2013: The NHL season that almost wasn't

Islanders are back, baby!!!

 

Ovechkin is suddenly leading the league with 31 goals after tonight.

 

He's been leading the league in goals for a week or two now, right?

 

Yeah, saw a Caps game last week and Ovechkin was looking like the guy I remembered from 2-3 years ago.

Caps could be a playoff darkhorse, although not sold on Holtby in goal.

 

IIRC Holtby was outstanding in the playoffs last year. He is a good, young goalie, which means you are going to have ups and downs, and a lot of hsi early season issues were caused by a lot of the poor play in front of him.

 

He has been, but the quantity of goals he has scored hit e last night, especially considering it is a shortened season and the terrible start he had. If he had this pace from the beginning of the season, we could have been looking at something close to a 40-50 goal season which would have been incredible.

 

The pace is not sustainable, all seasons have ups and downs.

 

Are there really any true dark horses left in the NHL? Columbus maybe but there is so much parity very few teams would be shocking to make a run to at least the conference finals.

 

Why is it not sustainable? Look at the goal totals that have led the league in the last 20 years. Is Ovechkin all of a sudden going to score 75 goals? He's a great player on a great run but I don't believe anyone can score like that anymore.

 

This is cool. Jared Staal, the youngest of the four brothers will dress for the Whalercanes in Carolina's Thursday's game against the Rangers.

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/nhl/story/2013/04/24/sp-nhl-hurricanes-eric-jordan-jaret-staal-marc-rangers.html

He was a second round draft pick by the Coyotes and in my opinion his draft position was because of his last name.

Huggy may disagree but he was probably the least impressive of the brothers in his OHL years with Sudbury.

Despite his size he always struck me as a bit of a perimeter player, and in the games where I saw him, was mostly invisible.

However, as Eric Staal pointed out:

"I was fortunate enough to be the first one through everything, and there wasn't a lot of expectation. You didn't know. And once I kind of established myself, then all eyes started pointing to them and how they developed and how they'd do.

"Along with that comes pressure, and everybody develops at different stages of their careers," he added. "He's been through the grinds and up and downs, and I think he's starting to learn what he needs to do to be effective, and hopefully that continues."

Good luck to him.