What You Didn't See Coming

Today's entry is all about the teams and players that most, including myself, projected to do one thing but have totally shocked us the other way. Let's begin, shall we?

From Rags To Riches
There were a few teams in the offseason that blatantly looked primed to bottom feed, whether they had before or not. These were teams like the New York Islanders and the Washington Capitals. The Islanders were the very picture of a horribly run franchise. I should know, I wrote an entire topic on it. Having made crazy moves like making the backup goalie GM and signing their #1 goalie to a 15 year contract (even though they could have just kept Luongo way back when), it's all been about the coach, not the front office. Ted Nolan has turned this team around from mediocrity to Atlantic division hopeful winner. They've even been on top of that division during the season so far and are currently housing the 7th playoff spot in the East. Nolan has gotten amazing play out of Alexei Yashin, the holdout from Ottawa who got a 10 year contract and has yet to produce anything worthy, until now. Even Viktor Kozlov, who has underperformed everywhere including Florida (except for the Bure explosion in 99-00) and New Jersey, now has the scoring prowess seemingly back.

And further south, the Capitals are really surprising a lot of teams. Obviously last year they missed the playoffs by quite a bit, essentially being the Alex Ovechkin show featuring Olaf Kolzig in goal. Now, the youth has matured a year, Alexander Semin (or the other Alex) has taken a little load off of the Gr8 and both Chris Clark and Zubrus have really pushed the limit. New defensive addition Brian Pothier shows he's no slouch and this team is without a doubt the hardest working in the NHL. They may not win all the games, but they rarely ever take a night off, they just love to play the game and it shows. They also currently house the 8th spot in the East, where with the Islanders they are giving past playoff hopefuls Toronto and Ottawa serious runs for their money.

Major Downfalls
Then there are the teams that were really progressing or taking playoff spots and have completely fallen apart. We can't discuss this section without the Philadelphia Flyers. There hasn't been a bigger collapse all year. They had been to the playoffs for many years in a row, including Eastern Conference finals appearances and a shot at the cup against the Wings. But the wheels came right off this year, as Bobby Clarke's mismanagement hit full steam behind and the horrible decisions were shown for what they were. Beyond the top line, it was a mess. Guys like Petr Nedved and youngsters Mike Richards and Jeff Carter could not find the net for the life of them. The defense was incredibly atrocious, as Derian Hatcher became the poster boy for how to act like a pylon 101. And the goaltending, don't even get me started. Neither Esche nor Niittymaki have shown any reason to make them a #1 goalie. It was an achilles heel that the Flyers hadn't addressed since Hextall retired and now it's got a spear wedged firmly into its side. They sit last in the East and 2nd to worst in the league, with little light ahead for them (or as we call it in Pantherland, gearing up early for the NHL Draft).

Player Resurgences
There were a few players so far that previously were considered to be out of the running, but now have made themselves known that it's not over until it's over. Again, case in point Alexei Yashin has returned to form years after he had a great season in Ottawa. Kudos for this really does again go out to Ted Nolan. How about Ruslan Salei in Florida, whose previous career high in points came last year with 19. As of 31 games in, he has broken that record and is on pace for about 52 points. Guess a change of scenery really does have an effect sometimes. Also Glen Murray in Boston is now 27th in NHL goal scoring where previously he had trouble being a supporting player in Beantown. Darcy Tucker began his upward trend last year, but now has 13 powerplay goals to show for so far, tied for 1st in the NHL. Goons becoming goal scorers? Now I've seen it all.

Career Spirals
And not the upward kind, the downward kind. So who's play has left them in the dust? If it wasn't obvious already, Derian Hatcher is incredibly done; he can barely skate back to his zone before a Sabre dismantles what little defensive ability he has left. John Leclair also seems poised to be at an end. He's been waived up and down and refuses to go to the minors. John, if Alexander Mogilny can take it then so can you, that is after all what you get when you injure Evgeni Malkin in his first NHL game. And of course finally, we come to Dan Cloutier. So he wasn't looking very good at all last year with the Nucks, though he was injured for a long time. This one time playoff performer has made LA look way worse than they should, poor Mathieu Garon losing his job to this clown. To prove this point, Cloutier's numbers are a GAA of 3.74 and a SV% of .868. In case you were wondering, he has zero shutouts, which is likely because he allows just about 4 goals a game. You aren't going to be winning many hockey games with that kind of goaltending. Unfortunately the same can also be said of once great Curtis Joseph, now languishing in exile in Phoenix. The team's been bad, he's been worse. CuJo is in danger of losing his job to Toronto 3rd stringer Mikael Tellqvist, not exactly the way to go out.

If the NHL is anything, it's unpredictable, and the games thus far have shown that. But there's more than half of the season still left to play and these teams and players have a long way to go. It's up to them which direction that happens to be.

See you at the red line.