welcome to the home stretch.

We’re officially four weeks away from the NHL regular season being over. Four weeks from now, we’ll be spending Monday morning digesting an unusually busy weekend featuring 24 games packed into Saturday and Sunday. We’ll know who’s in and who’s out, and who’ll be playing who. A season’s worth of speculation, second-guessing and (in some cases) self-delusion will be over with, and 14 teams will be clearing out their lockers.

Now, we just have to get there. There's still a lot to sort out between now and then.

One welcomed factor: The Games Played column has finally evened out. With the exception of the Hurricanes, who are a non-factor at this point, every team is within two games played of everyone else. We're all done with bye weeks too, so those days of "they're six points back but have five games in hand" are mercifully over.

The race for the final playoff spots in either conference will get most of the attention, although it's not shaping up to be quite as wide a field as we thought we'd be getting. There are currently only three teams sitting outside of a playoff spot by five points or fewer; the West is especially sparse, with only the Kings so much as within eight. That could still give us some decent races down to the wire, but it's an odd sight given that it was only a few weeks ago that almost everyone was still in it, or at least close enough to pretend they were.

It looks like we will get some decent battles for the division crowns; first and second spot in three of the four divisions are separated by one point or less. The race for the Presidents' Trophy will be a good one as well, with the faltering Capitals still leading the way but a half-dozen teams within range to chase them down. And we all know how much NHL teams care about the Presidents' Trophy, right?

Mix in tight races for the Art Ross and Rocket Richard, add the usual jockeying for Hart, Norris and Calder votes, and factor in battles for seeding and home ice, and there's plenty left to play for at the top of the league. And at the bottom, draft-lottery watchers will be focused on... [double-checks how far back the Avalanche are]... well, there's plenty left to play for at the top of the league.

We've got four weeks to figure it all out. For today, it's on to the power rankings.

Road to the Cup

The five teams that look like they're headed towards Stanley Cup–favourite status.

5. San Jose Sharks (41-20-7, +31 true goals differential*): Three wins in four for the second straight week has them pulling away as the only division leader with any margin for error.

4. Minnesota Wild (43-18-6, +59): They dropped three of four on the week, and have now three times in their last seven after not having done so all season.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Grab Bag: But the expansion draft

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Debating the expansion draft, i.e. the excuse for everything you team does
- Josh Ho-Sang's controversial number has everyone preemptively angry about... something.
- An obscure player who did not host a late night talk show
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a YouTube section tribute to legendary Kings' broadcast Bob Miller

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports