There were wins, losses, triumphs, and heartbreaks along the way, but the end of 2019 has finally arrived. With that in mind, here are 19 thoughts on the Atlantic Division as we conclude the decade:
Boston Bruins
1. The Brad Marchand-Patrice Bergeron-David Pastrnak line is absurdly good, and perhaps the best line in the league. The Bruins' forward depth thereafter may not be anything special, but that line alone pushes them into the Cup contender status tier. Per Natural Stat Trick, Marchand is the league leader in five-on-five G/60 among forwards with 500+ minutes of ice, and Pastrnak ranks third. That’s as close to unstoppable as a line can be.
2. They haven’t been particularly good recently, but there’s no reason that the Bruins shouldn’t be able to run away with the Atlantic Division here in the second half of the season. They have a ten-point lead right now, and their schedule difficultly per Power Rankings Guru is not overly daunting. The Toronto Maple Leafs will be happy to avoid the Bruins in the first round.
Toronto Maple Leafs
3. Speaking of those Toronto Maple Leafs - what a difference a coaching change can make! Their signing of Mike Babcock to a historically large coaching contract was always questionable, and the night-and-day change since his firing only serves as evidence of that. Sheldon Keefe has the Leafs playing a brand of hockey that is incredibly entertaining, with his best offensive players being free to go out and create offence. It sounds simple, but it's working.
4. The impact of that coaching change should be examined a little bit further. Consider the following: Per Natural Stat Trick, the Leafs are creating nearly an additional 0.4 goals per 60 minutes of five-on-five action since the coaching change. That’s good enough to rank fourth in the league during that stretch, compared to 15th during Babcock’s 2019-20 tenure. They’ve managed to do that all while slightly improving their expected goals against metric. High-tempo, offence-focused strategies work in today’s NHL. There's no real need to sacrifice offence for defence in the traditional sense.
Tampa Bay Lightning
5. People keep suggesting that Tampa will wake up and go on a run at some point, but there’s no chance of that happening unless Andrei Vasilevskiy picks up his game. He’s been dreadful:
Jacob Markstrom has recorded the fifth best 'goals saved above expectation' this season, among all NHL goaltenders, per @ChartingHockey. pic.twitter.com/pfYknBGKiz
— Thomas Drance (@ThomasDrance) December 31, 2019
6. Is Steven Stamkos the quietest career point-per-game player around? Per Quant Hockey, among players with at least 500 career points, only 55 are point-per-game players in league history; six of them are active, and one of those active players is Steven Stamkos. He doesn’t get the headlines that some of the league’s other superstars generate - simply by virtue of the team strength around him - but he’s been every bit as good and valuable. Having recently notched his 800th career point, Stamkos is showing no signs of slowing down.
Florida Panthers
7. Go back and look at the goals saved above expectation chart. Who sits right next to Andrei Vasilevskiy? Florida’s seven-year, $70M investment. Yikes.
8. The Ottawa Senators were expected to be one of the worst teams in the league, the Ottawa Senators play in an arena that’s in an inconvenient area, and the Ottawa Senators have burned a lot of goodwill with their fans in the last few years. The Florida Panthers find themselves with an entertaining young core right in the middle of a playoff race, and yet can’t draw much bigger crowds than those in Ottawa. The “if you build it, they will come… idea worked in Tampa, and spawned what is now one of the more engaged, organic fan bases in the league. It would be nice to see the same happen in Florida. We've been waiting a long time. Montreal Canadiens
9. You’re going to notice a bit of a trend here. Who sits right above Vasilevskiy and Bobrovsky on that goals saved above expectation chart? Carey Price. The Canadiens are actually one of the league’s best teams in terms of shot generation and expected goal share, but a lack of raw shooting talent and underwhelming goaltending combine to put them on the wrong side of the playoff bar as the calendar turns. They are paying Price $10.5M per season to be a problem solver. If they want to make the postseason, they’ll need him to turn things around.
10. It’s been quite the season for Shea Weber, who has tallied 12 goals and 31 points through 39 games. When the Canadiens pulled the trigger on the Subban/Weber swap, many around the hockey world (this blogger included) felt that the Predators had committed the highway robbery of the decade. At the time, Weber looked like he was aging fast, too big and slow to compete in the modern NHL. It’s fair to say that those of us who felt that way at the time were wrong, at least in the short-term. Weber has stabilized what were once concerning underlying numbers, and is now on the positive side of Montreal’s relative shot attempt and expected goal shares at five-on-five. He’s driving play for them at 34 years old, and has managed to do it in a league that has only gotten faster in the years since the trade.
Buffalo Sabres
11. I saw a tweet from HockeyBuzz’s own Ryan Wilson earlier, and it really made me think:
Jason Botterill in the midst of watching a second consecutive season slip away after unexpected early season winning streaks.
— Ryan Wilson (@GunnerStaal) December 30, 2019
He is guilty of what many GM's are: Overvaluing prospects and draft picks. The future is now with Eichel/Dahlin/Skinner. If not now then when?
12. Regardless of what happens for the Sabres this year, Ralph Krueger will always be one of the coolest guys in hockey. Imagine being fired from your first NHL head coaching gig by Skype, turning that into a Chair role at an English Premier League club, and then giving up that EPL job to coach the Sabres. What a career.
Ottawa Senators
13. What kind of odds do you think you could have taken off John Tortorella by betting that Anthony Duclair would be an NHL all-star this year? 100/1? 1000/1? And, yet, here he is. It’s a well-deserved honour for the Senators winger, who has been scoring at an incredible rate since the season began. Thanks in large part to an exceptionally hot December, Duclair now ranks fourth overall in the league (!) in five-on-five G/60 among skaters who have played 400+ minutes. It’s not half bad for a player carrying a cap hit of less than $2M.
14. The case for trading J-G Pageau has been made in this space before, and is based largely on his unexpected offensive outburst to start the season. The theory is that, because his value will never be higher, the time to trade him and extract that value is now. Another thing to consider is that the Senators system may not have room for him long-term. It's true that there’s a lack of high-end talent at centre, but there's no lack of players who project to be 2/3L pivots:
Josh Norris has been projected to be a top two centre at his best. So has Logan Brown and now Pinto.
— Hailey Salvian (@hailey_salvian) December 30, 2019
*IF* these centre prospects pan out...add in Colin White and where does JG Pageau fit in? https://t.co/SQGXJQecot
15. Given how bad the Red Wings have been to date, it’s almost impossible to believe that most models predicted that the Ottawa Senators would be worse. Check out their rolling goal differential, calculated to a point earlier this month:
How bad are the Red Wings this season? Tracked the rolling goal differential of each of the worst goal differential teams the last few seasons back to the McDavid draft. The Wings are pushing a pace to rival or even beat the horrendous '14-'15 Sabres. pic.twitter.com/GzKq6T6JJ7
— Rex Codex Libris (@CodexRex) December 13, 2019
16. I’m going to put as much effort into this second Red Wing thought as Steve Yzerman did into building an NHL-quality roster this year. Bonus Thoughts!
17. Do you know who looks like the real deal? Tampa’s Mikhail Sergachev. No longer a sheltered defender that his coaches are scared to count on, Sergachev is now a play driver for the Lightning. His relative shot attempt and expected goal shares are both positive, as per Natural Stat Trick, and he displays such a high level of confidence at both ends of the ice. The swap that sent Jonathan Drouin to Montreal and him to Tampa is one of those hockey trades that looks like it might work out really well for both teams involved.
18. This is both depressing and the makings of a very good team:
Top 10 NHL players traded by the Ottawa Senators of the decade:
— Bonk's Mullet (@BonksMullet) December 28, 2019
1. Erik Karlsson
2. Mark Stone
3. Matt Duchene
4. Jason Spezza
5. Mika Zibanejad
6. Mike Hoffman
7. Kyle Turris
8. Ben Bishop
9. Nick Foligno
10. Jakob Silfverberg
19. This isn’t a thought, but rather a prediction: My hunch is that the 2020 Stanley Cup winner will come out of the Atlantic Division. The strength of Boston, Toronto, and Tampa (as long as Vasilevskiy gets going) is too much to ignore. The only thing that might stop it from happening is if they spend too much time beating up on each other along the way.
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Happy New Year!
As always, thanks for reading.