Earlier today we ran through 16 storylines for the Eastern Conference, now we’re pivoting to the Western Conference. Just like the last piece, I will give you one thingI’m interested in following for each team and explain why.
1.) Jack Campbell in, Mike Smith out. Let’s start out in Edmonton with the most discussed goalie change of the offseason, where the Oilers saw the the pseudo-retirement of Mike Smith and the flagrant tampering signing of Jack Campbell. I’ve been a bit perplexed by the portrayals of this as a massive game changer for the Oilers, but I am fascinated to see it play out. To me, those who portray the Campbell acquisition as a consequential upgrade are the kind of people whose hockey takes are informed by watching Dang-It videos and nothing else. Mike Smith’s SV%, last two seasons: .919. Jack Campbell’s SV%, last two seasons: .916. And if you want to seriously argue that the defense in front of Smith was better than Campbell’s, I have beachfront property in Winnipeg to sell you.
Smith was a one-of-a-kind goalie, the kind of player who would make 7 A+ saves and then let in a center ice goal. Easy to meme, easy for the casually uninformed to bag on while they call into Edmonton talk radio from the parking lot of a Canadian Tire, but in totality, he was a fine goaltender who covered up a lot for a team that has been bottom 10-12 in xGA/60 at 5v5 the last two seasons. Campbell, meanwhile, has been generally okay behind a good defensive team with extended periods of brilliance and profound suckage. I don’t see a major upgrade here for Edmonton, and in fact, there’s some downside risk. Campbell’s high danger SV% numbers in Toronto were consistently bottom of the barrel, and now he’s moving to a system that will expose him to more of those. He’s also extremely injury prone (never played more than 50 games!), so Stuart Skinner as the backup has to be factored in. I assume Edmonton will be able to score enough to make the playoffs regardless of goaltending, but I am less rosy here than some analysts seem to be.
2.) Los Angeles Kings, the old and the young. I don’t really know what to think of the Kings going into this season. They were a 99 point team last season who were excellent in the advanced metrics but underachieved in terms of actual goals, with a milquetoast goal differential and they were unable to close out their first round series against Edmonton. My best guess is the playoff bubble again, but a lot will depend on the two poles of their roster. The Kings relied heavily on aging veterans last season, but also have tremendous upside to unlock in their youth and I’m curious to see how this unfolds in both directions. LA’s leading scorer by 13 points, and the guy who still shoulders the most weight, is Anže Kopitar, who turned 35 this summer. Their playoff goaltender is still Jonathan Quick, who turns 37 this season. And their best defenseman (and highest TOI defenseman by 5 minutes!), though he was hurt for the playoffs, is Drew Doughty, turning 33 this season. Much has been made about all the prospects the Kings stockpiled, yet their three most important players are the same guys who won them Cups a decade ago.
The prospects were heralded, though, and now they’re on the roster. Quinton Byfield is still very young; he only turned 20 this summer. But after 46 ineffective NHL games, it feels like this is a huge season for him to take a step forward. Arthur Kaliyev was a mega-scorer in the OHL and he just finished a middling rookie season. Is he primed to make the leap? Sean Durzi, Mikey Anderson, Jordan Spence, and Tobias Bjornfot all played at least 24 games on defense for the Kings last year. How many of those guys progress towards being true impact defenders? Oh, and the $15 M over three seasons LA owes Cal Petersen, starting this year, means that the goalie needs to pull his weight this season. The Kings could go any of many directions in 2022-23, but a lot hinges on these two buckets, the oldies and the kiddos.
3.) Seattle, an offensive graveyard no longer? When I was asked by Maple Leafs Hot Stove to write a piece on Mark Giordano after the deadline trade went through, Giordano’s offensive impacts were catastrophic. Then over the course of 20 games in Toronto, Giordano proved he was not cooked offensively and instead, was a victim of Seattle. By the end of the season, his offensive impacts had climbed from the bottom fifth percentile at the time of the trade to 36th percentile in Evolving Hockey’s GAR model. Which made me wonder… what the hell was going on in Seattle?
The roster was definitely built around defense, but that doesn’t totally explain it. From personnel to systems, the Kraken were an offensive nightmare in year one, a more concerning trend than Philipp Grubauer forgetting how to play goalie (to me that feels more random). If they want to reel fans back in to the nascent franchise, they need to have a pulse offensively this year and thankfully, I love the potential for improvement here. Andre Burakovsky? Awesome goalscorer. Oliver Bjorkstrand? They got a guy who’s scored at a 60 point pace over the past three seasons, one with impeccable underlying numbers, for a 3rd and 4th rounder. Steal of the offseason. Even getting Justin Schultz, who is over the hill overall but can still move the puck, should help get this thing on wheels offensively. Seattle also now gets a full season of Matty Beniers AND Shane Wright up front… that’s a lot of ammo being added to the offensive arsenal in one offseason. Maybe Dave Hakstol will find a way to biff this again, but I think the Kraken should be a lot more fun this season because Ryan Donato likely won’t be their 4th best goalscorer.
4.) GET JOHN GIBSON A HOBBY. During the extremely tiring goaltender discourse this offseason, the statement I was most consistently puzzled by was “the reason John Gibson’s play falls off a cliff midseason every year is because he gets bored once his team is out of the hunt”, as if that’s an explanation we should accept for why a goaltender making $6.4 M against the cap is consistently a below average goalie. Last time I checked, boredom is not not an acceptable excuse for when a QB plays a bad football game, or a batter strikes out four times in a game. But we’re supposed to accept it for Gibson? Come on, man.
As frustrating as that explanation was logically, the story of Gibson is mystifying. At the end of January, he had a .922 SV%. Post-January, it was .876. This is not a new development either. In 2021, he had a .923 in the first month, then posted an .894 the last three months. In 2020, Gibson had a .910 in the first two months and an .898 the rest of the season. Why does he start strong and then fall off? Your guess is as good as mine, but it’s something I’ll be tracking closely. Anaheim’s rebuild has allowed them to stomach the annual Gibson faceplant in the driveway, but as they round the turn to competitiveness, if Gibson doesn’t get his act together, that contract could be a major problem. He’s got five more seasons at $6.4 M per year and no one wants that noose around their neck while building a young contender out of promising pieces like Trevor Zegras, Jamie Drysdale, and Mason McTavish. At the very least, if it is really a boredom issue, someone ought to get the man a hobby. Take him out in the Pacific and teach him to surf.
5.) Jonathan Huberdeau, $84 M man. The Calgary Flames had one of the craziest offseasons I can ever remember, having two stars quit on their team, yet coming out of the mess with a still-competitive roster. I have no doubt that the Flames will be able to grind teams down and win defensively; they’ve assembled the deepest defensive corps in the NHL for my money. I also assume they’ll get good goaltending most nights (a dangerous thing to assume, I know) with Jacob Markstrom in net. They do need to ride him less in the regular season this year to keep him fresh for the playoffs, but that’s another topic of discussion. Point is, with Darryl Sutter behind the bench and this personnel, Calgary will suffocate enough teams to make the playoffs.
But whether they contend for the Cup comes down to whether Jonathan Huberdeau is That Guy. The Flames paid him $84 M to make him the face of the franchise after the blockbuster trade with Florida, so they certainly believe he’s That Guy. I’m not as sure. Huberdeau has some tremendous gifts. He’s one of the NHL’s top passers, something that shows up in the game tape and the stats. 85 assists is a lot! Huberdeau thrived playing in Florida’s flash-and-dash offensive system and that’s where I get a little iffy, because Calgary’s defensive personnel means they’re not likely to play that same style. Huberdeau will be in a system that requires him, a player infamous for not playing defense, to buy-in defensively. It also will feature fewer weapons around him and Huberdeau will not have the benefit of an all-world center on another line (Sasha Barkov) to soak up the hard minutes. Huberdeau was one of several tremendous offensive talents in Florida. Now he has to be the lone tremendous offensive talent in Calgary, while being asked to play and end of the ice he normally doesn’t. We’ll see if he’s worth his pay.
6.) No one loves bad mediocrity more than the San Jose Sharks. SJ has another big contract decision coming up with Timo Meier, and if their ownership group is in the same place as it was last season, I see them tendering Meier a similarly big contract to the one they gave Tomaš Hertl…. which makes no sense. The Sharks are a bad team with few prospects and laden with bad contracts. That in and of itself is not enough to say “don’t sign good players like Hertl and Meier” but it is time to face the facts. There is no path to this team being a Cup contender in the next five years and trading both of these pieces when they were expiring were tickets to enriching the prospect pool so you can do the rebuild necessary to re-forge a Cup contending core in the Bay.
But the Sharks didn’t want to do that. They locked up Hertl and I’ll be watching to see how they handle Meier. Maybe he tells them “I’m gone” and they’re forced to trade him, but I assume they don’t want to and that’s telling. They want a team with a vague air of competitiveness (don’t bother to check how much they missed the playoffs by!) and icing a roster akin to the Coyotes will obliterate revenue. Sweet, sweet money. It just sucks to see a team doing the wrong thing for their future because their owner needs the money, but it’s a good reminder that this is a business. The Sharks won’t be worth watching on the ice, but it is worth following how the Meier situation unfolds.
7.) Elias Pettersson liftoff time? There are few players I want to see dominate this season more than Elias Pettersson of the Vancouver Canucks. After looking like the league’s next great superstar as a rookie in 2018-19, EP40 has proceeded to… just stay that good and not get any better. It’s been immensely frustrating because the talent is all there, but as he ages closer to his true peak years, I think we’re on the verge of seeing it happening. Of course, I thought so last season too, and then Pettersson began the season in a coma. Through 28 games, he had 4 goals and 13 points and Pettersson, one of the NHL’s best pure shooters, had a shooting percentage of 6.3%. Then Travis Green got fired, Bruce Boudreau was installed, and things turned around, both for Pettersson and the Canucks. The final 43 games were tantalizing: 26 goals and 25 assists for 51 points in 43 games. Shooting percentage mean reversion helped boost that up, but it was a peek into the player Pettersson can be.
2022-23 is a massive season for Pettersson, Boudreau, and the whole Canucks organization. They need to make it back into the playoffs for anyone to be happy and Pettersson will be a big reason why they get there, if they do. There are plenty of things that interest me with Vancouver, the horror show on the blue line, the stellar play of Thatcher Demko, my favorite short king Conor Garland, the Russian mystery man Andrei Kuzmenko, but I want to see Pettersson become a superstar more than anything else with this team.
8.) Logan Thompson’s big moment. I have many concerns about the injury history of the Vegas core, but I still felt they were a good bet to jump back into the playoffs when the main body of the offseason concluded. Then we found out that Robin Lehner would miss the season with hip surgery. It feels like the Golden Knights have to make the playoffs or else this season is a total failure and a lot of that hinges on unproven Logan Thompson, a 25-year-old goalie with 20 career NHL games under his belt. Thompson played 19 of those games last season and he played very well. Thompson was never drafted but was a solid WHL goalie and then was quite successful in the AHL. There is a pedigree here.
Still, the season rests on a goalie with 20 career NHL games who was never a top tier prospect a la Vasilevskiy or Spencer Knight? *Gulp*. Vegas might be the most fascinating team in the NHL this year, with Jack Eichel having a ton to prove, Alex Pietrangelo attempting to fight off further decline, and Mark Stone trying to return to full health, except all of those things could happen and this team may not make the playoffs if Thompson doesn’t do his end of the job. An .895 will torpedo this team no matter what the skaters do. Vegas almost always underperforms their xGF numbers but have gotten good goaltending throughout franchise history. The franchise will be on the verge of entering a totally different era if they can’t get good goaltending again this year.
9.) Where will Arizona rank among the worst NHL teams of the modern era? The Coyotes have loaded up to tank for the 1st overall pick and wow is it a hell of a try. Of the 18 skaters they are likely to ice, there are precisely four who I would see in the lineup of a team that was contending for the playoffs: Nick Schmaltz and Clayton Keller at forward and Jakob Chychrun and Shayne Gostisbehere at defense. That’s it. When Travis Boyd and Lawson Crouse are on your second line and Karel Vejmelka is your starting goaltender, that’s a bad sign! Or a good sign for losing a lot of games, which is the goal.
I struggle to see a way that any team is going to have a worse record than the Coyotes this year, especially if Arizona sells Chychrun in-season. The question for me is how bad can they be? If you look at the worst P% in the Expansion Era, the 22 worst took place in a season that was at least partly in the 20th century. The worst mark for a year fully in the 21st century is the 2019-20 Red Wings, who had 39 points in 71 games when COVID washed out the season. That P% was just a smidge worse than the 2016-17 Avs, who had 48 points in 82 games, and the 2013-14 Sabres, who had 52 points in 82 games. Can the Coyotes do worse than that? I think there’s a legitimate chance. It will require some bad luck, in addition to the atrocious roster. Both those Wings and Avs teams had “everything that can go wrong, went wrong” seasons and while the Coyotes already have a worse roster, they’ll need some guys to have a poor shooting percentage season too. Not out of the question though.
10.) The end of an era in Chicago. Nipping at the heels of Arizona are the Blackhawks, who are poised to disassemble the final remaining pieces of the most successful era in franchise history. I don’t think the Blackhawks will catch Arizona; the existence of Tyler Johnson, Andreas Athanasiou, and Max Domi already give them more NHL-caliber forwards than Arizona has, but they will try. And trying starts with shipping out Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews if they want to be moved. The core from those early 2010s teams have mostly all moved on. Duncan Keith was shipped out last summer and is now retired. Brent Seabrook pseudo-retired years ago, Marian Hossa retired in 2017, Corey Crawford in 2020, but Toews and Kane, the most iconic pieces, are still there. That may change this season.
The Blackhawks will not be watchable this year but Elliotte Friedman’s twitter feed will be, to see if this is the end of the line for Kane and Toews. Neither are going to be traded if they don’t want to, but given the reports that both are disgruntled with the franchise’s rebuilding direction, I assume at least one will agree to be moved. If that happens, it will be the final sign that the old era is gone, like when my Detroit Tigers shipped out Verlander in 2017. Tearful for Blackhawks fans but needed given the franchise’s trajectory. However, if we want to take the Verlander comparison further, Chicago needs to figure out how to get fair value from these guys. There will be an abundance of bidders for Kane especially, but the Blackhawks cannot settle and sell because they feel like they have to. Kyle Davidson already got short-changed on the DeBrincat deal, it can’t happen again.
11.) Rick Bowness, the relationship counselor. The Winnipeg Jets were the team I went into the offseason saying “they’ve gotta make some big moves”. Then they decided to put all their chips on landing coach Barry Trotz. I didn’t love that idea because the roster had deeper issues, but perhaps a legendary, respected coach, one of the few game changers the NHL has behind the bench, could fix this without major changes. Then they didn’t get Trotz AND didn’t make big moves. Instead, this deeply flawed roster, which has gotten worse every year for the last half-decade and one seemingly dealing with profound chemistry problems, is being run back with no structural changes besides new coach Rick Bowness, the ultimate retread.
The problems for the Jets run deep before we consider the locker room trouble. The defensive group is well below average and their forward depth, once pretty solid, has been hollowed out to a bottom six with the likes of Adam Lowry, Sam Gagner, Dominic Toninato, and Jansen Harkins. Their star scorers, who are excellent offensive players, don’t play a whiff of defense. And yeah, the alleged locker room troubles: Paul Stastny said that the players needed to "have more respect for each other" on his way out the door after the season, both Scheifele and Dubois supposedly wanted out, their previous coach Paul Maurice quit on the team mid-season, and now team management has stripped Blake Wheeler of the captaincy.
Amid all of this, the reason for optimism with this team is… Rick Bowness? They certainly needed new coaching, but the team didn’t improve after Maurice resigned last season and the new hope is that Bowness will have the magic touch? Bowness has coached six different teams across 12 seasons and has a career record of 212-351-48-28. He has one Cup Final appearance riding Anton Khudobin in the bizarro bubble but there’s nothing here to suggest he is the sort of impact coach who will turn this around. That is, unless he turns out to be a relationship counselor who knows how to get these guys to like each other again. He’s not going to be able to fix the defense and doesn’t seem to have the chops to engineer a massive improvement, but maybe if morale and chemistry in the locker room improves, that will fix more problems than we thought. So please Mr. Bowness, start your tenure by asking Mark Schiefele “Do you feel loved? How do you feel on a daily basis?”
12.) Can St. Louis’ shooting voodoo continue? Last season, the Blues had a xGF% of 48.6% at 5v5. Their GF% at 5v5 was 54.2%. That’s right, they outperformed their expected goals by a full 5.6%. Though the Blues did beat their expected goals on defense by a small margin, the vast majority of that gap came from the offense and shooting percentage in particular. The Blues shot a full 1% better than any other team in all situations last season and the individual numbers are staggering. Vladimir Tarasenko, Robert Thomas, Pavel Bucnevich, Jordan Kyrou, Ivan Barbashev, Brayden Schenn, David Perron, and Brandon Saad all scored at least 20 goals last season and all got there by shooting at least 14.4%, which is 3% better than the NHL average. Barbashev and Schenn both shot >21% and Thomas shot 17.44%. Everything we know about shooting percentages tells us that this is not sustainable.
The Central Division has several playoff teams who I am skeptical of, all of which with reasons they could be worse this season, but the Blues’ is quite obvious. If they don’t get the same shooting luck and play like the team that expected goals models pegged them as, they are in trouble. Granted, the Blues have outperformed their expected goals for years, but never by this amount. If it falls back to overperforming by only a couple percentage points, that puts them in dicey waters. The goaltending on this team looks shaky– I don’t love a Jordan Binnington/Thomas Greiss tandem– so it’s all the more reason why continued shooting luck is pivotal.
13.) Mason Marchment: one hit wonder or secret superstar? After being a dull team that made me want to put a hatchet through the TV for the last several years, the Dallas Stars are loaded with intrigue. They gave up a first rounder for defensive prospect Nils Lundkvist, which could be a storyline in and of itself. So could the decision to give shorter term deals to prized RFAs Jason Robertson and Jake Oettinger. But for my money what takes the cake is what happened in UFA, the signing of Mason Marchment. After seeming like a career AHLer and being traded from Toronto to Florida, Marchment suddenly exploded with the Panthers last season. He scored 47 points in 54 games despite playing only ~14 minutes per night(!) with next to no PP time (only two PP points!!!!!). His 5v5 point production per 60 was among the very best in the entire NHL. And this was for a 26-year-old undrafted forward with 11 points in 37 career games prior to this season.
So, what is going on here? Marchment played in a very friendly offensive system in Florida, and had his best success on a line with Anton Lundell and Sam Reinhart, two very talented offensive players. I think that is a contributing factor no question, but I’m not sure it completely explains it. Maybe he’s a player who simply figured it out? I don’t think he’s quite the elite 5v5 player that his stats suggest he is but I’m highly interested to find out. Dallas will be a different environment, especially if he is playing with the likes of Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin, two aging ex-studs in decline. The Stars have not been a hospitable offensive system the last few years but there’s also a new coach to account for in Pete DeBoer. I don’t know how this one turns out, but for Dallas’ sake, they have to hope Marchment is more than a one-hit wonder.
14.) Nashville’s aging blue line. I went into this offseason feeling like the Predators had a big opportunity to build a deeper forward group and up their firepower. They had a surprising amount of cap space for a playoff team and this was a deep free agent class. They re-signed Filip Forsberg, and Nino Niederreiter was a savvy pickup, but rather than spending the remaining space to get one more impact addition (Burakovsky?), the Predators made an extremely puzzling trade for Ryan McDonagh. The veteran defender was still a solid player last season, but he showed decline from preceding seasons and has four more years on his contract at $6.75 M AAV. Not just did the Predators let the Lightning off the hook for a contract that will likely be ugly very soon, but they have added another old defenseman with a big cap hit.
Nashville now has three defensemen, Mattias Ekholm, Roman Josi, and McDonagh, who are all at least 32 years old and all have at least four years remaining at at least $6.25 M per season. In the immediate present, all three players are above average, but I’m not sure how much longer that will be the case. It might not be this year! Signing up for another aging defenseman was confusing and if I’m looking for reasons why the Predators could miss the playoffs, besides shooting luck reverting up front, if any of these three guys see steep falls in their play, that could be another reason. The Predators don’t have a ton of young players on the blue line, so there’s also not much cushion if injuries occur. They need these three to be healthy and for the sake of the franchise’s future, they need them to age immaculately. I don’t feel great about that, but the first test is 2022-23.
15.) The Minnesota Wild’s kids. Minnesota now enters the very grim cap situation created by the buyouts of Ryan Suter and Zach Parise. Starting this year, those two players (who do not play for the Wild), will account for between $12-15 M in cap space, seriously hamstringing a playoff contending team. How do you work around a black hole in the cap like that? Get incredible production from players on entry level contracts. Luckily for the Wild, they have some candidates to give them just that. Matt Boldy, making just $880,833 this season, was electrifying last year in a 47 game trial (39 points). Marco Rossi, making $863,333, scored 53 points in 63 games in the AHL last season and is now ready to make the jump to the NHL. Defenseman Calen Addison, making $795,000, scored 34 points in 43 games in the AHL last year and is also ready for a full-time NHL trial.
Those three players hold the keys to taking the Wild to the next level. We could talk about Marc-Andre Fleury in net, but that’s the randomness of goaltending and age curves at play. Talking about three of the league’s most promising prospects all joining the NHL full-time this season is more interesting to me. The Wild have an awesome top line with Kirill Kaprizov, a shutdown line with Marcus Foligno and Joel Eriksson Ek, but to contend in the West they need a second scoring line, especially with Kevin Fiala leaving in the offseason. A line with Rossi centering Boldy has a shot to be that, while Calen Addison on defense can be an offensive sparkplug on the third pair. Emphasis on “could”, but it’s not too often that a contender is putting so much faith in rookies. We’ll see if it pans out.
16.) Alexandar Georgiev, the reclamation project. I tried not to talk about goaltending a lot in this piece because it’s all so random. This is only the fourth bullet I’m spending on goaltending, but the state of goaltending for the defending champion Colorado Avalanche warranted it. In 2020-21, Philipp Grubauer had a terrific season for Colorado, then walked in free agency. The Avs responded by bringing in Darcy Kuemper in the summer of 2021, a proven goalie with a long track record. He had a terrific regular season, suffered an injury but toughed it out in the playoffs to win a Cup. Now he’s gone in free agency too. The third starting goalie in as many years seems to be Alexandar Georgiev, although Pavel Francouz is still an option on the payroll. In terms of goalie fliers, Georgiev is a bit of a stab-in-the-dark, at least relative to Kuemper.
Georgiev was a goalie I liked a lot on the rebuilding Rangers in 2018-19, and even the next year. But his numbers declined two straight years, cratering last season. I am willing to buy that a chunk of that disappointment is related to his frustration with being passed on the depth chart by Igor Shesterkin. However, even Georgiev at his best a few years ago was only playing 30-35 games a season and posting a .910-.915 SV%. That’s a cut below Darcy Kuemper and even Grubauer the year he was a Vezina finalist. So it comes down to: will the Avs fix Georgiev and make a good starter out of him, or is there real reason to be concerned? Colorado has earned the right to get the benefit of the doubt with goalies but I can’t rule out a scenario where the Avs are looking for a starter at the deadline.