Kukla's Korner Hockey
Ealry Season Play Doesn’t Paint The Whole Picture
by Paul on 10/23/09 at 10:18 AM ET
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from Eric Duhatschek of the Globe and Mail,
For proof, just turn the clock back one year to when two of the hottest teams out of the gate were the Montreal Canadiens in the East and the San Jose Sharks in the West. Both looked unbeatable in the first month, and looked promising all the way through to the All-Star break (San Jose was a sparkling 34-6-4-1; Montreal a more than adequate 27-13-2-4).
By the time April rolled around, all that early promise had evaporated. And by the time it was June, the celebrations were on in Pittsburgh, which was glacially slow out of the gate, out of the playoff picture in early January and subject to the same sort of scrutiny that is going on now in half-a-dozen different locales in the topsy-turvy, up-is-down NHL.
The Phoenix Coyotes and the Colorado Avalanche inexplicably lead the way in the West, while two of the three heavy favourites, the Detroit Red Wings and the Vancouver Canucks stumble along.
Meanwhile, in the Eastern Conference, no quality team is struggling more than the Carolina Hurricanes, a Stanley Cup semi-finalist a year ago who were bad early last year too, only to turn it around after the coaching change from Peter Laviolette to Paul Maurice energized them in the final third of the season and into the playoffs.
read on plus other NHL topics…
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