What's Hot, What's Not and Who Cares

episode 2 - 2025-11-11

Welcome to the 2nd episode of What's hot, what's not and Who cares. 

I apologize for the big gap between the 1st and this episode, life got in the way in the form of a broken arm for my son amongst other things.  The plan is to come back to a weekly episode hopefully. Lets dive into it.

HOT - Yours truly

The Canucks came into this season off a finals loss to the devils hoping to get a better start than they did last year.  The team came out of the gate firing on all cylinders leading the league in wins and points.  Draisaitl, Werensky and Reinhart are all on pace to finish with over a point per game while 5 others are on track to finish with 50+ points.  In net, both goalies have been good enough to give the team a chance to win every night.   The Canucks are in action tonight at home against the Winnipeg Jets.

NOT - Bottom of the standing teams without their 1st. Thats you Boston, Detroit, Seattle and NYR

4 of the bottom 9 teams dont have their 1st for this upcoming drafts, 3 of them dont have their 1st for the next 2 drafts, and 1 doesnt have their 1st for the next 3 drafts. That's ugly. Its still early in the season and there's always a chance of teams going on a run but 2 of them play in the top divivions and the other 2 are in the wide open atlantic.  For the 2 teams in the metro and pacific, its not looking good. #sorry,notsorry!    In these positions always come the hard question, do i give up on the season to be better next year making my 1st even better for the other team or stay the course and keep pushing? its never an easy decision.  Detroit is my pick to fare the best out of these 4 teams. 

HOT - "crumbs"(ov wise) players getting it done

Joel Blumqvist 76ov - 12 games played - 2.14gaa - .914 save%                                                                                        Yaroslav Askarov 76ov - 3 games played - 1.62gaa - .918 save%                                                                                Vladislas Gavrikov 82ov - 15 games played - 4 goals - 15 assists - on pace for 104pts                                                Dylan Holloway 82ov - 17 games played - 6 goals - 11 assists - on pace for 82 pts                                                      Marco Kasper 79ov - 15 games played - 5 goals - 11 assits - on pace for 88pts

How these guys are producing so much? only the sim knows.   Blomqvist gets a pass because he's playing behind a stacked team but if thats the case, does that mean that any goalie regardless of talent can get the job done?   Askarov has only played 3 games so the sample is tiny.   Gavrikov is a result of the sim engine as we've seen often in the past where random defs get an absurd amount of points.  I couldnt find an excuse for the 2 forwards, theyre not playing with quality linemates, i guess just putting any player on the top line and top pp makes them a superstar.   It'll be interesting to see how these anomalies fare further down the road.

Who Cares - Division strenght

After almost a quarter of the season done, this is how the division stand as of today

Atlantic - 59-54-13      Metro - 66-48-12      Central - 60-56-12      Pacific - 70-50-8 

Those numbers are pretty on par with what i thought they were gonna be. Atlantic is doing slightly better than expected thanks for Toronto and Central slightly worst with Utah and Minny being average so far.    Metro has pittsburgh compensating for Carolina's avg start and Pacific has the Edmonton oilers looking like what Calgary should be.    Does it mean anything? probably not but really, who cares.

Thanks for tuning in. 

Stay classy, Dchl