The Biggest Takeaways from the 1st Quarter of the 2014-15 NHL Season

Time flies when you're having fun.

One-quarter of the National Hockey League's 2014-15 regular season is already in the books. Fans have been treated to some terrific hockey, from both established stars and emerging players. For the most part, the focus has stayed on the game; issues of player safety and supplemental discipline have remained mostly in the background.

We're now getting deep enough into the grind to believe that a team's hot or cold starts could set the barometers for their results this year. We're also seeing plenty of new names mixing in with the league's established stars as some of the top performers of the season so far.

Here are the six biggest takeaways from the first quarter of this year's NHL campaign.

All stats current through games Sunday, November 23, courtesy of NHL.com.

Upstarts Rattle the Standings

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Fortunes change quickly in the era of NHL parity.

Of the 16 teams that made the playoffs in 2013-14, five are sitting outside the postseason picture after Sunday's games. The 2014 Eastern Conference champion New York Rangers have just squeaked into third place in the Metropolitan Division after Sunday's 5-0 shutout of the Montreal Canadiens.

This isn't a bubble situation, either—four teams that missed the playoffs last year are currently ranked among the NHL's top 10 teams, balanced against four teams that have fallen from contender status into the league's bottom 10.

After an impressive 4-1 win over the Chicago Blackhawks on Sunday, the Vancouver Canucks lead the resurgent teams with a 14-6-1 record, good for fifth place overall. The Nashville Predators, Calgary Flames and New York Islanders all sit just one point behind Vancouver. All are looking like they might be able to hang among the contenders for the long haul.

At the other end of the spectrum, injuries have derailed a promising Columbus Blue Jackets team, dropping them to 28th place overall with a 6-12-2 record. The situation's not much better for the Philadelphia Flyers, Colorado Avalanche and Dallas Stars, who have all failed to capitalize on the momentum they built last year.

If the early trends continue, we could see quite a few fresh faces in the playoff picture next April.

Tough for Teams to Improve Through Trades

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Salary-cap management has virtually eliminated the garden-variety in-season trade in the National Hockey League.

Deals go down during the summer and at the annual trade deadline. These days, even when teams have specific ideas about how they'd like to improve, it's pretty tough to find a partner who can take on the personnel and cap hits that they hope to divest in the process.

According to TSN's TradeCentre page, after a few deals were made right before the new season began, there wasn't a single NHL trade for nearly five weeks.

The Dallas Stars broke the seal when they traded Sergei Gonchar to the Montreal Canadiens for Travis Moen on November 11. Two more trades on November 20 bring the total number of deals to three so far.

All season long, the rumors will swirl. But the days when a game-changing trade comes down have become few and far between in today's NHL.

Filip Forsberg Early Favorite for Calder

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When the Washington Capitals called the Nashville Predators to inquire about winger Martin Erat at the 2013 trade deadline, general manager David Poile was able to exact a high price from a team that hoped to make a playoff push that spring. For Erat, Nashville received the 11th overall pick from 2012, center Filip Forsberg.

Just over a year later, the deal is looking like it could turn out to be one of the most lopsided trades in NHL history. Erat played just four playoff games with the Capitals in 2013 before suffering a wrist injury. He was then shuffled off to the Arizona Coyotes at the 2014 deadline.

This season, Forsberg has become the front-runner for the 2014 Calder Trophy. He's on his way to becoming the Predators' first true offensive star in franchise history.

At just 20 years old, Forsberg has exploded with nine goals and 13 assists in his first 20 games this season, easily leading all rookies in scoring. He has also demonstrated his two-way skills by recording a jaw-dropping plus-20, first in the entire National Hockey League.

Forsberg's being chased for the Calder by more highly touted prospects like Aaron Ekblad of the Florida Panthers and Jonathan Drouin of the Tampa Bay Lightning. A trio of Calgary Flames are also in the top 10 in rookie scoring: Johnny Gaudreau (3-12-15), Josh Jooris (5-4-9) and Markus Granlund (3-6-9).

It's a long season. Forsberg has opened up a comfortable early lead, but will need to maintain his torrid pace if he hopes to follow in Gabriel Landeskog's footsteps from 2011-12 and become the next Swede to capture the Calder.

Changing of the Guard on the Blue Line

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Hands up: Who thought Mark Giordano would be the leading contender for the Norris Trophy at the quarter pole of the 2014-15 season?

Not only has the Calgary Flames captain anchored his team's impressive turnaround this year, he's playing responsible defensive hockey and scoring at a point-a-game pace.

Erik Karlsson led all defensemen in scoring in 2013-14 with 74 points, but he finished the season with a minus-15. This year, Giordano has six goals and 17 assists for 23 points in 22 games and is a plus-10 to boot.

Some other new names in the Norris discussion include Giordano's teammate T.J. Brodie (16 points, plus-12), Anton Stralman of the Tampa Bay Lightning (12 points, plus-12) and Kevin Shattenkirk of the St. Louis Blues (16 points, plus-eight).

Before the season began, our panel of Bleacher Report hockey experts pegged Alex Pietrangelo, Drew Doughty, P.K. Subban, Shea Weber and Ryan Suter as the top five Norris favorites. That group has some work ahead any of those players hope to unseat this year's upstarts.

Fighting's Not Disappearing as Fast as You Might Think

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Fighting in the NHL is not disappearing as quickly as some might think.

According to HockeyFights.com, there have been 112 fights across 311 NHL games this season, an average of 0.36 fights per game. That's just a couple of ticks off the 2013-14 number, which was 0.38 fights per game. but it's a big drop from the recent peak in 2008-09, when we saw 0.60 fights per game.

Last season's top fighter was Tom Sestito of the Vancouver Canucks, who picked up 19 fighting majors in 77 games—three more than second-place Rich Clune of the Nashville Predators.

One quarter of the way through this season, three players are on track to eclipse Sestito's mark. Brandon Prust of the Montreal Canadiens, Cody McLeod of the Colorado Avalanche and Jared Boll of the Columbus Blue Jackets have each logged five fights already, putting them within punching distance of the 20-fight mark for the season. Prust's most recent tilt came on Sunday against Kevin Klein of the New York Rangers.

Yes, the role of the designated enforcer is becoming more and more obsolete—Sestito, for instance, dressed for just two games with the Canucks this season before he was sidelined with a lower body injury on November 2. But from what we've seen so far this year, fighting refuses to disappear completely from the NHL game.

The Connor McDavid Sweepstakes Is on

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Whether by accident or design, competition is strong for the NHL's prime draft lottery positions.

This year's top prospects, Canada's Connor McDavid and the United States' Jack Eichel are both projected to be "generational players." Eric Duhatschek of The Globe and Mail says the two centers are the types of players who "can take a team from truly bad to really good in short order." Think of how first overall pick Sidney Crosby transformed the Pittsburgh Penguins a decade ago.

Duhatschek explains that, while the NHL is making tweaks to the draft lottery rules in order to make the system more equitable, the team that finishes last this season won't pick lower than second overall—thereby presumably guaranteeing themselves either McDavid or Eichel.

It's a strong incentive to try to finish at the bottom of the standings. Through Sunday's games, three teams are tied in their pursuit of last place with 14 points: the Buffalo Sabres, Columbus Blue Jackets and Edmonton Oilers. The Carolina Hurricanes are one point up in 27th.

No team will admit to tanking to secure a good draft pick; that's what the lottery aims to prevent. But there's already a gap of 10 points between the bottom of the standings and the final wild-card spots in both conferences.

Only one team can finish last. It's going to be a battle to see who can fail most successfully.