Why Your NHL Team Won't Win the 2016-17 Stanley Cup

There are no perfect NHL teams. The salary cap, if nothing else, would guarantee that; each general manager has limited resources and faces intense competition as he attempts to build a Stanley Cup-capable squad.

This piece is dedicated to the problems yet to be solved by those GMs. It’s a safe bet that any manager worth his paycheck is constantly assessing his team, looking for ways to improve it and coax a few more goals and points in the standings out of his roster with the ultimate goal of winning a championship.

The size and quantity of the problems faced by each team varies greatly, but we’ve identified at least one issue for each NHL team in the early season.

Anaheim Ducks: Lack of forward depth

Jae C. Hong/Associated Press/Associated Press

Maybe the most telling stat is scoring chances. The Ducks’ usual fourth line is composed of Ryan Getzlaf (presently injured), Corey Perry and Nick Ritchie. When that trio is on the ice at five-on-five, Anaheim has a 22-11 edge in scoring chances (67 percent, or plus-11). When any other trio of forwards is on the ice, the Ducks are outchanced 61-43 (41 percent, or minus-18). The top line’s been great, but this team needs more out of the rest of its forward units.

Arizona Coyotes: Losing the possession battle in a landslide

Although mileage varies on the degree to which shot metrics can be used to judge individual players, there isn’t a lot of debate that teams need to tilt the ice in the right direction to enjoy long-term success. Arizona is not such a team. The Coyotes rank 25th leaguewide in Corsi and 30th in Fenwick (which takes blocked shots out of the equation).          

Boston Bruins: Overreliance on Zdeno Chara

Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports

For a decade in the early 2000s, Zdeno Chara was perhaps the NHL’s best defenceman, even if the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association only saw fit to give him a single Norris Trophy over that span. He turns 40 in March, though, and it’s time for the Bruins to start shifting responsibility on to the rest of their defence corps.

The trouble is that Boston doesn’t have a better internal option, so Chara is doing it all again. He’s playing nearly 24 minutes per game, facing the toughest opponents and taking on the toughest zone-starts of any Bruins’ blueliner, all while playing with a teenager in his first pro campaign. Expecting him to do it at 40 for four playoff rounds just isn’t reasonable.

Buffalo Sabres: Possession metrics

Like Arizona, the Sabres tend to get outshot. By a lot. The club is hovering at a 47 percent Corsi rating, having allowed an average of five additional shot attempts against per game than it has managed to produce itself. Over a season, that adds up to a deficit of more than 400 shot attempts, and it takes phenomenal goaltending and finishing ability just to survive that, let alone thrive.

Getting Jack Eichel back will help, but it may not be enough to reverse that kind of inadequacy.

Calgary Flames: The top line isn’t working

Sergei Belski-USA TODAY Sports

The Flames beat the San Jose Sharks 3-2 on Thursday, but an ongoing problem continued unabated: The team’s best players simply haven’t been its best players. With Johnny Gaudreau on the ice, Calgary was outshot 12-5, outchanced 11-2, and out-Corsied 22-11.

Gaudreau and Sean Monahan have combined for just 11 points over 24 man-games this season. Each sports an ugly minus-nine rating and an on-ice Corsi number under 45 percent. Somehow, the Flames have to get their top duo running again.

Carolina Hurricanes: Goaltending problems

It’s been more than a decade since a rookie Cam Ward backstopped Carolina to its first and so far only championship, and it’s been five seasons since he last posted an NHL-average save percentage. Nevertheless, he’s somehow still the Canes' choice as starting goaltender, and his 0.882 save percentage this season does much to explain the club’s early struggles. Backup Eddie Lack, coming off a 0.901 save percentage campaign, has somehow been even worse.

Chicago Blackhawks: The salary cap

Chris Szagola/Associated Press

Remember when Chicago built that great team and then had to tear it all down because Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane were coming out of their entry-level deals? Remember when they rebuilt that team again, finding a whole new set of secondary players, and then were forced to tear that down because Toews and Kane were bound for unrestricted free agency?

General manager Stan Bowman has done (almost) everything right, prioritizing his core and cutting where he had to, but there’s no question that Chicago has been a victim of its own success. With more than half the roster on deals worth less than $1.0 million, it’s hard to see how the ‘Hawks are going to compete with teams that have four good lines.

Colorado Avalanche: Shot generation

The Avalanche have averaged 51 shot attempts per hour at five-on-five this season, a number marginally better than last season’s 50 per hour. Although the team has made impressive strides in reducing shots against (strides which have been largely undone by Semyon Varlamov’s poor play) it continues to struggle when it comes to generating pressure in the opposition zone.

Columbus Blue Jackets: Shot suppression

Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press

Goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky has played every game for the Blue Jackets thus far, posting an incredible 0.941 save percentage. He’s had to be good, though, because in an average hour of playing time at five-on-five, Columbus has surrendered more than 33 shots. That’s the third-worst total in the NHL, and it goes a long way toward explaining how the club is just 0.500 with Vezina-caliber goaltending every night.

Dallas Stars: Middling goaltenders and a green blue line

A key component in the Stars’ exit from the postseason last year was poor goaltending, with neither Kari Lehtonen (0.899) nor Antti Niemi (0.865) posting an even semi-respectable save percentage. Both goalies are back, and just for good measure this summer, general manager Jim Nill purged a bunch of veterans from the defence corps. Five of the eight defencemen on the roster are under the age of 25, which is always a risky strategy but especially so without a strong starting option.  

Detroit Red Wings: Pavel Datsyuk doesn’t play here any longer

Raj Mehta-USA TODAY Sports

Even in the twilight of his NHL career, Pavel Datsyuk was a difference-maker for the Red Wings. The team’s percentage by either Corsi or scoring chances jumped six percent when he stepped off the bench and on to the ice at even strength last season. It’s not a surprise, then, to see the Red Wings rocking a 46 percent Corsi rating in the early season after sitting at 52 percent last year.

Edmonton Oilers: Too many moving parts

Although the Oilers are blessed with perhaps the game’s brightest star in Connor McDavid, there’s still a lot of uncertainty about the pieces surrounding him. Despite Edmonton’s reputation for offence, scoring depth has long been a problem, and the summer subtraction of Taylor Hall isn’t going to help matters. The perpetually troublesome defence has been rebuilt, but there are questions of health and performance on virtually every pairing.

It simply isn’t realistic to hope that all of the team’s problems have been sorted out with no troublesome side effects over the course of a single summer of activity.

Florida Panthers: Lack of past playoff success

Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press

In a way, this is the same problem the Oilers have. Florida hasn’t won a playoff series since 1996, and last year’s six-game loss to the Islanders was the team’s first playoff appearance in four years. It takes an awfully big jump to go from one-and-done to Cup-winner, especially when one-and-done was notable as a franchise high point.

The Panthers made a ton of offseason changes, and with so much change always comes uncertainty and the likelihood of failure somewhere along the way. Early indications are good, but the team may need to build more of a base before it can win it all. 

Los Angeles Kings: A distinct lack of scoring threats

The Kings beat Pittsburgh 3-2 in overtime on Thursday, getting goals from Trevor Lewis, Matt Greene and Nic Dowd. The victory ended a three-game scoreless streak that saw L.A. go head-to-head with a trio of potential playoff opponents and fail to score on any of them.

Offence has often been an issue for Los Angeles, even when things have gone well otherwise. This year, it’s been like pulling teeth to generate goals, and an injury to starting goalie Jonathan Quick has left the club with even less margin for error than usual.

Minnesota Wild: PDO just doesn’t last forever

Paul Battaglia/Associated Press

The basic problem with the Wild can be summed up thusly: At even strength so far, the team has gotten 47 percent of the shots, 50 percent of the scoring chances and 60 percent of the goals. Minnesota has been fortunate in seeing a disproportionately high total of its shots end up in the back of the net and a disproportionately low total of its opponents’ shots behind Devan Dubnyk.

That can happen over a 10-game stretch, but over 82 games these things tend to even out, and it’s a really bad idea to bank on such a run to get through four playoff rounds. Eventually, PDO—the stat that combines shooting percentage and save percentage—regresses closer to the NHL mean, and then a team that relies upon it sees its results turn south.

Montreal Canadiens: Shot suppression

For the second season in a row, the Canadiens are off to a hot start with seemingly unbeatable goaltending. As with last year, though, Montreal is leaning a bit too heavily on its goalie. As Marc Dumont of Eyes on the Prize wrote at the start of the month, even after allowing for score effects, the Habs are giving up more shots and chances against than we’d ideally see from a contender. It doesn’t matter when teamwide save percentage is at 0.960, but that can’t last forever even with a healthy Price.  

We’re quibbling a little bit here given how dominant the Canadiens have been early, but this may become an issue as the season continues.

Nashville Predators: Pekka Rinne

Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports

It’s a tough time to be a Predators fan, with the team off to an extremely poor start. The good news is that Nashville is starting to get its puck possession game back. After posting a brutal 45 percent Corsi rating over their first five games, the Predators have managed a 53 percent clip against (mostly) good teams over the last five games.

The other good news is that Pekka Rinne, generally, is playing well (0.915 save percentage). The question is whether or not that will last. Rinne’s been a 0.910 save percentage-or-lower goalie in three of the last four seasons, and his collapse at the end of the second round last year was a primary reason that San Jose was able to knock Nashville off in seven games.

New Jersey Devils: Defensive depth

The trade that sent Adam Larsson to Edmonton in exchange for Hall last summer brought a new No. 1 forward to New Jersey, but it also cost the Devils a key defensive presence that is clearly missed on the blue line.

The second pairing combination of John Moore and Ben Lovejoy has been particularly bad, getting outshot 37-19 in just over an hour as a five-on-five tandem. That’s nowhere near good enough, and at some point one imagines head coach John Hynes promoting either Kyle Quincey or perhaps even Yohann Auvitu to a more significant role.  

New York Islanders: The shot metrics just aren’t good enough

Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

Stanley Cup-winning teams spend a lot more time in the opposition zone than in their own end of the rink. Jack Capuano’s Islanders, with the exception of the 2014-15 edition, haven’t managed to do this. With Thursday’s loss to Philadelphia, New York fell to last place in the NHL in terms of shot attempt percentage. The club’s 46 percent Corsi rating is nearly seven points shy of what it managed in 2015. If that continues, it will certainly be time for either a radical overhaul of the roster or a change in tactics behind the bench.

New York Rangers: Dan Girardi and Marc Staal

Last season, there were only two defence pairings in the NHL that played more than 200 minutes together and had a Corsi rating south of 40 percent. Incredibly one of them—Dan Girardi and Marc Staal—played for a playoff-bound team.

Girardi and Staal have both improved their play in the early going this year, with each much closer to the 50 percent mark by the shot metrics. Given their history, though, it’s reasonable to be suspicious of that relative early success—particularly since Girardi still has the worst Corsi rating on the New York blue line.

Ottawa Senators: Defensive depth

Paul Sancya/Associated Press

Ottawa raised some eyebrows around the league when it took Dion Phaneuf’s contract in trade from Toronto. The plan, executed unfailingly ever since, was to pair Phaneuf with highly regarded prospect Cody Ceci to create a dynamite second pair behind Marc Methot/Erik Karlsson.

It’s never worked. Phaneuf/Ceci were mediocre last season and in the early going this year, have been disastrous. Ottawa has been outshot 72-46 with the pairing on the ice at five-on-five and outscored by a 5-1 margin. Yet with the Senators seemingly committed to both players, it’s difficult to see a way out for the team.

Philadelphia Flyers: Suddenly shaky goaltending

The Flyers entered the season as a team on the rise, and their early work in 2016-17 has mostly confirmed that. Weirdly, though, the goaltending situation has gone sideways. Both Steve Mason and Michal Neuvirth, both of whom played well last season, have struggled mightily in the early going. Mason, the putative starter, is 2-4-1 with a 0.878 save percentage, while Neuvirth is 4-1-0 but has an equally ugly 0.876 save percentage. Somebody needs to right the ship, and fast.

Pittsburgh Penguins: Injuries to critical players

Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

We’re just 11 games into Pittsburgh’s season, and already we’ve seen Sidney Crosby sidelined with a concussion and Kris Letang lost to an upper-body injury, to say nothing of the absence of playoff start Matt Murray. The Penguins managed to push through all of those problems, but each was a reminder of how quickly key pieces can be taken out of the lineup.

The Pens were fortunate to get 20-plus playoff games out of virtually every key skater en route to the Cup last season. They may not get dealt such a favourable hand this time around.

San Jose Sharks: Top-talent fatigue

It’s going to be interesting to watch Peter DeBoer manage his top players’ ice-time this season. With the exception of a few newcomers, everybody on this season’s Sharks team was playing hockey deep into the summer. The best of them played early in the fall, too, at the World Cup. That’s a lot of hockey for anyone, nevermind for a 37-year-old like Joe Thornton or even early-30s players like Joe Pavelski and Brent Burns. Unless DeBoer is careful, he runs the risk of burning out key players before the postseason even starts.

St. Louis Blues: Game-breaking forwards

Billy Hurst-USA TODAY Sports

The Blues lack multiple high-end scoring threats. Vladimir Tarasenko, coming off a 40-goal campaign, is superb, but St. Louis has only two other returning players who managed even 15 goals a year ago. There was an obvious need for improvement in the offseason, and so far it isn’t clear that enough was done.

Newcomers David Perron and Nail Yakupov combined for just 20 goals last year but do have five in the early going. Internal growth options like Jaden Schwartz (one goal in seven games) and Robby Fabbri (zero goals in 11 games) are off to slow starts. Coach Ken Hitchcock will need to coax more offence out of the players he has, and even if he does the Blues may be forced into a by-committee approach to goal-scoring.

Tampa Bay Lightning: Offensive depth

One of the great strengths of the Lightning in recent years has been the way they could run four dangerous lines, wearing opponents down and taking advantage of clubs with particularly soft underbellies. In the early going this year, however, it’s been the Bolts who are vulnerable past the first line.

Both Tyler Johnson and Valtteri Filppula need to rebound from middling 2015-16 campaigns, and neither is off to a great start. Johnson had a big game Thursday to climb to six points on the year, but he is under 50 percent Corsi-wise. Filppula’s even a little worse than that, though so far he’s at least scoring. The Lightning will require strong two-way performances from both men and their linemates.

Toronto Maple Leafs: Did you know they finished 30th in 2015-16?

Brace Hemmelgarn-USA TODAY Sports

I’m a fan of the way Toronto has approached its rebuild. The team has been smart in the way it’s collected young talent, including all those little decisions along the way to sign veterans to cheap deals and then trade them for picks. It’s been patient in developing them, and when those players come up, they’re handled by a coach who might be the best in the game of hockey.

Nevertheless, this was the worst team in hockey last season, with a minus-48 goal differential. That’s a big hole to climb out of, and teams don’t go from the bottom to the top of the hill in the span of a single offseason. 

Vancouver Canucks: Underwhelming forwards

It was deeply tempting to say, “Troy Stecher” and call it a day, but as odd as it is to watch the Canucks make suboptimal decisions like demoting one of their four best defencemen or playing Derek Dorsett with the net empty, the truth is that no matter how perfectly head coach Willie Desjardins handled this roster, this is a team that would be in trouble.

The Sedin twins, now in their late 30s, are responsible for carrying the load offensively. Brandon Sutter is being asked to anchor the second line, generally with one veteran winger and one unproven prospect. Bo Horvat, at 21, has been expected to drive results for the team’s shutdown line. There just isn’t enough talent to go around.

Washington Capitals: They have to go through the Penguins and Rangers and Flyers

Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press

The 2016-17 Washington Capitals are an exceptional team, with top talent and wonderful balance at all positions on their roster. Yet the same was true of the 2015-16 Capitals, who were clearly the league’s dominant team during the regular season.

The problem is the Metropolitan division, which is arguably the toughest one in hockey this year. Pittsburgh won it all last year and has the kind of forward depth that keeps goalies and defencemen from sleeping soundly. The Rangers are a top team early. Philadelphia broke out late last season and is on the upswing. New Jersey improved dramatically over the summer. No matter how well a team is built, that’s a gauntlet.

Winnipeg Jets: Defensive play, especially on the penalty kill

After a dismal 2015-16 run, a cursory inspection shows things trending up for Winnipeg’s penalty kill, which is currently effective just over 80 percent of the time. The trouble lies in the underlying numbers. A year ago, the Jets allowed 95 shot attempts against per hour in four-on-five situations, the third-worst total in the league. This year, the number is up over 100, and a team that allows that many shots is always going to end up paying for it at some point.  

Statistical information courtesy Natural Stat Trick, Hockey Reference and Corsica Hockey.