Flames looking confident
for stalwart Carey Price. á Ottawa is going to be a very tough out every single night, and that’s different. You sense that right away. Oh, they’ll have stretches where they’ll show their youth, but there’s enough young talent and optimism and enthusiasm to overrule that. Tim Stutzle has star power written all over him. Budding young talent Josh Norris could make the entertaining Brady Tkachuk even better, and Thomas Chabot is the real deal on defence. Picked by virtually everyone to finish seventh in the division, your coach will be warning you before every game against the Senators to be ready. Wins won’t come easily in the nation’s capital.
Toronto is a team that appears to be the same. They scare you. You know they can embarrass you on any given night. They have four of the most talented forwards in hockey, Willie Nylander and John Tavares are standing out early, they have an improved
defence and Freddie Anderson is good. They seem deeper, and it looks like they’ll be a tougher team to play against. But somehow, they feel the same to play against. You know how dangerous they are, but somehow they’re vulnerable. The Joe Thornton addition looked very good early with his savvy and positive energy and sharing of knowledge, but that has been derailed by a rib injury that will sideline him for a significant time.
Things haven’t been particularly smooth in Winnipeg, where a combination of factors has kept key players out of the lineup, but they found a way to
win three of their first four games. It feels different, more like the conference finalist team of a couple of years ago. You know how talented Patrik Laine is, and he had a terrific first-game tease before going out with injury. Then all of a sudden the team makes a rare star-player trade early in the year and everything changes. Pierre-Luc Dubois is now a Jet. Now you really don’t know how different Winnipeg will be. Vezina winner Connor Hellebuyck has been himself. They also have a couple of young defencemen, including Finnish star Ville Heinola, who look like they can play. á Edmonton. Wow. It’s been a tough start. Things clearly still revolve around their superstars, Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. They are just so great. But if you can even come close to containing them, you’ll have a chance to beat them. You won’t ever stop them, but slowing them down may be enough. It’s going to take more time to build around them in a championship type of way. An early injury to goalie Mike Smith has put all of the workload on Mikko Koskinen, and an undermanned D without injured Oskar Klefbom hasn’t helped. Early returns are Edmonton is the same. á Calgary feels different. That’s what happens when you’ve addressed what you felt was your biggest need by acquiring goalie Jacob Markstrom. The part about taking him directly from one of your division rivals, Vancouver, is just a bonus. A team that felt like it was idling with the talented group of Matthew Tkachuk, Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan and Elias Lindholm may very well have taken the next step. There’s a certain confidence in their play that comes with feeling like they will get a big save when needed. With points in their first three games, it feels like going into southern Alberta will be a challenge every night. á It’s been a tough start in Vancouver, with the magnifying glass on the goalie tandem of emerging Thatcher Demko and newcomer Braden Holtby. When a major change like that happens, it’s the first thing you think of as an opponent. It’s the first place you think about attacking.
The play of high-end forwards Bo Horvat, Brock Boeser and now J.T. Miller, who was absent early, has been really good, but the slow start of third-year player Elias Pettersson has been really strange. He’s just so good. They’ve been hit hard with injuries on defence, putting Quinn Hughes, Tyler Myers and new guy Nate Schmidt on a pace that will be hard to keep up. In a rare case in the North Division, the Canucks are different early, but not in a positive way.
There are your early returns through the eyes of a player. Sitting in the locker room, lacing up my skates, these are my thoughts about what looks the same and what looks different. No fancy stats, no details, no coaches getting in my way, that’s just what I see. I also know early returns are just that. Dave Poulin is a former NHL player, executive and TSN hockey analyst based in Toronto. He is a freelance contributing columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @djpoulin20