Toronto Maple Leafs Headline November Canadian Team Power Rankings

Canada’s Worst Team

With apologies to hopefully future Toronto Maple Leafs 3rd line centre Bo Horvat, his current team stinks.

Yes, it’s true, they are ahead of the Senators in the standings.

Unfortunately for Vancouver, however, the Senators are victims of bad luck, and their roster is on the way up.

The Canucks are victims of bad thinking.

They fired Jim Benning, which was smart.

Unfortunately, they stuck with Jim Rutherford, which was dumb.

What  the Canucks were thinking when they decided to replace one guy who doesn’t understand how to build an NHL team in today’s environment with another is anyone’s guess.

Mine would be that they don’t understand that hockey is a star driven league, and that they credited the Penguins two most recent Cups to Rutherford, instead of understanding that the Penguins won those Cups in spite of him.

The Canucks are a mess.

They need a full rebuild and should be looking to unload anyone and everything that they can.  They are only two points up the Senators (not counting their game in hand) and yet, they are years and years behind them.

The NHL’s 6th Best Canadian Team

The Montreal Canadians are 17th overall in the NHL standings, by points percentage.

That is a huge failure.  They should be trying to lose, and the fact that they aren’t is ridiculous.

Sure, it might be slightly more honorable to just miss the playoffs than it is to lose on purpose, but who cares?

Teams sell advertising on jersey’s now, which is much, much worse than losing on purpose.  At least losing on purpose isn’t greedy and shallow, and at least it eventually pays off for the fans.

To be fair, Montreal is outperforming their Xgoals rating, so they likely should be worse than they are, but no one made them trade for Kirby Dach or Sean Monahan.

They are not a good team, and they likely will fall down the standings, but they’d be smart to start selling things off sooner than later.

Connor Bedard will win a Stanley Cup.

It is worth finishing last in order to get him.

Why did they burn a year of Slafkovsky’s ELC?

What are they thinking?

You got me.

The Overrated Winnipeg Jets Are the 5th Best Canadian Team

Say what?

Aren’t the Jets 8th overall and 5th by points-percentage?

They sure are. 

But this is the NHL.  Luck doesn’t surpass skill as a factor in the standings until near the end of the season.

Blame the goalies.

or,

Blame Your Parents.

Either way, it’s not gonna change the facts.  And the facts are that the Jets are not a good team.

However, they do have the NHL’s best or (at worst) second-best goalie.

Only 9 NHL teams have a worse Expected Goals Percentage than the Jets.

They do happen to have the NHL’s 3rd best 5v5 save-percentage, however.  They also are one of the least penalized teams, and have a top 10 PK team.

Things are going their way, and it’s entirely possible that they keep going their way.

But it’s unlikely.

If the Jets are gonna keep this going, Connor Hellebuyck will need to put up a Hart Trophy Season, but so far, so good.

NHL Canadian Team Power Rankings #4:  Ottawa Senators

The Ottawa Senators were never going to make up the 40-odd points they were behind the Toronto Maple Leafs last year, at least not in one off-season.

The Senators were way too optimistic coming into this season, as I repeatedly told anyone who would listen.

Sure they added some nice pieces, and the fact that goalies are random could help them out a lot, but that blueline was always trouble.

And why the Leaf are currently 4th overall, the Senators are 4th last.

All is not doom and gloom for the Senators.

Unlike the Jets, Canadians and Canucks, the Senators are on the upswing.

It’s not gonna hurt them if they have to add yet another top five pick this year, and being in the Bedard sweepstakes is a blessing in disguise, even if their fans were thinking playoffs.

The Senators need defensemen, but what they really need is time.  Once the players they have develop, they’ll be a top team.

And if they can add another blue-chipper, so much the better.

I rank them at the head of Canada’s four (current) loser teams. This is because while they are the lowest in the standings, they also currently have the best shot at a franchise altering player.

Winnipeg can’t be helped. They’re going on an unlikely run at the worst possible time.  They are, along with Vancouver, delusional about their status. Both teams need a rebuild but have too many good players at the moment.

Montreal is behind Ottawa because they should be losing more but aren’t.

In case that is confusing: Ottawa gets ranked at the top of the four bad teams because they are the closest to doing what they should be doing.

Calgary Flames: The 3rd Best Canadian Team

At 9-9-3 the Calgary Flames are a .500 team.

In fact, they currently sit 20th in the NHL standings, would miss the playoffs if the season ended today, and are behind three other Canadian teams, including Montreal.

The Flames currently have an expected goals rating that is 12th best, would make them a playoff team, and which is in fact not far off what Toronto and Tampa are posting this year to date.

The Calgary Flames are ranked 3rd worst in the NHL for PDO, which is the combined total of save and shooting percentages at 5v5.

Since most teams will post a 100  PDO if given enough time, it can be used to measure luck. The Flames are currently the NHL’s 3rd most unlucky team, behind only San Jose and Columbus.

The Flames have a solid goalie in Markstrom, and they have a lot of good scorers, including Huberdeau and kadri.

If you want to know why the Flames are doing so badly, it’s because Jon Huberdeau has the lowest on-ice shooting percentage of his career, while his individual shooting percentage is by far the lowest it’s been in five years.

The Flames could easily miss the playoffs due to a bad-luck start to the season, but all the numbers say that they will eventually get better.

So while the Jets and Habs are ahead of them, I don’t hold it against them because at this point in the season we are still seeing a lot of whacky results.

Calgary is  a superior team to all of Canada’s teams, save two.

The 2nd Best Canadian Team: Edmonton Oilers

Ex- Toronto Maple Leafs goalie Jack Campbell is off to a bad start with his new team.

Unfortunately, the Oilers have the NHL’s worst front office, and their strategy to fill their team with ex Leafs is a bad one. 

The Oilers are paying Zach Hyman $5 million per year on one of the NHL’s worst contracts.

Their second most used defenseman at 5v5 is Cody Ceci.

They continue to employ Tyson Barrie.

But the worst thing they did was give Jack Campbell a five-year contract.

Having watched almost every game of Jack Campbell’s career, I wrote that giving him a multi-year contract extension was a firable offense. 

I wrote that when I thought Kyle Dubas was going to sign him.

But it barely matters.  The Oilers have Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, and that is enough to get them into the playoffs, and enough to make them Cup contenders.

If their goalie gets even slightly warm at the right time, look out.

If their owner decides to start operating his team like it’s post-Y2K, then really look out.

But even if they keep their status quo they’ve still got a decent shot at glory, just because of they have two of the best players in the world.

Toronto Maple Leafs #1 By a Mile

When the second best Canadian team is currently borderline to make the playoffs, this exercise hardly seems fair.

Canada has seven teams.

Two are rebuilding.

Two need to rebuild.

Three are contenders.

But not equal contenders.  The Flames would be the best if star players didn’t drive results and if goalies were predictable.  Their roster is very good, and they’ve also got a name-brand goalie.

Unfortunately, star players drive results and goalies ARE random.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are similar to the Oilers in that their two best players could go to any roster in the NHL and instantly make them a playoff team and a contender.

The difference here is that if the Leafs best player was John Tavares, they would still make the playoffs.  That is not something the Oilers could say if Ryan Nugent-Hopkins was their best guy.

The Leafs have the most star players in the NHL.

They are also the deepest team.

Last year, they finished 4th overall with the 28th best goaltending.

This year, their goaltending is good and they almost never lose.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are the NHL’s best Canadian Team, and it isn’t up for debate.   The only people who would say differently are either fans of other teams, or people trying to get attention.

You could argue that there are teams in the NHL that are better than the Leafs, but those teams would be American and that argument would also probably be bad.

It’s pretty clear that if the NHL’s 4th best team has had to deal with all four of their best defenseman missing significant time, as well as both their top two goalies and the organization’s AHL starter getting injured, then they are probably the NHL’s best team.