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The month of August has always been a dreadfully silent month in terms of hockey news. Like, to the point where I question what I’m even doing when I open my laptop in search of something new. (At one point, I swear to you that I saw a tumbleweed blow across the NHL.com homepage.) That’s why I’ve decided to try something semi-new, and make August a reader-request month of sorts. If it’s about the Bruins, hockey, or the NHL, and you wanna read it-- tweet it at me (@_TyAnderson), email me (
[email protected]), send a private message, or comment it in the boards of a blog.
Today’s blog comes courtesy of Twitter user @Skirby01, who asks who will soar and plummet this year?
Well, when we’re talking about risers, the easiest bet in the National Hockey League has to be the Buffalo Sabres. The Era of the Tank is over, and Massachusetts’ own
Jack Eichel is in town. Worth it? Ask a Sabres fan and they’ll probably tell you that it was. (But having to watch a full year of
Andrej Meszaros forget that he plays hockey for a living is something I wish on no human.)
But reason for optimism in Buffalo goes beyond Eichel’s arrival.
At the trade deadline, the Sabres acquired
Evander Kane and Zach Bogosian from the Winnipeg Jets in exchange for Tyler Myers plus. They hired
Dan Bylsma to be the man behind the bench. At the Draft, they acquired goaltender
Robin Lehner from the Senators, and forward
Ryan O’Reilly from the Avalanche. GM Tim Murray made moves (and then some).
It was the acceleration that the Buffalo rebuild needed for a hockey-rabid city. And what you have in Buffalo now is a core that you can legitimately build around. Eichel will project as your No. 1 center of tomorrow. O’Reilly is a fantastic No. 2 center option. Tyler Ennis can/will be in a role that suits his ceiling more. Kane is a bona fide high-end scoring winger, and the Sabres’ younger pieces (Zemgus Girgensons, Rasmus Ristolainen) will still find ice time needed to contribute and develop in the now, too.
I know it’s stupidly easy to project this Sabres team to eclipse last year’s horrific 23-win, 54-point total, but dare I say that this group could even make a semi-legitimate run at a wild card spot in the East? Obviously, going from the worst in the East to the playoffs is a leap few have made, but given the uncertainty in the Atlantic Division, is it really impossible to imagine? Of course not.
But if you want to challenge me and tell me to pick another team I could see making a huge leap, I’ll take the Dallas Stars. How huge of a leap can a team that finished with 92 points -- just seven points out of the postseason -- truly make, you might ask? Well, they’ve added goalie
Antti Niemi, and two key members of the 2015 Stanley Cup champion Chicago squad in Johnny Oduya and Patrick Sharp. Those experienced assets, along with the continued development of a guy like John Klingberg (who I thought was just awesome when watching Dallas games last year), and formidable one-two punch of Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin could make the Central the Stars’ for the taking.
Now for the sad trombone portion of the blog…
If there’s one team I think could plummet -- and I know that’s a harsh way to put it -- this upcoming season, I’d pick the Montreal Canadiens. That’s not to suggest that the Habs are a bad team. It’s just that they put up a 110-point season on the shoulders of an all-world, MVP-caliber season from goaltender
Carey Price. And Price, for my money, is the best goalie in this league. That remains a fact. But as we’ve learned, it’s incredibly difficult for goaltenders to stay on otherworldly level for two straight 82-game runs. If you take Price off the Canadiens, they’re an average-at-best club. This is almost universally accepted, even in Montreal. You can say that about a lot of clubs, yes, but Montreal especially. I’ve always found an incredible disconnect between the Montreal
skaters and their coach, too. And this team simply doesn’t score as much as they need to. What’d they do to address that? They acquired
Zack Kassian from the Canucks and signed
Alexander Semin.
Kassian scored 10 goals in 42 games last year while Semin scored six in 57 games for Carolina.
The Habs did not acquire Kassian to score goals (at least one would assume they did not), and Semin is a worthwhile reclamation project for
Marc Bergevin’s squad. But I don’t think that much has changed in Montreal when it comes to solving their issues. They needed another high-end scorer to complement somebody like Max Pacioretty, and I don’t think that they got it. They will still need to find a way to win close games and low-scoring affairs, and while I’d almost always take Price as my goaltender in those situations, an offensively charged up East could make life rough for Montreal.
(That said, I think they’re still a playoff team. Just not a 110-point one.)
In the West, I’ll take Vancouver. Their big summertime acquisition?
Matt Bartkowski. Their other big move? Trading
Nick Bonino to Pittsburgh for
Brandon Sutter? Factor that in with an aging core and cap problems and I really don’t see how this team makes the postseason in a Pacific Division complete with re-toolings or load-ups from just about everybody else.
Ty Anderson has been covering the Boston Bruins for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, is a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • 
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