Your 2011-2012 Prognostos -- The Western Conference

We did the Eastern Conference prognostos, now we head to the…

Western Conference

1. Vancouver Canucks

Last year’s Stanley Cup runner-up will not be the best team in the West, but they will finish atop the conference standings. Their path through their own division – the Northwest – will be easier than that of their principal competitors, San Jose in the Pacific and the Chicago Blackhawks in the Central. Not that the Canucks are a pushover. They return with their roster almost entirely intact. Ryan Kesler will not score 40 goals again (41, actually), but there are still the Sedins to challenge the 100-point mark. The only real question mark is whether Roberto Luongo suffers his own Stanley Cup hangover after allowing 18 goals in four losses in the Stanley Cup final. Last year Luongo appeared in the fewest games in a regular season in nine years (60, compared to 58 in 2001-2002). Cory Schneider appeared in a career high 25 games last season. That convergence will continue.

2. San Jose Sharks

In Waiting for Godot, Vladimir and Estragon wait in vain for this Godot chap to arrive on the scene. They were practicing for waiting on San Jose to appear in a Stanley Cup final. San Jose’s formula – win pre-season plaudits from pundits, win a lot of games from October to March, drop out of the playoffs before the blossoms are off the trees, rinse, repeat. They’ve been doing that since 2003-2004 (average record, 48-23-11; number of conference finals won, zero). To their credit, they realized it wasn’t working and retooled in significant ways (Dany Heatley and Devin Setoguchi, out; Martin Havlat, in). Like that team that plays on the Potomac River, what they do from October to March isn’t going to impress anyone anymore. Let’s see what they do in May and, if they’re still around, in June.

3. Chicago Blackhawks

The Hawks followed up their Stanley Cup in 2010 by sleepwalking through a lot of the 2010-2011 season before playing their last 26 games to a 16-7-3 record and an eight-seed in the West. Those early cobwebs won’t be there this time around. The Blackhawks have a certain familiarity insofar as their expected performance level among their skaters is concerned. One expects that Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Patrick Sharp, and Marian Hossa will fall in around the 70-point mark. Duncan Keith and Keith Seabrook will combine for 100 points or so. The wild card is Corey Crawford in goal. He led all rookie goalies in wins, was second among them in goals against average, and was third in save percentage. He had more than a respectable 2.21 GAA and .927 save percentage in a first round loss to Vancouver last spring. What he has for a second act will be the missing element to be defined in the Blackhawks’ effort to return to the finals.

4. Detroit Red Wings

Someday, the Red Wings’ run is going to come to an end. Twenty consecutive seasons in the playoffs, four Cups, six appearances in the Finals. An average of 47 wins a season over that 20-year period (including 33 in a 48-game season in 1995). That streak will not end this year. Whether they finish ahead of Chicago or not will largely depend on whether the Wings can: a) get another top notch season from Nicklas Lidstrom, and b) if they can fill the hole made with the retirement of Brian Rafalski. That is important because the Wings got 110 points and 20 goals out of that pair last season. Ian White might the player to watch here. In stops at Calgary, Carolina, and San Jose last season he was 4-22-26, plus-3, in 78 games.

5. Los Angeles Kings

The Kings might not finish the season on top of the Western Conference, or even the Pacific Division, for that matter. But they might be the most dangerous team in the West next spring. By that time, newcomers Mike Richards, Dustin Penner (a late arrival last season), and Simon Gagne will have a season to become acclimated to the left coast and their new teammates, and Drew Doughty and Jack Johnson will have another 82 games of experience. And Jonathan Quick could continue that upward arc that saw his GAA drop from 2.54 to 2.24 last season, his save percentage jump from .907 to .918, and his shutout total rise from four to six. He might be the best goaltender in the Western Conference.

6. Nashville Predators

There might not be a consistently better-coached team in the NHL than the Predators, nor one that more consistently applies a philosophy to its effort. Without high end talent since, well, forever, the Predators rely on balance, hard work from all four lines and all three defensive pairs, and solid goaltending. There might not be a player with more than 50 points (there wasn’t last year) or a player with more than 25 goals (there wasn’t last year), but with Pekka Rinne in goal, Shea Weber and Ryan Suter anchoring the defense, and Barry Trotz still behind the bench, 100 points is not out of the question (they finished with 99 last season).

7. Anaheim Ducks

The Ducks have what might be the best first line in all the NHL with Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry, and Bobby Ryan, not to mention a legendary goal scorer in Teemu Selanne pulling down 18 minutes a night. The iffy areas for the Ducks are on defense in their own end and Jonas Hiller, who is among the more talented goalies in the league, but who suffered bouts of vertigo last season that caused him to miss more than 20 games, including six in the post-season. He says he is over it, but it remains to be demonstrated that he is.

8. St. Louis Blues

The Blues finished ten points out of the party last season, but that was without T.J. Oshie (missed 33 games) and David Perron (missed 72 games). Perron is trying to return from a concussion and is probably the biggest question mark. Not far behind is goaltender Jaroslav Halak, who had a somewhat disappointing 2.48 GAA and .910 save percentage after a big year in Montreal that earned him a big payday with the Blues in free agency.

The rest…

9. Calgary Flames

The Flames finished three points out of a playoff spot last season. But it is hard to see the Flames improving on that with the lack of balance they displayed on offense last season, entirely too dependent on Jarome Iginla (43-43-86) for consistent scoring. Then there is the matter of goalie Miikka Kiprusoff, who saw his GAA swell from 2.31 to 2.63 and his save percentage shrink from .920 to .906. Seeing as how he is about to turn 35 and has logged more than 4,150 minutes in each of the last six seasons, one wonders if he isn’t running low in the gas tank.

10. Columbus Blue Jackets

The Jackets finished 24th in offense last season. Adding Jeff Carter should take some heat off Rick Nash, letting both big forwards contribute more goals to the Columbus effort. But the Jackets were also 26th in the league on defense. And that means goalie Steve Mason has to prove that his Calder Trophy rookie season was not a sign of being a one-hit wonder. He’s had goals against averages over 3.00 the last two seasons and save percentages of .901 in both seasons.

11. Dallas Stars

Brad Richards is gone and with it the likelihood that the Stars improve on last year’s ninth place finish in the West. Loui Eriksson will do his level best to prevent a slide – he finished only one goal and three points behind Richards in scoring for the Stars and was a plus-10 to Richards’ plus-1. He and Mike Ribiero (19-52-71) will probably have to have career scoring years to give the Stars a chance to get into the top eight. Getting Jamie Benn to show a similar improvement this season to the one he had in his second NHL season last year (up 15 points from his rookie year) wouldn’t hurt, either.

12. Phoenix Coyotes

Between goaltenders Jason LaBarbera and Mike Smith, the most wins either has in the NHL in one season is LaBarbera’s 17 wins with Los Angeles in 2007-2008. Last season, Ilya Bryzgalov had his 17th win on January 15th. That is the difference between this year’s Coyotes and last year’s edition. And it is magnified by the fact that Phoenix is not a team that is going to score a lot. Last season they had one 20-goal scorer and one 60-point player. Both happened to be Shane Doan, who while being a warrior, also happens to be about to turn 35 (Monday). This season will test the wits of coach Dave Tippett.

13. Minnesota Wild

These are not your father’s Wild. These are not even last season’s Wild. New coach (Mike Yeo), new attitude (bringing in Dany Heatley and Devin Setoguchi to perk up the offense). But after Mikko Koivu (17-45-62, plus-4, last season), where is the depth at center? And the defense looks as if it will be overmatched on most nights. Folks are going to find out just how good a goalie Niklas Backstrom is. He’s going to get a lot of work.

14. Edmonton Oilers

The Oilers will start the season with four top-ten overall draft picks on their roster. That would be impressive but for the fact that those four picks were taken over the last five years, a reflection of how bad the Oilers have been and how much further they have to come as those youngsters mature. They will be better late than they are early, but not nearly enough to raise them from the lower echelon of the West.

15. Colorado Avalanche

No team in the West will capture the attention of Caps fans over the course of the season more than Colorado. For the Caps own the Avalanche’s top pick in next year’s draft, and it could be a lottery pick if the Avs finish in the bottom five in the league. There is also the matter of the Avs’ new goaltender, Jean-Sebastien Giguere. He’s going to get more than the 33 games of work he got last year in Toronto, because the Avs other new goaltender, Semyon Varlamov (obtained from Washington for that top pick in 2012), has not played as many as 33 games in either of his full seasons in the NHL (his high is 27), a product of repeated leg and groin injuries that have took him out of the lineup in Washington. And Colorado’s defense is such that a goaltender is going to be tested physically. That’s not a good mix.

Your 2011-2012 Prognostos -- The Eastern Conference

Having covered the Caps’ previews, what about prognostications for the rest of the league?  Glad you asked.  We’ll start with the…

Eastern Conference:

1.  Washington Capitals

Salary caps, the draft, free agency all contribute to a sense of parity in the league, and one of the ways that is reflected is in raising questions about even the best teams on paper.  The Caps are one of those teams, and this is arguably the best team they have ever iced – on paper, especially since they inked (in Tomas Vokoun) the lights-out goalie they haven’t had since Olaf Kolzig was carrying the team to a Cup final in 1998.  But disappointing exits in the last three years have uncovered a lack of killer instinct in this team.  The Caps have lacked the “f*** you and the horse you rode in on” gene.  Whether they have changed their genetic makeup with the additions of Joel Ward, Troy Brouwer, Jeff Halpern, Roman Hamrlik, and Vokoun, and/or whether that missing gene can finally express itself in the person of Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, Mike Green, or Alexander Semin is the question about this team.  It really is the only thing that could be lacking.  They have the most talented team in the East – on paper.

2.  Buffalo Sabres

Two things will conspire to make the Sabres the number two seed.  First, they are deeper than they have been in recent years with the additions of Robyn Regehr, Ville Leino, and Christian Ehrhoff.  None of them, by themselves, are game changers, but they could do the same kinds of things for the undercard of the Sabres lineup that the additions the Caps implemented might accomplish.  And that might take some pressure off goalie Ryan Miller to be the man every night.  The other thing is the Stanley Cup hangover.  You know the drill… no team has repeated as Cup champion since the Red Wings did it in 1998.  But there is more, starting with the Detroit Red Wings’ Cup win in 2002, the Cup winner of the previous year failed to get out of Round 1 the following year five times, and one other team (Carolina) failed to qualify for the playoffs.  Only once did a team go past the second round.  Boston will not be immune to that effect and Buffalo will be the beneficiary in the Northeast.

3.  Pittsburgh Penguins

The Penguins finished with the fourth highest point total in the league last season without the services of Sidney Crosby for 41 games and Evgeni Malkin for 38.  It speaks to the motivational talent of head coach Dan Bylsma and the virtue of hard work.  Crosby’s return is assumed, but the precise details are iffy.  Malkin is coming off a significant knee injury.  So, for the Pens, the question is, can they muster up that level of effort again?  They’ll have to as they wait for James Neal to be that scoring winger the club has lacked.  In a division having teams with more question marks than the Pens have, they should win a battle of attrition to finish atop the Atlantic and a three-seed.

4.  Philadelphia Flyers

The Flyers will be the best of a tightly grouped lot in the middle of the other conference playoff eligibles, but not because of anything they do.  Rather the difference between themselves and the Rangers for second in the Atlantic, behind Pittsburgh, will be the absence of Ranger defenseman Marc Staal for the foreseeable future.  They’ll be that close.  We do not buy into the notion that Ilya Bryzgalov is going to take South Philly by storm, or that a team losing Mike Richards and Jeff Carter and gaining a soon-to-be 40-year old Jaromir Jagr as a first line forward is an elite team.  They’ll be good and hard to play against, but not in the top-tier of clubs.

5.  Boston Bruins

Yes, they are the defending Stanley Cup champions.  They also finished the 2010-2011 regular season with a so-so 8-6-4 record and were an overtime from being eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.  Score one for timing and resilience.  But it does not make them the class of the East.  Tim Thomas, though, probably keeps his position as class of the East in goal.  Everything springs from him.  He had a 1.40 goals against average in Bruin wins last season.  Boston lacks an elite offensive player, but made up for that with balance last season – 12 players with at least ten goals, eight with at least 40 points.  It was a successful formula last season, but it might have too many moving parts to swim upstream against a Stanley Cup hangover, especially early.

6.  New York Rangers

These are not your father’s Rangers, if by “father’s,” you mean circa 2000.  This is a gritty, nail-spitting group that plays good defense and has world-class goaltending in Henrik Lundqvist. Adding Brad Richards and the further development of players like Brandon Dubinsky, Ryan Callahan, and Artem Anisimov might have meant a 10-12 point jump in the standings.  But with Marc Staal still suffering the after effects of a concussion sustained last February, the loss of the cornerstone of their defense will be a big hole in that lineup.  If Richards and Marian Gaborik find some instant chemistry, it could mitigate that loss.

7.  Tampa Bay

Tampa Bay had five skaters play all 82 games last season and another seven play at least 75 games.  Health was not an issue.  Not all of those players return, but if the Lightning are to keep pace with the Caps they will have to have a similar run of good luck concerning health.  This is a team that could finish anywhere from a top-three seed to out of the money altogether.  What determines that is whether Dwayne Roloson can fend off Father Time another year in goal at age 42.  If Roloson falters, it will take all of the considerable offensive gifts of Steven Stamkos and Martin St. Louis to qualify for the post season.

8.  Toronto Maple Leafs

Yup, they’re back.  David Steckel is the last piece.  OK, we’re kidding, but the Leafs showed signs of improvement late last season with a 10-7-2 finish after March 1^st (that’s a 95-point pace).  A lot of that was rookie goalie James Reimer, who won 20 games for Toronto last season, all of them in the 2011 portion of the season.  If the Leafs get improvement from Mikhail Grabovski (58 points last season), Phil Kessel (32 goals), and Nikolai Kulemin (57 points), the Leafs could surprise some folks and make their first playoff appearance since before the lockout.  What might hold them back is an injured Nazem Kadri (knee), who otherwise has had difficulty justifying his seventh overall pick in 2009.

The rest…

9. Montreal Canadiens.  Small and quick with a veteran defense and good goaltending gets you to the playoffs.  But lose one of those legs of the stool, and it falls over.  Losing Roman Hamrlik and James Wisniewski will hurt, not to mention Hal Gill (36) and Jaroslav Spacek (37) being another year older.

10.  Carolina Hurricanes.  They always hang around with guys like Eric Staal and Cam Ward in the lineup, and Jeff Skinner was a find last year as a rookie.  But they are not deep enough, especially on defense, to crack the top-eight.

11.  New Jersey Devils.  Last season was like a sandwich with a tasty filling made with moldy bread.  They had that 23-3-2 run in the middle of the season that got them into contention, but before that they were 10-29-2, and after it they were 5-7-1.  A year later, it is a team with a new coach (Peter DeBoer) and a team that is not all that different from the one that finished dead last in offense.  And while it might not be the last year for the legend in goal, Martin Brodeur can see it from his crease.  Pride will get them this far.

12. New York Islanders.  This team is not that far away from being a playoff contender.  The arc of their season might resemble that of the 2006-2007 Capitals, a team that was in the thick of it for 30 games but faded when health issues and lack of talent caught up with them.  The most entertaining story might be how they handle the Rick DiPietro/Evgeny Nabokov/Al Montoya goaltending carousel.  Right now, they are light a forward on the roster, choosing to carry all three goalies.

13.  Winnipeg Jets.  The Jets will come flying off the runway as the adrenaline of a new city and rabid fans bear them up.  But they will run out of fuel by Thanksgiving.  They are still the Atlanta Thrashers – 20^th last year in scoring, 29^th in defense, 27^th in penalty killing, one player with more than 20 goals.  They just are not deep enough to challenge over an 82-game schedule.

14.  Florida Panthers.  Florida is where all the retirees from the north settle to spend their golden years.  Seems the logic applies to the hockey team, too, in a way.  Tomas Kopecky, Jose Theodore, Scottie Upsall, Ed Jovanovski, Marcel Goc, Tomas Fleischmann, Sean Bergenheim, and Matt Bradley.  Free agents all, forsaking more northern latitudes to settle in south Florida.  Nice try, but that’s not going to be enough to move the needle a lot higher than the 27^th-ranked scoring team last season.

15.  Ottawa Senators.  29^th in scoring last season, 24^th in defense.  They were the worst even strength team in the league.  They had 11 players who were minus-10 or worse, three at worse than minus-25.  They had one 20-goal scorer and one 50-point player.  Both happened to be Jason Spezza, who also happens to have missed 42 games the last two seasons.  And Daniel Alfredsson’s games played has gone from 79 to 70 to 54 the last three years.  He will be 39 in December.  It will be a long winter in Ottawa.