The NHL Thread

With only about 30 games left in the NHL season, playoff races are really starting to heat up. Every game becomes a battle, and every point won or lost gets more precious. It's one of the best times to be a hockey fan.

Beyond Tampa, the most interesting clubs are the Maple Leafs and Devils. If either of those teams misses the playoffs, there will be a fan meltdown. Toronto has some truly elite players on the roster, but depth is a concern, and there are goaltending questions. Inconsistency has plagued the Leafs, and they could waste a year with Auston Matthews, William Nylander and Mitch Marner in their primes.

When taking a look at the three rosters, the Stars are probably the most complete team of the bunch. Dallas has the deepest forward group in the NHL, and it could finish with eight 20-goal scorers at this rate. Behind them, Miro Heiskanen is strong No. 1 defenseman, and Thomas Harley has emerged as a potential star. If all else fails, Jake Oettinger can be counted on to erase some mistakes.

The Canucks do have a 10-point lead over the second-place Golden Knights, so this one might be pretty brief. Vancouver has piled up points at an incredible pace this season, and it has left some really talented teams in its dust. That said, there is a chance one of these teams could catch them.

The Canucks have been rolling under Rick Tocchet this season, with stars like Quinn Hughes, Elias Pettersson and Thatcher Demko leading the way. They rank first in goals scored and fourth in goals against. Vancouver has been running hot for a long time now, and a cooldown might be coming, but it has already banked a comfortable lead over its division opponents.

The defending champion Golden Knights have dealt with injuries to Jack Eichel and Adin Hill, but they have managed to keep rolling, nonetheless. Vegas is still a virtual lock to make the postseason, but winning the division is not necessarily this team's focus. The Golden Knights have proven they can endure some regular season swoons before flipping a switch in the postseason. The difference this year is that the first-round matchup might be a lot scarier.

Unfortunately for whoever finishes second or third in this division, likely Vegas, the Oilers got off to a disastrously poor start. Otherwise, they might be atop the division and vying for a Presidents' Trophy. They might finish atop the Pacific anyway because they have been winning at a torrid pace since new head coach Kris Knoblauch took over in November. Connor McDavid is not of this world, Leon Draisaitl is an incredible talent and Edmonton is finally getting good goaltending from Stuart Skinner. I don't think the Oilers will win the division, but they might get close.

The Flames deserve a paragraph of their own because they have actually been playing quality hockey since the New Year, and as a result, they're just a few points out of the playoffs. The problem is that this roster has already started to get picked apart by contenders looking for upgrades. Elias Lindholm was already traded to the Canucks, and Jacob Markstrom is one of the best goalies on the trade market. Then, Chris Tanev and Noah Hanifin could get moved out. It's hard to see Calgary sticking around as it continues to sell.

When Kekalainen took over, 11 years ago almost to the day, this franchise had tasted the playoffs just once—and gotten swept. With his rosters, they won their first-ever postseason games in 2014, then put together a streak of four straight appearances from 2017 to 2020 that would have been pretty forgettable had it not been for the absolute punking they put on the Lightning in 2019. But the building blocks of Columbus's success were soon scattered, and these most recent couple of seasons have been particularly dispiriting. Last year was at bad as it gets—59 points and a minus-116 goal differential—and after a poorly thought-out attempt to let Mike Babcock mold this team, Kekalainen was left this year with a bunch of young guys, unplanned absences, and a murky future.

The lasting impact of Kekalainen, for this nascent franchise still determining its identity, may be his confidence in Columbus as a legit NHL city, even if some top free agents might disagree. He operated the Blue Jackets with a belief that they should not resign themselves to a role as the league's kid brother. When he could have dealt Sergei Bobrovsky's and Artemi Panarin's expiring contracts for longer-lasting assets, he held on and got that indelible sweep of Tampa before watching them leave for Miami and New York. In the following years he weathered the stigma that nobody would want to spend their career in Ohio. When he unexpectedly inked Johnny Gaudreau to a big contract in the summer of 2022, he claimed it as a crowning achievement for his philosophy: “I think we can finally get rid of the bullshit that this is somehow a bad destination, a bad city, whatever."