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Teams Suffering Slow Starts May Already Be Cooked

October 24, 2017, 9:12 AM ET [24 Comments]
Jay Greenberg
Blogger •NHL Hall of Fame writer • RSSArchiveCONTACT
There was a time when a team could ease into an NHL season. No matter how badly you started, Peter Ing was in goal for the Leafs, so somebody would be worse.

Life was simpler, unhurried. The Canucks’ best player was Moe Lemay. Only five of 21 teams missed the playoffs and one of them was certain to be the Red Wings. You could show up for camp 15 pounds overweight and relax with a couple of cigarettes between every period. By Christmas, the panicked coach would be gone and Roger Neilson would take over and figure something out.

The injury-ravaged 1979-80 Islanders started 7-12-4, didn’t get over .500 until January 15, and won the Stanley Cup. With Mario Lemieux out with a bad back, the 1990-91 Penguins were 12-16-3 on December 7. But it was still football season, so not to worry, not as long as Ulf Samuelsson was still on the market. When the champagne was good and cold, the Pens drank it.

In 1987, the Flyers were just one narrow Game Seven outcome away from spraying each other with champagne. For their heartbreak, they earned a 6-13-3 hangover to start the next season but still made the playoffs with three points to spare.

The system to get in was foolproof. When the Flames or Bruins or any team that used to be good went bad, the league would create new clubs that were worse. In a masterstroke, the NHL put one in Columbus, Ohio, where it missed the playoffs 13 of 15 years and nobody complained.

But the scheme ultimately has backfired. These expansion teams grew up. Columbus is one of the best clubs today. And another of the newbies born into an indifferent place– Atlanta–moved to Canada, where hysteria sets in at 0-2.

When 14 teams, almost all of them better than those 1982-83 Devils, started missing the playoffs every year, the NHL for 2017-18 went back to the tried-and-true method of adding a franchise. That club has started 6-1, not what Colorado, which has made the playoffs once in eight years, voted for.

Since 2005, losers can get a point, and teams chasing can fall farther behind by three on any given night. So it’s uphill as soon as you lose your opener.

From Montreal, where hockey is everything; to Phoenix, where 21 years in the desert is fast going on 40 while waiting for John Chayka to bring down tablets with the Ten Analytics; to Madison Square Garden, where the next patient building plan in the 91-year history of the Rangers will be the first, to Buffalo, still waiting to cheer after two finals in 47 seasons, the panic is already palpable.

The Sabres have spent the last six non-playoff seasons trying to build it right, but through four coaching and three GM changes, something appears still wrong. A star, Jack Eichel, is in place but there isn’t much scoring on the third and fourth lines, nothing close to a No. 1 defenseman, plus journeyman goaltending. Buffalo has more talent than three years ago, sure, but still not as much as its competition for a playoff spot

The Canadiens, which had a big hole created when Andrei Markov left after 16 years to go home and play in the KHL; thought it was filled with the most dependable free agent defenseman on the market, Karl Alzner. But at 1-6-1, Montreal looks more like the team that finished 2016-17 30-25-8 than the one that started that season 13-1-1.

Captain Max Pacioretty says it is hard for him to lead when he thinks he’s the worst player on the team, never a good sign. Another bad one is Carey Price’s .881 save percentage, because as he goes, Les Habs go, and they are not going anywhere with 4.13 goals against average per game, even if the 1.50 per game they are scoring figures to pick up.

Jonathan Drouin and Alzner, the two big off-season pickups, are leading the team in scoring, so what does that tell you about the rest of GM Marc Bergevin’s creation? Or his longevity, having produced just one conference finalist in his six years running the team. As for Drouin, Mikhail Sergachev, who was traded for him, is off to a good start for the 7-1-1 Lightning and would have looked good for the next 10 years on a Montreal defense short on puck movers, the name of the game in today’s NHL.

Bergevin could fire an accomplished coach, as he did when things inevitably started to backslide a year ago. But you don’t get to do that repeatedly before the owner figures out that you, not the coach, is the problem. Was it 1993 the Canadiens last won the Cup? Or 1893? All the same, to the people of Montreal.

The Coyotes, who have been howling into the wind with a massive youth movement that got them off 1-5 a year ago, seemed to grasp the error of their ways with off-season trades for Derek Stepan and Niklas Hjalmarsson. The former is not a No. 1 center and the latter at best a No. 3 defenseman but with Clayton Keller and Oliver Ekman-Larsson in place, one would think last place would be a thing of the past.

How long is the leash for new coach Rick Tocchet? The length of the lease always is the more pressing question for the wackiest franchise since the Minnesota Fighting Saints. Some years, the Glendale City Council has put up a better fight than the team. Finally, expectations have grown higher. But with an improved start by Colorado and an astonishing one by Vegas, the Coyotes’ hole looks like the Grand Canyon already.

“We have been working hard, haven’t taken any steps backwards,” Stepan said last week. “We just gotta find a way to outscore the other team one time, just to relieve the pressure.

“Honestly it feels like it’s creeping in a little bit. It’s kind of created a monster.”

The Oilers have a monster, Connor McDavid, and still are two goals a game, some of that having to do with the absence of Leon Draisaitl. They are playing responsibly; one would think things will turn sooner, rather than later. But there is a history of teams having a breakthrough season slipping back the following year; sort of a life lesson towards what true contention requires.

The Leafs, out of the gate at 7-2, don’t seem to be feeling that, at least yet, as they continue to score to their heart’s content. But when you are not putting the puck in the net, the tension gets as high as the expectations, no matter how hard a team tries to concentrate on the basics. You have to figure the goals will come, unless, of course, they don’t.

“I thought we did a lot of good things,” said Adam Larsson after a 2-1 loss in Philadelphia on Saturday.

Good things are a lot easier to find than goals when you are trying to make the game fun again. The task is to turn it around before you start turning on each other.

“The bad teams I have played on guys get away from the game plan, don’t give the effort and there’s finger pointing,” said the Rangers Rick Nash. “None of that is happening here.”

What’s really happening in New York is a weak center ice, created by the trading of, ironically, Stepan. A defense not what it was during a stellar 12-year run to 11 playoff positions, three conference finals and a final, this year goes back to play the puck with improved and hungry New Jersey and Philadelphia teams coming hard. At age 35 Henrik Lundqvist will either be the answer or be blamed as the problem, but Alain Vigneault is a good coach, Ryan McDonagh a strong leader and Nash, has had slumps before and always come out of them.

“We’re together on focusing in taking this one step at a time,” Nash says, like responsible Coyotes, Canadiens, Oilers and Sabres also say. And it is true that a good bit of what these teams have to fear is fear itself.

Seasons can be turned around, of course. In 2013-14, a far from great Flyer team made the playoffs in a not-so-easy Metropolitan Division after starting 3-9-3. In 2015-16, they did it again, after winning only six of their first 20 contests.

That noted, the Flyers lost in the first round both times. So did the 1995-96 Flames, who were the only team since 1993-94 to make up a ten-point deficit on November 30, and the 2014-15 Senators, who fell even further back --14 points–on February 9 and got in with a late charge.

Of the clubs (as identified by Bob Waterman of the Elias Sports Bureau) that overcame the odds with great stretch runs, only the 2005-06 Sharks, who were also nine back on November 30, won a playoff round. And they lost the next series.

There is a small history of teams that close with a rush, proving dangerous against a No. One or a No. 2 seed in the first round. But with rare exceptions, when you start badly, April ends badly. After the defending champion Rangers had to go like hell to sneak into the playoffs of the shortened 1995 season, they rolled past higher-seeded Quebec in the first round. The Rangers looked scary again only until they were swept by the upstart Flyers in the second round.

“It’s like you need to have a separation between the regular season and the playoffs,” Mark Messier reflected when it was over, meaning teams need some time and space to recharge mentally from their mad dash to a four-round spring grind.

So while 82 games theoretically leaves a lot of time to erase early problems, the awful start is a lot more than just that; exceptions made when your star is hurt.

Yes, these teams just have to remind themselves to stay calm and keep playing hard and smart. That is the only way out. But understanding that it is a long season most often yields to the reality of exactly that: A long season.
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