What We Learned: Who takes the goalie leap first?
We're still more than a month and a half out from the trade deadline, but word is starting to get around that the Four Nations tournament will disrupt the normal trade-related workflow for a lot of teams.
Because most of the best players on earth—and a bunch of GMs—will be otherwise engaged for a couple of weeks in mid-February, clubs are starting to eye the prospect of getting a head start on their trade season plans, hoping to make deals—especially those involving players who will be representing their countries—before the tournament rather than in the narrow window after it. But if all that creates a kind of soft deadline, one thing to keep an eye on that ought to be extremely interesting is the East Wild Card race.
A bunch of mediocre-adjacent teams are scuffling Three Stooges-style to squeeze through a door that's only wide enough for two of them. I'm not sure I'm putting the Islanders in the race anymore, but let's say they are, and at this point, everyone but the top six in the East and the Sabres are, to one extent or another, jockeying for the two Wild Card spots. Nine teams playing for two spots. And again, I don't really think any of these are necessarily good teams, but there is one problem a lot of them have that can only be addressed via trade. The Philadelphia Flyers have the worst five-on-five save percentage in the league (.889). The Montreal Canadiens are second-worst in that stat (.894). The Pittsburgh Penguins are fourth-worst (.899), the Columbus Blue Jackets eighth-worst (.904), and the Ottawa Senators are somehow still 11th-worst (.907).
The fact that they're in contention for or in possession of a playoff spot halfway through the season with those stats tells you a lot about the quality of the teams we're talking about—not especially high—but also presents a real opportunity to meaningfully improve and potentially take control of this Wild Card race.
If you're a team with a goalie to sell, like maybe the Anaheim Ducks or, if you believe Doug MacLean, Vancouver Canucks, you gotta be calling those Eastern Conference wanna-bes every hour on the hour and saying, "What's it gonna take to get you to be the team that pulls the trigger on a goalie trade first?" Now, sure, maybe Montreal isn't interested because they think Jakub Dobeš is gonna get them where they want to go. Ottawa almost certainly doesn't want goalie help with term given Linus Ullmark's uncertain injury status and the fact that they're mostly plugging away with their backups anyway. But Pittsburgh? Philly? Columbus? These are disasters waiting to happen, if they're not at that level already, and the margins between these teams are so thin in terms of both lineup quality and won-lost records that the first team to make that potentially seismic goalie trade could position itself as a Wild Card team to reckon with in the second half of the season.
Right now, it seems like Ottawa and Columbus have the banked points and the strong vibes that give them the inside track on those two playoff spots. But it's just as easy to imagine them hitting the skids as it is throwing the car into cruise control because, sorry to say, they're still the Senators and Blue Jackets—teams that need to play half a season of passable hockey, and we know from experience that's no guarantee. Even the potential for a solidified goaltending situation would be a huge shot in the arm.
Obviously, a lot of this depends on the price. If John Gibson—who has multiple years left on his rather expensive deal after this one and whose quality isn't exactly a settled issue—costs an arm and a leg, it's easy to understand why GMs whose teams are unexpectedly competitive might prevaricate instead of just getting the deal done ASAP. But every day that passes with an unresolved goaltending situation is one where you might lose a head-to-head game against a team that's also in this race.
The three teams I'm really interested in here are the Flyers, Sens, and Pens. Philly and Ottawa are both top-10 all-situations expected-goals teams, if you can believe that. The Flyers have a middling offence but really strong team defence, and their goaltending is basically two Achilles heels—the only thing stopping them from having success. I wonder how much the brain trust there actually wants to get into the playoffs this season, but it feels like it would be malpractice, to some extent, not to try to upgrade there.
Ottawa probably feels like they have something with an Ullmark/Leevi Merilainen tandem, and they might be right. But we still don't have a timeline on Ullmark's return and with all due respect to the new No. 1(?) we're talking about a guy with 11 games of NHL experience, so the certainty around his ability to keep this up can't be too strong, especially because he was getting games in the ECHL as recently as last season. Makes sense to them to play this out at least a little longer, just given the results to date, but it also feels like there has to be a backup plan if things go sideways, and they won't want to wait too long for the problem to correct itself.
And of course Pittsburgh's situation is rough because that Tristan Jarry bet a couple years ago just never really worked out, and has turned into a calamity at this point. Not sure they really have the ability to take on another big goalie contract midseason but of course GMs can be creative when forced. They're the team to watch in this race because they have the unique pressure to make the playoffs based on the Crosby/Malkin/Letang/Karlsson of it all, but whether a trade for a name-brand goalie — the only kind worth trading for based on who seems to be available right now — is in the cards remains unclear.
Finally we have Columbus, a team that's winning a lot despite the bad goaltending, though Daniil Tarasov has been good in his two games this past week. Don't mess with success, don't upset the chemistry in the room, etc. etc., sure. But at some point, especially if you want to be one of those GMs who "rewards" teams with trade reinforcements, you want to undergird that success instead of hoping some magic beans keep you going for the last 35ish games of the regular season. With the apparent maturation of a number of talented young players, I think you can argue Columbus is finally ready to pull up on the stick and fly out of the bad weather they've been in these past several years, and an actual reliable goalie would obviously help with that.
The clock's ticking. It's not hard to envision any number of these teams losing two, four, six games in a row, and thus dropping out of real contention. But with a goalie they can rely on — which, by the way, is really the one thing the Rangers have going for them — there's so much opportunity here. Which team seizes it will probably tell us a lot about the next three months of the regular season.
What We Learned
Anaheim Ducks: Gotta wonder at what point the Ducks go into full seller mode. Based on how things have gone lately, it has to be coming up.
Boston Bruins: I said it last week: I think that Marchand/Pastrnak "they can't stand each other" rumor was laying the groundwork for a certain 36-year-old who's a UFA at the end of the yeat to get traded, or be allowed to walk, if they miss the playoffs. Anything happen recently to support that?
Buffalo Sabres: Wonder why this kind of thing keeps happening to the Sabres specifically. Tungsten Arm O'Doyle stuff, I mean. Probably a coincidence.
Calgary Flames: Don't know if he has the legs for the full marathon, but you can't say he's not making the race interesting.
Carolina Hurricanes: Boy you ain't kidding. Look up Carolina's team 5-on-5 save percentage, and just have a little laugh to yourself. That's a gift from me to you. Unless you're a Hurricanes fan.
Chicago: This is a "buy low" strategy but I still don't know what it's gonna cost.
Colorado Avalanche: Easy to have a more tight-knit group when you're not staring daggers at both your goalies all day every day.
Columbus Blue Jackets: The Blue Jackets have one home game between now and Feb. 4. That's gonna tell us a lot about them.
Dallas Stars: Yeah you can't really take a period off against the Avs these days, huh?
Detroit Red Wings: Yeah I mean I guess the power play is still going but that's about it in this one.
Edmonton Oilers: I mean this is two suspension-worthy plays in just a couple days. Absolutely beautiful headline, though. Ultimate respect. Something about "being pissy."
Florida Panthers: Imagine if they get Spencer Knight going long-term. Look out.
Los Angeles Kings: This is the right thing to do. Really heartening to see.
Minnesota Wild: Don't you think I know that?
Montreal Canadiens: Giving up seven straight goals and losing a huge rivalry game at home while you're in the thick of a playoff chase DOESN'T hurt your confidence? What's your secret?
Nashville Predators: Hachi machi.
New Jersey Devils: In the past week, I've seen the Devils connected to half the forwards who might be theoretically available between now and the deadline. What are they cooking.
New York Islanders: Kind of a mean headline but you can't disagree, can you?
New York Rangers: Oh finally, we get to make excuses for why the Rangers aren't good again. It was a rough couple weeks there.
Ottawa Senators: Okay maybe they don't need a goalie. Just kidding they still do.
Philadelphia Flyers: This is what I was just talking about, Sludgeman.
Pittsburgh Penguins: Some might even say he's making a Renaissance painting.
San Jose Sharks: They didn't even put the best player on the team, who played in Boston last season, in the subhed. That's a lot of connections!
Seattle Kraken: Why would I be surprised by this?
St. Louis Blues: Ah, very cool.
Tampa Bay Lightning: What's crazy about Nikita Kucherov having 600 career assists is that one-sixth of them came last season.
Toronto Maple Leafs: The Leafs have a stable goaltending situation? The Maple Leafs? The Toronto Maple Leafs?
Utah [fill in the blank later]: Some of us have been saying this the whole time. It's like when Seattle announced their name after making everyone wait for like two years or something, and they said, "Oh yeah, we walked into the office on Day 1 and someone had written down 'Release the Kraken' on a Post-It" or whatever. Just announce it!
Vancouver Canucks: Awesome.
Vegas Golden Knights: I think that's a good area to focus on, yeah.
Washington Capitals: Who indeed. Oh right, the guy in the picture.
Winnipeg Jets: This is not the kind of headline you write about a team you're mega-confident in.
Play of the Weekend
lmao
https://x.com/TerrierHockey/status/1880442625741976053
Gold Star Award
Sometimes you gotta tip your cap to the two goalies who combine to stop all 53 shots in a game that goes to a shootout, even if watching a goalless CBJ/NYR game sounds like a very specific kind of hell.
Minus of the Weekend
It's so funny where there's a suspendable play during a game and local media guys take turns trying to assign blame to the guys on the teams they don't cover. "Sure that was dirty, but what about this other thing?" Alright bud. Everyone can be wrong in situations like this. You don't have to get mad about it, because you don't actually work for the teams, fellas.
Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week
User "DapperDan" is trying to lend a hand:
Both could probably use a change of scenery at this stage
