1. Nikita Keucherov and the Lightnings hot week: There may be no hotter team in the league right now than the Tampa Bay lightning. The Lightning have won two of their three games this week and there only loss came while picking up points in a shootout with another red hot eastern conference team in the New Jersey Devils. The Lightning are winning with everything. Nikita Kuecherov is the hottest scorer in the NHL right now with 8 points in his last five games. Andrei Vasilevskiy has a shutout and a 2.57 GAA through 7 games played making him one of the hottest goalies in the league right now.
2. The Toronto Maple Leafs are the best offensive team in hockey right now with 34 goals over two weeks. Its incredibly impressive you start to worry about them cooling off at the wrong time but with Auston Matthews and newly promoted center Connor Brown the Leaf’s look unstoppable. Fredrick Anderson also looks to be figuring things out and had a shutout against the Capitols this week.
3. The New Jersey Devils are a fast young exciting team to watch: Nico Hischier scored his first 2 NHL goals against the Senators late this week, boy the Sens sure do like giving rookies big debuts against them, the Devils Yesper Bratt and Taylor Hall are just two more hot players this team has right now. It also helps that they have Corey Schneider in goal who has four wins in 6 appearances. This team is going to lean hard on the offense and though it may not work down the stretch in the beginning it sure is fun to watch.
4. Struggles in the old guard: To move to the new you must discard the old. The New York Rangers Montreal Canadiens and Boston Bruins are off to rough starts. The roughest of which is the Canadiens 1 win 6 regulation losses and 1 overtime loss does not bode well in one of the most hockey hungry markets in the league. Everything is going wrong for this team and I’ve been preaching a steep decline for years. If you lean on Carey Price this heavily and get no scoring pieces on your team eventually Price will break down. The Stats speak to that 33 goals against in 8 games. Perhaps its time for a rebuild in Montreal, that Starts with trading Carey Price for a king’s ransom for a team that feels they are a goal tender away. What about Calgary?
5. So much excitement in the east but don’t forget the west: The front runner right now is Saint Louis. Over the last week the Blues have two wins over two key division opponents. A 5-2 smoking of the Black hawks that featured a Jaden Schwartz hat trick and a 4-3 win on Thursday over the Avalanche who suddenly look like the team we thought they would be. The Blues are a top the central and cruising.
6. The Nashville Predators are back to the Nashville Predators: After a rocky start for the Stanley Cup runner ups this week everything really started clicking for the Preds. Who have won two straight and stole a point away from the Blackhawks in an overtime loss. The Puck movement is so much better looking this year and Pekka Rinne is silently having a Vienza year start.
7. The top five teams of week 2:
1. Tampa Bay Lightning
2. Toronto Maple Leaf’s
3. Saint Louis Blues
4. New Jersey Devils
5. Los Angeles Kings