Now that we are one month into the season, the trends that have evolved to this point have a little more schtick to them than they did at the beginning of the year; namely the Boston Bruins are on their ‘revenge tour’.
The league has taken notice that the big bad Boston Bruins are once again back to be Stanley Cup contenders thanks to the help of David Pastrnak and his MVP caliber month in October.
Nearly the entire Atlantic division has something to brag about as six of eight teams are above .500 at this point in the season.
Interestingly Toronto and Tampa Bay who both secured playoffs spots last season, currently sit outside the playoff picture after 5 weeks of NHL action. However, Buffalo who missed the playoffs again in 2018-2019 began this season red-hot due to an easy strength of schedule and since then are 5-4-1 in their last 10.
This start is one that Bruins fans could only have imagined for the reigning Stanley Cup finalists and boy are the boys in black and gold fun to watch right now. Based on the first five weeks of the 2019-2020 NHL season, here are my Atlantic Division power rankings:
The long season continues for the Ottawa Senators as they are amid a 4-5-1 run after a blowout loss to the Boston Bruins on Saturday Night.
Ottawa held the Bruins off in the first period of action on Saturday in part due to an unusual start to the game when Senators player Scott Sabourin left the game in a stretcher, and the rest of the period was played very cautiously by both teams.
I have noted that Brady Tkachuk is an A+ caliber talent and will be leaned on by their organization for years to come. In matter of fact, both Tkachuk brothers look to be future stars in this league, following the footsteps of future hall of famer and father Keith Tkachuk. Boston next visits the Senators on November 27th.
I contemplated putting Detroit in the seventh spot as they’ve been playing bad hockey lately. Dylan Larkin and his team even lost to the Ottawa Senators 5-2 two weeks ago…which that alone would be enough reason to put them last in the division rankings.
Detroit has been outscored 11-3 in its last two games (not good) and play three games in the next four nights when they face Boston this Thursday on home ice (not good). There’s not a lot of good things to say about Detroit right now…maybe they should be ranked at seven.
Detroit lost 6-1 to the Predators on Monday evening. You can now slide them down with Ottawa at eight.