Post to Post: The NHL's Balance of Power Has Shifted from West to East

For years, the NHL’s balance of power rested in the West. In the regular season, Western teams dominated their Eastern rivals. In the playoffs, the Stanley Cup headed West with shocking regularity.

Then, last spring, the Pittsburgh Penguins became the first Eastern team in five years to win the Cup and just the third in the last decade. This came on the heels of a 2015-16 regular season which had seen the two conferences move to near-parity, with the West winning 221 games and the East triumphing in 217.

Even that was a remarkable achievement. Only a year earlier, the West had been 26 games over 0.500 when playing the East, and as Matt Larkin of The Hockey News noted this wasn’t a short-term trend. By his math, between 2010 and 2015 the West as a whole won 126 more games than it lost.

Yet we’re well past parity now. This year, the East is already 13 games above 0.500, a pace which matches the West’s dominance in 2014-15. After years of being the conference where real hockey was played, the West is now taking a backseat to the East.

Mostly, it comes down to two divisions. The emergence in the Metropolitan of five legitimately awesome teams (much to the chagrin of the merely capable New Jersey Devils) has made that division one to be reckoned with, while at the other end of the spectrum the woeful Pacific division is easily the weakest in all of hockey. The Central, now in its twilight, remains roughly on par with the Atlantic.

After a decade of Western domination, it appears that the Eastern Conference is ready to rule the NHL.

Schedule Effects and the Florida Panthers

Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press

Some free advice for any general manager considering canning his coach and stepping behind the bench himself: Take a long look at the team schedule before making that decision.

The Florida Panthers' firing of head coach Gerard Gallant was highly controversial, for all kinds of reasons—not the least being the common perception in the press that good hockey people were being shoved aside in favour of spreadsheets. Against that backdrop, interim head coach Tom Rowe could have used all the help he could get, and he got none from the schedule.

Florida played eight of the 10 games following Gallant’s firing on the road, and that had a big impact on the team's record. Just look at the home and road splits under Gallant and Rowe:

Coach	Situation	W	L	OTL	PTS%
Gallant	Home	7	4	0	63.6%
Rowe	Home	2	1	0	66.7%
Gallant	Away	4	6	1	40.9%
Rowe	Away	2	2	4	50.0%

The team's home record under Rowe is too small to judge, but the road record (thanks to lots of close games) is actually superior to that the team posted under Gallant. It may be that Rowe and company felt the coaching change needed to be made immediately, for the good of the team, and that’s laudable.

But had they waited until the club’s inevitably poor performance over a difficult schedule to dismiss Gallant, the decision likely would have been less controversial. Rowe himself would also have had an opportunity to silence the critics immediately with a stretch where the team played eight of nine at home. 

The Reclamation of Justin Schultz

Fred Vuich/Associated Press

Justin Schultz was one of the key figures in the Edmonton Oilers’ decade-long rebuild. A much-hyped college free agent, he started his pro career during the 2012-13 lockout, putting up a whopping 48 points in 34 games for the loaded Oklahoma City Barons and winning the AHL’s defenceman of the year award in the process.

It was perhaps the worst thing that could happen, because it meant that when he stepped into the Oilers lineup as a rookie, he started out averaging more than 21 minutes per game. Within a year he’d be the team’s No. 1 defenceman, a role he was unprepared to handle.

The results were disastrous by any metric. His offence regressed and his defensive game was miserable. Edmonton kept feeding him minutes anyway, oblivious to his faults. Finally, last season his role was reduced, and he was eventually flipped to Pittsburgh at the deadline for a third-round pick.

The results since have been something else entirely. Schultz, who re-signed with the Pens at a reduced rate, now has 20 points in 33 games. More importantly, Pittsburgh dominates the shot clock when he’s on the ice.

It isn’t hard to figure out the change. Schultz is the Pens’ No. 6 defenceman by ice time. He doesn’t kill penalties. His even-strength minutes are carefully managed, featuring low quality of competition and lots of shifts starting in the offensive zone.

Pittsburgh has treated him as an offensive specialist rather than as a franchise savior, and he has rewarded the team with an outstanding performance in that role.

The Tightening NHL Scoring Race

Andy Clayton-King/Associated Press

Just two weeks ago, there was a seven-point gap between Connor McDavid and the second-ranked NHL'er in the league's scoring race. Now there are eight players within seven points of McDavid, and the list makes for some fascinating reading.

Patrick Kane is there, along with Chicago Blackhawks teammate Artemi Panarin. The Penguins have three representatives in the race, with Sidney Crosby (36 points in 27 games, leading the NHL in points per game) nicely overcoming an injury which cost him a bunch of games to start the year. Either Crosby or St. Louis Blues' Vladimir Tarasenko (just two points back) are likely the biggest threats.

There are, however, a pair of surprising names in the hunt, and they reflect a revived Metropolitan division. Jakub Voracek is scoring at a point-per-game pace for the Philadelphia Flyers, nicely erasing the memory of last season’s hardship. Meanwhile, Cam Atkinson of the shocking Columbus Blue Jackets also makes the cut, with 33 points on the year.

Statistical information courtesy of Hockey-Reference.com and Stats.HockeyAnalysis.com. 

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.