NHL weekend rankings: A stunning coaching change in Vegas shakes up the Pacific
Vegas' reputation for ruthlessness strikes again. What does it mean for the least impressive — and most winnable — division in the NHL?
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The Vegas Golden Knights fired Bruce Cassidy on Sunday with eight games left in the regular season. Rob Gray / Imagn Images
Well, we didn’t see that one coming.
Maybe we should have, given that the Vegas Golden Knights don’t exactly have a reputation as a patient franchise. They’ve spent every year of their existence as aspiring Stanley Cup contenders, and they’ve made it clear that failure isn’t an option. Given how much failing they’ve been doing this year, maybe we should have expected yesterday’s bombshell, with John Tortorella replacing Bruce Cassidy as head coach with just eight games left to play.
What does it all mean? Let’s dig into it…
Bonus five: Reactions to a coaching shocker
5. The Golden Knights are bad: This isn’t news, but the change really brings it into focus. They’re going to lose more games than they’ll win for the first time in franchise history, and only loser points and a weak Pacific have disguised just how bad they’ve been. Nobody can score, they can’t get a save, Jack Eichel somehow has zero power-play goals, Rasmus Andersson looks like a bust, and offseason prize Mitch Marner is playing out of position on the way to his worst offensive output since he was 20 years old. Other than that, going great.4. John Tortorella is a fascinating choice: Maybe not a bad one, although we’ll have to see how it all plays out. He’s a known commodity, and you wonder how his schtick will play in Vegas. His reputation as a guy that players hate playing for is overwrought, but it’s fair to ask whether a roster of superstars who chose this destination will be on board for the Torts Experience. Pete DeBoer? Total bum.
3. Tortorella should probably rent: If he fails, he’ll get fired. If he succeeds, he’ll still get fired, but maybe a year or two later. Tortorella becomes the fourth coach in the Knights’ nine-season history. Gerard Gallant won a conference title and the Jack Adams with an expansion team and lasted two more years; Cassidy won a Cup and got two more and change.
2. You didn’t expect this: Yes, you. Or at least you, in the general sense of my readers, because Cassidy was the ninth-safest coach in this year’s prediction contest. Then again, the coach right above him is Craig Berube, and the two right below him are Sheldon Keefe and Dean Evason, so maybe we should have figured it out.
1. This could work: As everyone almost instantly pointed out, this kind of move is close to unprecedented, but it has worked before — namely when the Devils went from Robbie Ftorek to Larry Robinson with days left in the season and then won the Cup. The Knights still have to get past the whole being bad thing, but if Tortorella can juice them up to “marginally better than mediocre,” that might be enough in the Pacific, at least.
On to this week’s rankings…
Road to the Cup
The five teams with the best chances of winning the Stanley Cup.Heartbreaking: The worst person you know just scored a great goal.
5. Buffalo Sabres (45-21-8, +36 true goals differential*) – I did not jinx the Sabres. Don’t put in the newspaper that I jinxed the Sabres. They only lost three in a row since we declared them playoff locks, and they snapped that streak on Saturday. It’s fine. We’re fine.
4. Tampa Bay Lightning (46-21-6, +62) – All the best to Victor Hedman.
3. Dallas Stars (44-18-12, +48) – I don’t care how many times you see it, it’s scary every time.
2. Carolina Hurricanes (46-21-6, +40) – With the division wrapped, there isn’t much to play for down the stretch beyond home ice in the conference final. For what it’s worth, this is their first time being this high in the rankings since November.
1. Colorado Avalanche (48-14-10, +88) – It really feels like the Hart Trophy might be slipping away from Nathan MacKinnon, as fans and media voters lock in on Nikita Kucherov’s recent heroics and Connor McDavid dragging the Leon Draisaitl-less Oilers to a playoff spot. There’s still a very strong case for MacKinnon, but at this point you wonder if being the front-runner all season isn’t hurting his chances with voters who are looking for some late-season novelty.
*Goals differential without counting shootout decisions like the NHL does for some reason.
Not ranked: Anaheim Ducks – So this might really be happening.
The Anaheim Ducks look like they’re going to win the Pacific Division, at least as far as the regular-season standings go. The Oilers beat them on Saturday, which keeps the race open, but Edmonton seems likely to run out of time. The Ducks control their own destiny and are still the favorites to take the top seed.
And no, that’s not going to get them into the top five, because the Pacific is still the Pacific and it’s bad. My guess is you won’t see many experts picking the Ducks to emerge from the first two rounds, with the Oilers and Knights still getting the benefit of the doubt as legitimate contenders. The majority probably won’t even pick Anaheim in round one, because the novelty of the crossover Mammoth will be too hard to resist.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not one of the season’s best stories. The Ducks came into the season as the classic rebuild trying to make the transition into … well, something. This is supposed to be the hardest part of a true rebuild scenario; anyone can strip a team down to the studs and collect picks, but we’ve seen plenty try to flip the switch and start winning again only to find they can’t make the transition. This was the Ducks’ year to at least get back into the mix. That felt like the best-case scenario.
Instead, they’ve skipped the entire mushy middle and gone straight to the top of the division. You could have got 35-to-1 odds on that at the start of the season, and you’d have felt like a fool for taking them, because it would have been a sucker’s bet. Even with Joel Quenneville and a young core aging into its prime, it was too big a leap. Back in my season preview, I left the Ducks to the very end and then made my dramatic prediction: “I kind of sort of think they’re making the playoffs this season.” And even that felt like a bold stand at the time. Today? It barely even counts as a good call.
The bigger question is what comes next. Are this year’s Ducks going to follow in the path of, say, last year’s Canadiens — the good young team that makes a surprise playoff appearance, loses quickly, but learns from the experience and comes back ready to take another step? Or will they be more like the Devils, a flawed team having a strong year that immediately regresses?
We’ll find out. For now, Ducks fans are under no obligation to even pretend to care, because they’re just enjoying the ride. And if six weeks from now, they’re watching their team prep for the Western Conference final, they can save this column and toss it on the pile of predictions that completely whiffed on this year’s team. It will have plenty of company.
They’re hosting Toronto tonight, which was going to be the big Radko Gudas payback game until his injury put that in doubt. For now, it should be an easy two points as they make up their game in hand over Edmonton.
The bottom five
The five teams headed towards dead last and a shot at Gavin McKenna or Ivar Stenberg.Wait, writers on this site are allowed to get predictions right?
5. St. Louis Blues (31-30-11, -33) – This California road trip will make or break their chances at a miracle playoff run. I’m still betting on “break,” but their recent wins have certainly put the bottom of the lottery into flux.
4. Calgary Flames (31-34-8, -37) – They’ve got points in six straight, including five wins. But before you worry too much about their lottery odds, check out the brutal schedule on this upcoming road trip. If they start winning those games, we can get concerned.
3. New York Rangers (30-35-9, -23) – The whole “the J.T. Miller trade may have been one of the worst in NHL history for both teams” thing is gaining steam and I’m kind of here for it.
2. Chicago Blackhawks (27-34-13, -50) – Friday’s blowout loss to the Rangers did two things: put the Hawks solidly in contention for the second-best lottery odds, and produced one hell of a photo.
1. Vancouver Canucks (21-43-8, -91) – They’ve lost five in a row and given up 25 goals along the way, while also becoming the first team mathematically eliminated from the postseason. Honestly, for an active tank, that’s a pretty good week.
Not ranked: Winnipeg Jets – The big question heading into the second half for the Jets was whether they could make a push back into the playoff picture, or would instead plummet all the way down to the bottom of the standings.
The season isn’t over, but it’s close enough that now we know the answer: No. As in, neither.
There was a time when it looked like that playoff push could happen, peaking with three straight wins in early March that at least made you wonder. That on its own felt like a surprise, given how far off the pace they’d fallen after a disastrous midseason losing streak that hit 11 games. It didn’t last long, but was just enough to move the Jets into the dreaded mushy middle where fans aren’t even sure what they should want.
What we do know: The Jets will become just the fifth team to ever follow a Presidents’ Trophy win with a playoff miss. We looked at a few of those teams last season, when the Rangers were dropping out of the race. For good, as it turns out; they became the fourth team on the list, and it’s fair to say the season they’re having right now won’t give Jets fans much optimism.
So now what? Murat’s been doing some good work with that question, wondering what next year’s lineup might look like and just how close the Jets really are to contending. The short answer to that second question is “closer than you might think, but not as close as you’d want to be.” The Connor Hellebuyck factor looms large here, and his presence probably makes a bottom-out rebuild impossible. That might be a good thing — there’s a reasonable question of whether the Winnipeg market could handle a multi-year absence from contending. And if you had to start with only one piece in place, a consistently elite goalie is probably the hardest to find in today’s league.
Could the Jets be a playoff team next year? Absolutely, and that’s true even if Hellebuyck doesn’t singlehandedly carry them there. Could they be Cup contenders? That’s a much tougher call, especially after how we watched the top of the Central separate this year. Add it all up, and the Jets seem like they could be headed for the dreaded mushy middle, the wasteland of bubble playoff teams that pick in the mid-teens every year.
Jets fans, what do you want to see this summer? Is it time to take a step or two back, if only to build some momentum for the future? Do you double down on what was, let’s remember, a 116-point team just a year ago? Do you trust Kevin Cheveldayoff to thread the needle between those two options, and come out on the other side with something that isn’t just spinning its wheels? Or are you already getting that sinking feeling that the mushy middle scenario might be unavoidable? Let me know in the comments.