Pacific Preview Part 2: Arizona, Edmonton and Vegas

Last season: 39-35-8 (86 points) – 4th in the Pacific Division

Oddsmaker’s projected points O/U: 87.5

Notable Additions: Phil Kessel, Barrett Hayton, Carl Soderberg.

Notable Subtractions: Alex Galchenyuk, Richard Panik, Nick Cousins, Josh Archibald.

The Coyotes will begin yet another season with high hopes and expectations. A similar sentiment resonated during the beginning of the last two seasons, but this year brings new reasons for excitement. The trade bringing Phil Kessel, Dane Birks and a 2021 4th to Arizona for Alex Galchenyuk and Pierre-Olivier Joseph gives Arizona a pure scoring winger and a legitimate powerplay threat, something they have been sorely lacking for the past few years.

Kessel will add a scoring touch to the first line with Derek Stepan and on the half boards of a first powerplay unit that needs a serious boost after ranking 26th last season. The soon-to-be-32-year-old tallied 36 powerplay points last season and 42 the season before.

Other injections into the lineup will be a healthy Nick Schmaltz, Christian Dvorak, and Antii Raanta. They were spread thin down the middle because of injuries to their centers, but a full year of Schmaltz and the addition of Carl Soderberg should go a long way towards remedying that. Before going down with a season-ending injury, Schmaltz had 14 points in 17 games after being acquired by Arizona. They will need him to pick up where he left off if they want to make the postseason.

The return of Raanta to the lineup will give the Coyotes some of the best goaltending depth in the league. Raanta posted a 0.930 SV% in his 2017-18 campaign and after he went down with a season-ending injury on November 27th, Darcy Kuemper picked up the slack by stopping 92.5% of the shots that came his way. Head Coach Rick Tocchet has fielded questions about who his starter will be and he hasn’t given a definitive answer yet, but it’s nice to have those options in goal. As load management becomes a topic on the rise, look for the Coyotes to split their time fairly evenly.

In his third year, Tocchet will need his team to stay healthier than last and some of the younger forwards will need to continue to take the steps forward that everyone is expecting them to take. That group of forwards includes Hayton, Lawon Crouse, Christian Dvorak, and Conor Garland. They allowed the 5th fewest goals but also scored the 4th fewest. They’ll need to score more goals in the coming season, but look for them to be just as stingy defensively.

Last season: 35-38-9 (79 points) – 7th in the Pacific Division

Oddsmaker’s projected points O/U: 85.5

Notable Additions: James Neal, Markus Granlund, Josh Archibald, Joakim Nygard, Riley Sheahan, Gaetan Haas, Mike Smith

Notable Subtractions: Milan Lucic, Ty Rattie, Tobias Rieder, Andrej Sekera, Cam Talbot

The most important piece to a successful Oilers season finally fell in place as Connor McDavid played his first preseason game on Tuesday and looked good in the process. Much has been made of his speed and how great he’s looked in practice as he’s really pushed his pace. After a summer of concern and 3rd and 4th opinions on his PCL injury, he’s finally game ready. This is obviously great news for the club, who expected to play regular season games without their captain at one point.

It’s almost essential to have McDavid and Leon Draisatl putting up close to the combined 221 points that they did last season for this team to have any chance of making the postseason, but they’ll also need a lot more from their supporting cast than they’ve gotten in the last two seasons. The team scored 229 goals in 2018-19 and 91 (39.7%) of them came off the sticks of either McDavid or Draisatl. That’s a ratio that can’t simply can’t continue.

There are a lot of new faces in the room, but none are sure bets to make the significant impact the Oilers need, but one player who looks poised to help their cause is James Neal. It’s reasonable to expect Neal to have a bounce-back season based on how he’s performed throughout his career. Returning to at least a 20 goal mark from his 7 with Calgary would help immensely.

 

You can also expect Markus Granlund to put up 20-25 points, but the rest of the additions are basically wildcards who haven’t consistently played full NHL seasons or any at all. Josh Archibald only played his first NHL season last year and Gaetan Haas and Joakim Nygard don’t have an NHL game under their belts.

In goal, it’s reasonable to think the Oilers can improve by replacing Cam Talbot with Mike Smith, who’s posted a better SV% and GAA over the last two seasons. Some believe that Mikko Koskinen will improve on his first year in the NHL with more games played under his belt, but at 31 years old, he may also just turn out to be the goaltender he indicated he was last year.

Behind the bench, it will be interesting to see how new head coach Dave Tippett changes the team’s systems and mindset. He’s gained a reputation across the league as being a defensive-minded coach from his time in Arizona, but it’s unlcear how much of that is due to his personnel not having the offensive abilities to play the opposite way. He’s never coached players as offensively talented as McDavid and Draisatl, and the way he handles them will be an important factor to this team’s success.

It’s been well documented that Tippett is the 9th Head Coach the club has had in the last 10 years and along with better systems and a new mindset, the team will need the stability that Tippett and new GM Ken Holland have been preaching all summer.

Expectations within the organization are to make playoffs, but most outside the organization view that possibility as unlikely, mostly because of their lack of forward depth and inconsistent goaltending. At the very least, they’ll be fun to watch every time McDavid and Draisatl get on the ice for a shift.

Last season: 43-32-7 (93 points) – 3rd in the Pacific Division

Oddsmaker’s projected points O/U: 100.5

Notable Additions: Jimmy Schuldt, Cody Glass, Garret Sparks

Notable Subtractions: Erik Haula, Colin Miller, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, Ryan Carpenter

Vegas enters the season as the odds-on favourite to win the division at 22.4%, slightly ahead of San Jose at 22% according to moneypuck.com. They bring the same core of players that they iced last year, when they were considered a legitimate cup contender.

The most exciting prospects for this team moving forward are a full year of Mark Stone and seeing if prospect Cody Glass can carve out a significant role for himself. Stone is one of the most fun players in the league to talk about because he’s still underrated around the league and is poised to have a career year alongside the best forward group he’s ever played with for a full season.

When Stone is on the ice, his team controls the puck well and he’s able to create scoring chances at a very high rate. Among forwards who played at least 500 minutes, Stone ranked 6th in expected goals (xGF) and 15th in xGF/60 last season. Combine this with his defensive impacts, which caused him to finish 2nd in Selke voting and you have Vegas’ best player. Adding that type of talent to an already competitive squad gives us good reason to believe their team will be a Pacific powerhouse.

Losing Colin Miller on the back end because of cap constraints will hurt them, but they’ll look to compensate for that with a full year of Nate Schmidt, who tested positive for a banned substance, and Jimmy Schuldt, who left college as a highly sought-after prospect. The rest of their defensive group features familiar names such as Shea Theodore, Jon Merrill, and Brayden McNabb, who have proven that they can play at a high level.

Vegas didn’t quite get the results they wanted until later on in the year, but their expected goal share showed that they were playing very well consistently from the get-go.

Based on this, many predicted Vegas’ bad puck luck would turn around and thats exactly what happened up until their postseason meeting with San Jose. If the Knights can control the expected goal share like they did last season, it’s unlikely that they will face the same unfortunate puck luck and rack up more wins over the course of the year.

The top six forward group for the Knights, which features arguably two first line-calibre trios, should carry them this year, while the usually steady Marc-Andre Fleury stabilizes them in the defensive end. With a lot of areas of strength and no glaring weaknesses, the Knights looked poised to be legitimate contenders once again next season.