Dan Shulman of ESPN once said his years following sports have taught him one sure thing: a team is never as good as it looks on a winning streak, and never as bad as it looks on a losing streak.
I don’t know if Shulman ever covers hockey, but he knows today’s NHL, a league where good and bad change addresses on a daily basis.
Just about every team is running hot and cold this season. In Ottawa, the once-mighty Senators are barely showing a pulse. The Devils couldn’t do anything right in October; now they can’t lose. Dallas fired the general manager a few weeks ago. Now the Stars lead the Pacific Division.
Atlanta, Montreal and Toronto are among the other cities where wins and losses come in bunches. Most other teams are ambling along at a win-one-lose-one pace. Carolina was pounded 8-1 by Buffalo (last in the Northeast Division) last weekend, and rebounded to beat the Rangers (first in the Atlantic) two days later.
But do first place and last place mean anything anymore? The NHL standings show 26 of 30 teams crowded into a ten-point range. The same issue reared its head about this time last year.
It's one area where the Gary Bettman vision has become reality. The commissioner promised a league where every team "can give their fans hope that they have a shot at the cup" at the start of every season. Of course, that doesn't work unless every team is also on the verge of missing the playoffs.
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