The Penguins are still confusing, the Jets might be done, and let’s find the season’s most mediocre team

The nature of this column is that we spend a lot of time talking about the very best and very worst teams. Maybe too much time, honestly, since there are only so many ways you can write “The Avalanche are good” or “The Sabres are the Sabres” each week. We trying to use the “not ranked” slot to bounce around the league and make sure everyone gets a mention, but the teams that are thoroughly mid tend to be mostly ignored. Except for this week.

(Did you like the way I slipped in the term “mid” there? I learned it from my teenager. Apparently it’s how the kids talk about something that’s middling or mediocre. I’m told that it’s better than being cringe, but not as good as being lit. I have no idea whether it’s better or worse than being poggers, but I promise you that I’m on the case.)

Anyway, this is the week that we’re going to figure out which team has been the most mediocre, something we try every year around this time. As always, we’ll start with our top and bottom five lists, or rather, with the teams that haven’t shown up in either yet.

This year, that’s 10 teams, but a few of them don’t really work as candidates. The Rangers haven’t been in the top five yet, for example, but they’re clearly a very good team. The Bruins and Leafs haven’t shown up yet either, but they’re not in the running here. On the other end, I haven’t had the guts to put the Islanders in the bottom five, but they’re closer to that group than to the mushy middle.

That leaves us with six real candidates among the no-list brigade. The Kings, Stars and Predators have all given off some pretty mediocre vibes at times, but all three teams are good enough for the playoff hunt and solidly winning records, so I don’t think they work. The Sharks and Red Wings seem like better fits, hovering right around .500, but they’ve lost far more than they’ve won and their goal differential suggests that they’re bad.

The best contender among teams who haven’t been on either list is probably the Jets. They’ve lost a few more than they’ve won but are over fake .500 thanks to a league-leading ten loser points, and the goals differential is close to even. But can you really be the league’s most mediocre team if you were so bad at one point that your own coach had to quit midway through the season? I’m not convinced you can be.

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Checking in on that super-easy prediction contest, in which several hundred of you are already out

One the even of the 2020-2021, I had an idea for a prediction contest. I admittedly didn’t put a ton of thought into it, but I liked the concept and thought it could be fun, so I threw together a call for entries. About 900 readers obliged, answering my eight “easy” questions about what would happen during that shortened season with as many or as few answers as they wanted. In the end, only one of those 900 entries was perfect, and it didn’t score well enough to win.

In other words, this thing was harder than it looked. So of course, the sequel had to be even tougher. This year’s version had ten questions, including one fiendish but optional bonus. Then again, we now had a proof-of-concept from year one that could guide your strategy, so maybe this would be no problem at all.

Halfway into the season, how’s everybody doing? Let’s take a look and see.

The short answer is that it’s a bit of a mixed bag, which is probably to be expected given how many entries we have to wade through. There are 1,554 of them, to be precise. (And thanks to readers Mike and William, I now have some tools to help me parse all the entries rather than doing it by hand.) As with last year, there are a few questions that look like they’ll be easy pickings and a few others that are causing big problems. The key is whether you could figure out which were which.

A quick reminder of the rules: You got ten simple and straightforward questions like “Name a GM who’ll definitely keep his job” or “Name a team that definitely won’t make the playoffs”, and you had to give at least one or as many as five answers. You get more points the more answers you give, but even one wrong answer gets you a zero for the question, so you had to balance the risk and reward when deciding how far to go.

This year’s edition of the contest can be found here, and you can search for your entry in Mike’s database here. Let’s run through the questions and see how it’s going.

1. Name up to five teams that will make the playoffs this year.

2. Name up to five teams that will not make the playoffs this year.

Simple enough, and last year both of these questions ended up being easy money, with only the Flyers tripping up more than a handful of entries. Otherwise, the teams that everyone knew would make the playoffs – like the Avalanche, Lightning, Golden Knights – cruised to their spots, and the consensus bad teams – like the Sabres, Senators, and Red Wings – all missed by a mile. Basically, you should have had a ton of points in the bank after these two questions, and if you didn’t then you were probably already out of the running.

That led to an obvious strategy for this year’s contest: Load up on with max answers on the first two questions. So how’s that working out?

Not great! This year’s standings have thrown some curveballs at us, and a whole lot of you are going to swing and miss. The big killer here is the Islanders, who showed up on about 900 entries as a sure-thing playoff team. They’re not mathematically eliminated yet (nobody is), but barring a miracle the majority of entries will be taking a zero on Question 1. And if you did dodge the Islanders, you still may not be out of the woods yet, as about 400 entries picked the Oilers and 140 had the Jets.

It could get even worse on Question 2, although the outlook here is better than it was looking a month ago. A whopping 1,200 entries had the Ducks as a team that wouldn’t make the playoffs, and they’ve been holding down a spot for most of the season. They’re fading now, but still in the race, so there will be some nervous eyes on Anaheim. If they can’t make a comeback then this question should be relatively safe, aside from a few dozen of you who had the Kings or Rangers on your list.

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The Athletic Hockey Show: When a win is not a win

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Where should fans stand with Alexander Ovechkin now?
- The Hawks have a new/old GM
- The Leafs are bad now
- A rant about how hockey fans are conditioned to think about 10-7 wins
- Jesse Granger on some trade deadline odds
- Plus listener mail, the 1960 Team USA gold and more...

The Athletic Hockey Show runs most days of the week during the season, with Ian and I hosting every Thursday. There are two versions of each episode available:
- An ad-free version for subscribers that you can find here
- An ad-supported version you can get for free wherever you normally find your podcasts (like Apple or Spotify)

Puck Soup: Russian to judgment

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- The hockey world reacts to war in Ukraine
- How should we view Alexander Ovechkin now?
- The Hawks finally pick a new GM, and it's just their old GM
- Whether Chicago should rebuild, and if the Canucks will join them
- Reacting to that 10-7 Leafs game
- The outdoor game in Nashville
- The MLB lockout sure feels familiar
- And more...

>> Stream it now:

>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.

>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.

Every ten-game win streak of the cap era, ranked from least to most fake

Last week, the Calgary Flames lost a game to the Vancouver Canucks. That wouldn’t usually feel all that newsworthy. But this time it did, because the loss snapped the Flames’ ten-game winning streak.

Those streaks are rare, although not as rare as you might think. There have been three this year – the Flames, plus the Penguins and Avalanche. There’s been at least one win streak of ten games or longer in every season of the cap era, with the exception of 2014-2015. In all, the list of 10+ win streaks in NHL history sits at 59, with the cap (and shootout) era accounting for 33 of them.

And let’s just say they’re not all created equal.

That’s the thing about long win streaks. Sometimes, they’re an absolute show of force by a truly superior team exerting its dominance over an outclassed league for weeks on end. And sometimes, if we’re being completely honest, it’s just a mediocre team (or worse) that goes on a fluke run. A goalie gets hot, the bounces all go one way, and next thing you know a team looks unbeatable. But it doesn’t last, and by the end of the season you’re left wondering how these scrubs managed to string together that many wins.

Today, we’re going to rank all 30 cap-era streaks from past seasons, going from the least to the most fake. (Sorry, Flames, Pens and Avs fans, we won’t know how this year’s streaks rank until a few months from now.) There’s no set criteria, but basically we’re using the power of hindsight to see which teams that ran off a long win streak turned out to be worthy, and which ones didn’t quite.

Every long win streak in our current era is at least a little fake because of runaway parity and at least a little real because wins are still wins, but that doesn’t mean some can’t turn out to be more real than others. Let’s do this, starting with the teams that won a lot of games because they were actually good…

#30 and #29 (tie): Tampa Bay Lightning and Tampa Bay Lightning, 2019-20

The team: While it may be hard to remember now, the Lightning struggled through the first two months of the season. Coming off their shocking loss in the first round in 2019, they won just 17 of their first 34 games in 2019-20.

The streak: The Lightning kicked off what would become a 10-game win streak on December 23; the stretch ran through January 11. They took a quick break to remember what losing felt like, didn’t like it, and then won 11 straight from January 29 through February 17.

But then: After the COVID pause, they came back in the bubble and won the Stanley Cup.

Fake factor: Two streaks in the same season that ends in a championship is about as un-fake as they come.

#28. Chicago Blackhawks, 2012-13

The team: Coming out of the lockout, the Blackhawks started the year 10-0-3. Then they somehow got better.

The streak: From February 15 through March 6, the Hawks won 11 straight, running their points streak to 24 games.

But then: When they lost 6-2 to the Avalanche on March 8, it was their first regulation loss in a regular season game in almost a full calendar year. Then they went out and won the Stanley Cup.

Fake factor: Everything about a lockout season is a tiny bit fake, but this team was unstoppable.

#27. St. Louis Blues, 2018-19

The team: Halfway through the season, they were in dead last in the league. You may have heard the rest of the story.

The streak: From January 23 to February 19, the Blues ran off 11 straight wins. At one point they also had three straight shutouts, just to show off.

But then: They slowed up a bit down the stretch, including losing five of seven at one point. But I hear that the playoffs went pretty well.

Fake factor: This is the streak that every mediocre team dreams of – the one that sure seems fake at the time, but turns out to be a legitimate Cup contender in hiding, revealing itself to the world.

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