This is a very important week in the West. If that’s true, then it’s a very, very important week in the Pacific. Probably that’s news to a lot of fans in the East, because they are concerned with the ever-long questions: Will the Leafs start to get better goaltending? Will Marc Andre Fleury find his way back to the right coast (Washington)? Will Detroit make the playoffs?
Come on—none of these are the right things to be asking. The East is settled, with the top four teams in the Metro clear of the fifth by 12 points and the top four in the Atlantic up by ten points going into Wednesday night.
None of those are complicated questions. What’s really complicated is figuring out who might be in the playoffs on the left side of the countries that make up the NHL. And from there, who will be a buyer and who a seller at the trade deadline. (We’re looking straight at you, Anaheim.)
What’s most undecided is what will happen in the Pacific, where positions three through seven are razor-thin—all four of Edmonton, the Ducks, LA, and Vancouver being within seven points. It had been that a couple of teams had games in hand, but that situation has mostly evened out over the past week or so with the various Covid makeup games being taken care of.
And so all of the following: Anaheim, Los Angeles, Edmonton, Vancouver, and San Jose are basically in a spot where they have to win—a lot—and soon. Lucky thing that they’re all playing each other this week, including the Ducks taking on the Sharks Tuesday in a 4-3 OT win and the Kings and Ducks playing Friday. In between now and then, LA took on Arizona on Wednesday.
Sticking with the far left coast, the keys for each of LA and Anaheim are different, but each has a clear path to securing wins.
For the Ducks, what has to happen is what happened Tuesday night, minus giving the Sharks an OT point. The Ducks got scoring from a depth guy early—Derek Grant scoring before four minutes had gone by. Then they went down 2-1 to round out the first period before tying the game in period two.
Once more, San Jose took the lead, but the second goal of the second period was put in by Rickard Rakell to knot the game at threes. So there’s another key—scoring from the guys who should be scoring, because that’s what they get paid to do. But question—will Rakell end the year in Anaheim? That depends largely on what happens in the near future. He, Josh Manson, and Hampus Lindholm may be out the door by or before the trade deadline. In case you don’t recognize those names, two of them comprise two of the top defensemen on the Anaheim side.
More magic happened as, after a scoreless third period and OT, Trevor Zegras scored to open the shootout. Rakell then made it a sorta-hat-trick (someone has to come up with a name for this “two goals in regulation or OT and a third one in the shootout” thing) when he scored to end the shootout in Anaheim’s favor.
No surprise, Rakell ended up first star. Brent Burns of the Sharks was third. Who was second? The Ducks’ Adam Henrique, who had an assist, three shots, and nine of eighteen faceoffs won.
So to sum up: the Ducks win when they get depth scoring, don’t flag when they blow a lead, get contributions from their superstar kid(s), and get their vets contributing goals and hard play. Probably not a unique formula, come to think of it.
For the Kings, what has to happen is that their vets need to keep contributing, mixing that with scoring from the mid-tier, new-ish players. Looking at LA’s team stats, Kopitar leads the team going into Wednesday with 47 points on 13 goals. Kempe was next with 23 goals and 33 points. Arvidsson was third, followed by Drew Doughty and then “hey wait—he can score?” Danault, who came over from Montreal to play center and contribute defensive play, but was not counted on for 29 points on 14 goals to date. Following in this list as far as scoring goes, by the way, is Iafallo with 14-14-28 tallies and Trevor Moore with 28 points on eight goals.
To complement the scoring, Jonathan Quick needs to carry on the youthful play he seems to have found once more. His record is 13-10-6 and his save percentage .911. Cal Petersen trails him with a record of 13-7-1. Quick has started the majority of the games thus far, though Petersen was in on Wednesday in Arizona for an eventual 3-2 win.
Playing the Coyotes, the Kings featured Quinton Byfield playing alongside Dustin Brown and Andreas Athanasiou. Byfield is rounding into form after an ankle injury in the preseason. He has eleven games under his belt this year, with a single goal his only scoring point on the year He does have a shootout goal as well.
The top line was Kopitar centering Iafallo and red-hot Adrian Kempe, who is second in team scoring and had two goals in each of the two games previous to Wednesday’s contest.
Third trio was Moore-Danault-Arvidsson, and fourth was Lemieux with Lizotte and Kaliyev. Interesting to note the contrast with the Ducks—aside from middleweight Lemieux, there’s no fighter on this team. The Ducks are dressing both heart guy and fighter Sam Carrick and Nick DesLauriers, who mixes it up—a lot.
But who needs that when you have skill up and down the lineup, as the Kings do? They got out to an early lead in shots versus Arizona, at one point being up 8-3, but neither team scored through one period. The second brought four goals, three of which were separated by only 1:10, with the first going to Arizona and the second two to the Kings. The Coyotes tied the game 2-2 about 13 minutes into the period.
The third period saw the Coyotes surge mid-way. Before that, Petersen was basically asleep in the LA net. Then all of a sudden it was two-on-ones and dangerous redirections of pucks, all of which Petersen kept out or saw go wide or over the net. That partly explains why the Coyotes shots total stayed low.
The Kings went ahead with about three minutes remaining, and though Arizona had a late PP, they couldn’t crack Petersen again. The culprit–long passes that couldn’t be handled and behind-the-back fanciness that led to nothing.
And so the Kings kept pace, though not nearly with the margin of comfort that coaches like. In short, Arizona pressed them to the end, and could easily have had a spoiler role on this night, but LA escaped and now heads to Anaheim on Friday evening.
To round out the Division talk—amongst the other potential playoff teams, Edmonton lost to Tampa Bay Wednesday, the second loss in a row after winning several to greet their new coach. Vancouver is 6-3-1 in their last ten, and not to be counted out. Points-wise, they are five points behind LA-Edmonton-Anaheim, but Boudreau behind the bench has them believing.
And then trailing them is San Jose. San Jose, oh, what’s to say? Things aren’t working, at all, and the most interesting question is what will become of free agent Thomas Hertl—stay, go? It’s not likely that there’ll be a lot of pressure to not leave because the team is making the post-season. They haven’t won a game in February, losing all five so far, though gaining three points. They are -24 in goal differential, worse by far than any other team who even hopes to contend. Perhaps one telling stat is that in looking at the Sharks’ scoring, all five top players are vets, players one would expect to be scoring. No surprises. No youth.
So in the end, if you’re gonna tell the story of the West, you’ve got to talk about practically everyone, because so many teams are knotted so closely together in the playoff race, and that makes for an interesting week of hockey.
Notes
Miles away from Cali, former Duck Corey Perry scored his 400th goal playing for Tampa Bay Wednesday.]
Brian Kennedy is a member of the Professional Hockey Writers Association.
