Is it too early to judge NHL teams now that we're at the quarter pole of the season? For the Western Conference, the answer to that question is probably "yes." Consider this: at the start of the week, the second seed and the 12th seed were only separated by five points. One short winning streak and any ground looks like it can be made up.
It's not that way out east, where you see a gradual slope when it comes to points earned in the standings. You've got your top teams, your middle teams, your hanger-ons, and your disasters. Out west, it's the Detroit Red Wings on top and a whole jumble of teams not terribly far behind.
So why is this happening? More importantly, what can fans and hockey pundits make of all this?
The problem here is that just about every team has had surging moments that demonstrated the true potential of the roster. And they've also had bouts of inconsistency, bad defense, lack of scoring, or injuries — or perhaps all of the above.
Let's take the Columbus Blue Jackets, the team that everyone got hyped on just about a week ago. Columbus started out the season mediocre, as pretty much no one was scoring and the goaltending was awful. For a good 15 games after, the Blue Jackets' top line came alive and the goaltending duo of Steve Mason and Mathieu Garon wowed the world. And since then, it's been a struggle to both score and to keep the puck out of the net.
Or how about the Los Angeles Kings? The Kings started off like gangbusters, with Jonathan Quick tightening his grip on the starting position over fellow young goaltender Jonathan Bernier. The Kings were winning with balanced scoring, strong goaltending, and solid defense — even without much scoring from star Anze Kopitar. Then they finished the second half of November with only one win.
In fact, the only team to really avoid any bumps in the road so far is the Detroit Red Wings. Just about every other team (sans the last-place Edmonton Oilers) has flipped between looking like contenders and pretenders. Such is life in the Western Conference, when a schizophrenic team can look like world beaters on one night and like roadkill the next.
Does this mean the Western Conference as a whole is weaker than the Eastern Conference? Not necessarily; in fact, if you look at the point totals, combined with the quality of competition, the Western Conference seems to come off better. Perhaps the problem is that every team is a flawed masterpiece with immense strengths and one or two sever weaknesses. When the team plays to those strengths, the team looks like a Stanley Cup contender, and when the weaknesses are exposed, things can get ugly.
In situations like these, the weaknesses usually start to filter teams out of the playoff race by February, and then it's a dogfight between the remaining teams to squeeze into the final playoff spots. The trade deadline is one way to fill obvious holes, and sometimes a surprise rookie can step up when needed most. Also, if the past few years have shown us anything, it's that you don't have to be perfect in the playoffs to win the Stanley Cup — it's arguable that the Chicago Blackhawks had a significant number of problems exposed during each round; they just managed to overcome those through luck or right-place-at-the-right-time hot players.
It is indeed the wild, wild West, where anything can happen. Yes, even the Detroit Red Wings might hit a slump and lose their small lead over the rest of the pack. However, that also proves another theory — once you get in the playoffs, all of this gets erased and we start from zero.
For those sports fans that claim the regular season is meaningless, here's Exhibit A as to why we play the games.
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