By the end of this weekend against Tampa Bay, it'll be 12 more games for the Golden Knights until the end of the season. On the surface, it's not a particularly exciting or noteworthy number.
That is unless you're a Disney/ESPN or a TNT Sports exec, giddily waiting to press 'Play' on the string of commercials occupying space between March Madness games. But historically, if you're in the Western Conference, this chunk of time has helped determine who ends up in the Stanley Cup Final.
Let's look at the last five Western Conference champions: Edmonton, Vegas, Colorado, Dallas, and St. Louis (we're exempting the post-covid recovery/ Northern Division season in 2021, and bringing in 2019).
The average number of wins with those five teams was 10; only Dallas in 2019-20 was below .500 in the last 12 games of the season. Along with the Oilers last season, they're the only ones not to hold Lord Stanley above their heads.
What about the Eastern Conference?
In the other conference, the pattern also holds... sort of. The average number of wins among the Florida duo and Boston is slightly over seven, with the defending champion Panthers the only one to go below seven.
Given that, only until a few years ago, the East was the big behemoth conference...it makes sense. Still, it wouldn't surprise me if that pattern breaks given how well Washington's been playing this season.
What does all this mean for the Golden Knights this season? That'll depend where we are by roughly 8 P.M. PST on Sunday night. Vegas finished 7-5, including losing their last three road games followed by...well, we know the rest.
It's more of what we saw last night against Boston or what we saw in Columbus this last road trip. If so, all will be awesome. It'll be more of what we saw last weekend in Buffalo and Detroit. If so, it might be another early summer.
Other bits from the realm:
- With William Karlsson back in the lineup, it seems the forward lines we saw last night will probably the ones we saw next month in playoff time. Barbashev-Eichel-Stone on the top line, Saad-Hertl-Dorofeyev on the second line, Roy-Karlsson-Smith on the third line, and Pearson-Howden-Kolesar on the fourth line. That leaves a depth question to keep an eye out: What to do with the free agents that haven't really born a lot of fruit, Victor Olofsson and Alexander Holtz?
There isn't a roster limit in the playoffs, so there's probably room to keep a forward on in case of emergencies. Olofsson seems like the easy answer, given his relatively solid play before his goal scoring and point production fell through the proverbial trap door.
But Alexander Holtz scored his seventh goal in 10 AHL games with Henderson onWednesday night. It's just another question to ponder in between panicky scoreboard watching the next three weeks.
-Now for some good (and bad) news: Shea Theodore returned to practice this week in a no-contact jersey before sliding into LTIR retroactive to the 4 Nations Face-Off. He might be close to a return to the lineup in his own right in the near future.
But in reality, it'll probably be somewhere close to the final mini road trip against Calgary and Vancouver. Perhaps it's the start of the first round series. Whenever it happens, it'd mean Kaedan Korczak would be the odd man out of the blue line.
He's had the kind of solid season that provides a nice balance to the high scoring, flashier elements from your Hanifins and Alex Pietrangelos. Part of me hopes Korczak finds the back of the net before the roster winds send him back to Henderson.
He came pretty close against the Bruins, missing the top corner by a few inches. Is it likely to happen? Probably not. But what is the March Madness season if not a time for launching pipe dreams...and using busted brackets as a home heating source!