Pretty surprising, actually. The Rangers continue their free fall on every power ranking, the Islanders stay somewhat solid, and the Capitals still get no respect.
ESPN continues their not-making-any-sense-whatsoever and apparent western conference bias with their rankings. The Sporting News is a little more reasonable. ESPN ranked both the Blackhawks and Sharks above the Capitals whereas The Sporting News put them at number 2, behind only San Jose. The Sporting News also dropped the Hawks to number 4, which is pretty accurate considering their woes over the past week. ESPN apparently doesn’t see that as a real reason for them to drop anywhere. Whatever, though. No sense even bothering with ESPN’s analysis on hockey, or well, any other sport, since they also were picking the Jets over the Colts. I digress.
Capitals have won something like 9 out of 10 of their last games and they have allowed fewer goals in 5-on-5 situations than any other team in the league. Oh, their powerplay is clicking around 26%, for best in the league. Simply put, the Capitals should have put most doubters to bed this year, even if Mike Milbury did call them the “Crapitals,” but what did he ever know about hockey anyway?
The Rangers looked dominant coming into this week, just destroying Montreal and Tampa Bay, scoring 14 goals through two games this week, then they lost a hard fought (literally) game to Philadelphia, and were absolutely ABYSMAL against Montreal for their second go with Les Habitants, Montreal, who seem to be on an upswing since beating out NJ at the Rock. I’m expecting Montreal to put together a run, and I feel like I always pick them to go pretty deep every time they make the playoffs, and this year isn’t really any different.
Woes continue in Beantown, where they’ve dropped 5 straight and have a horrible 2-7-1 record over the last 10. Injuries have caught up with them, and as a result, they’re losing games they should be able to win. Detroit is still out of playoff contention right now, but unlike Boston, Red Wings fans should hold back on the complaining, now you know how the rest of the league has felt the past 16 or so years, ya jerks.
Philadelphia still won’t get the respect they probably should just for the simple fact that they’re so cocky about everything. Buffalo, however, was looking great, now, not so much, every team has their ups and downs and it seems the Sabres are in the middle of a down. Phoenix really proved themselves, even in their loss to Washington, they’re a tough team to play, with a never say die attitude, they’re not the shock of the year anymore, they’re in playoff contention because they want to be, and they do what they need to do to stay there, kudos Phoenix, and I still believe the desert deserves a team, too.
The Islanders, ah, where to start with the Isles. They’re a good team, especially at home. However, playoff berths are usually a result of road wins, where the team is better than they were last year, but still not great. They have 2 games they can prove themselves in this week, the first of which, I’ll be attending, against the Washington Capitals at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Tuesday. The Isles and Caps have actually matched up well over the last two seasons, pretty much every game they’ve played the last two seasons have been decided either in OT or a shootout, and the last time they played the Isles came away with a win at the Verizon Center, arguably one of the toughest places to play a game in the east. The second game this week is on Saturday, in Philadelphia, since the Flyers seem to be on the upswing and they’re never an easy win, regardless of what their record says.
Carolina, which is a team the Isles will play in the middle of the week, have been playing some good hockey recently. They dropped a tough game earlier this week to the Lightning in overtime, which they rebounded from with a convincing win against the Thrashers. They then dropped 2 points to Philly and bounced back with a 5-1 crushing of the Bruins. They’ve been up and down, and somewhat inconsistent, but they’ve been playing better than they did earlier this year, that’s for sure. They see two New York teams this week, the Rangers first, then the Isles, and then they see Chicago on Saturday. They can use wins, even if they’re realistically out of the playoffs.
I don’t know what else I could add here, I’m sure there’s a few teams I missed/believe it or not, I just down right don’t care about some teams, call me biased, but the truth is, I don’t care.
