ST. LOUIS — The Pacific Division is proving to be the wild, wild west of the NHL this season.
Vancouver beat defending champion St. Louis on Monday night to move to 60 points in 50 games. Edmonton (57 points in 49 games), Calgary (57 points in 50 games), Arizona (57 points in 51 games) and Vegas (57 points in 52 games) all follow right behind.
“It’s pretty surreal,” Calgary defenceman Mark Giordano said. “I’ve never seen anything like that with this amount of time left in the season. It’s going to be a great finish, we’re right there right in the mix, we’re in a good spot.”
The logjam at the top is creating a 30-plus game sprint to the finish. The stakes will get higher as the NHL’s scheduling goes heavy on inter-divisional games late in the season.
“I don’t know if I was alive when it has been this close in the division,” Vancouver goalie Jacob Markstrom said. “It’s great. It’s great for everybody. Obviously you want a 10 or 20 point cushion at this point but that’s not the case and it’s pretty much every team is right there inside a couple of points. It’s going to be fun hockey and pretty much playoff hockey is going to start here after the break.”
The tight race places a premium on regulation wins, allowing a team to grab two points without allowing its rival to get one.
No Margin for Error
While Vancouver and Edmonton appear to have the edge in games played, there is no margin for error.
“You can go from first to last, from last to first the next night and we’re all going to play each other coming up right at the end of the year,” Vegas forward Max Pacioretty said. “It’s going to be a fight to the end and we’re expecting these last 30 games to be really intense. But on the bright side if you’re able to get in and you’re able to get through these games, that should prepare you for the playoffs and we’re looking forward to that challenge.”
All of the teams can find inspiration from the Blues’ run last season. The Blues were last in the entire league on Jan. 3 only to catch fire and ride that momentum to the Stanley Cup.
Like those Blues, the Golden Knights made a mid-season coaching change replacing Gerard Gallant who led the team to the finals in their first season, with former Sharks coach Peter DeBoer.
Pacioretty said the All-Star break came at a good time for Vegas. He believes it will allow him and his teammates to emotionally reset and come back ready to perform for their new coach.
“That’s kind of like a fresh wound right now and you kind of take responsibility whenever a coach gets fired,” Pacioretty said. “You look at yourself in the mirror and say what could I have done better?”
Arizona finds itself in a different position after sitting at or near the top of the division for most of the season.
“We were always the hunters,” Coyotes coach Rick Tocchet said. “We were always, ‘Hey, how are we going to get back into this thing?’ Now teams are below us and they’re the hunters on us. The old day of playing the backup goalie against the Coyotes, they’re not doing that anymore. They’re playing their starters. That’s what guys have to understand now. You’re going to get the best.”
The race doesn’t allow Tocchet and the other coaches the luxury of managing workload. Tocchet, who isn’t a big morning skate fan, believes it’s all about consistency.
He doesn’t remember a race this tight in his 18 years as a player or in his five years as a coach.
“You have to embrace the pain and all that stuff because if you look at those standings there’s five teams right in there,” Tocchet said. “One week you’re either in first place or fifth place. Everything the coach does now is for the players and for their psyche and to make them feel comfortable.”
Raising the stakes even higher is that not all five teams are guaranteed to make the post-season as wild cards. Winnipeg, Chicago and Nashville from the Central Division are in the mix for those two spots as well.
Giordano said it’s all about peaking at the right time.
“We have great players and it’s just about putting it together at the right time,” Giordano said. “I feel like last year we had a great start and an unbelievable first half and sort of lost that confidence we had down the stretch and it carried over for us in the playoffs. Hopefully this year is the complete opposite.”
Joe Harris, The Associated Press