Atlantic Division Power Rankings: Boston Bruins top after October

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.

The Sabres are quickly spinning back to reality and are in danger of dropping farther in the division rankings should they have a tough upcoming weekend against the Tampa Bay Lightning. Eichel and his teammates seem to have lost their scoring prowess that helped them earn many of their wins early in the season as they now have only scored two goals or less in each of their last five games.

Buffalo still has a ridiculous 26.52% success rate on the power play this year led primarily by NHL rookie Victor Olofsson who has 10 of his 12 points from the powerplay in 2019.

The Boston Bruins will test their above-league-average penalty kill against Olofsson and the Sabers when they face-off against them for the first time on November 21st.

Here come the Panthers. As you may recall, I was a big believer in the Panthers when the season began and after falling short of my early expectations, the team is now finding their rhythm.

They still haven’t received the goaltending they were hoping for when they signed Bobrovsky to his $70 million ticket, but I’m betting his performance will improve sometime this month.

The Panthers have earned wins against the likes of the Predators, Penguins, and Avalanche lately while scoring at least four goals in 4 of the last 5 games. This is a team that will seriously challenge for a top three spot in the division at season’s end and should play the Boston Bruins hard in their first match-up of the season on November 12th.

Forget first place in the Atlantic Division, are the Bruins the best team in the NHL? As I mentioned earlier, the Boston Bruins have had a historic start to the 2019 season and are playing some of the best hockey I’ve watched them play since 2013.

David Pastrnak and the Perfection Line are ridiculously hot right now, but it makes you wonder how long they can keep the pace for and when we will see some more pucks in the net by the third- and fourth-line workhorses.

The black and gold play seven in-division games this month and all but one is played against Eastern Conference rivals.

I’ve noticed that the coaching staff are doing a good job of managing players minutes early in the season and we are often seeing new guys inserted into the lineup on a nightly basis. If you tag that with the success of the Providence Bruins, I wouldn’t be shocked to see the Bruins use some call-ups this month in relief of some of the veterans on the team.

In fact, Bruins fans got a good taste of this when Zach Senyshyn (taken 15th overall in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft) got the call-up against the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday night.

Its fun being a Bruins fan right now, so sit back and enjoy it folks.