Down Goes Brown's Weekend Review: It's Ugly up in Canada

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports Canada.

(Editor's note: Sean McIndoe looks back at recent play in the NHL and the league's biggest storylines in his weekend review. You can follow him on Twitter.)

"It's still early."

That's the mantra of the wise hockey fan over the first few months of the season. We all go into the season with certain expectations locked in place, that comfortable set of assumptions that can start to feel like sure things if you repeat them often enough. Then the opening weeks of the season happen, and it all goes straight to hell.

Let's think back to what the league looked like on the first day of December. My preseason Cup pick had been the Lightning over the Ducks, but both teams were stuck in 11th in their respective conferences, with Tampa Bay spinning its wheels and Anaheim unable to score and on the verge of firing its coach. The defending champion Blackhawks were already nine points back in their division. Sidney Crosby had been the odds-on favorite to win the Hart and Art Ross, but he'd just barely cracked the top 100 in scoring. Inevitable Calder Trophy winner Connor McDavid was already hurt, and established goalies like Tuukka Rask and Semyon Varlamov had looked awful.

It was chaos. Small children wept openly. Nothing made sense.

Now that we're well into February, we can look back at those days and see that, well, it really was still early. The NHL has spent the last few months gradually morphing back into what we'd thought it would be all along. The Lightning and Blackhawks have looked unstoppable, and the Ducks aren't far behind. McDavid is healthy again and lighting it up, and Rask and Varlamov have settled back into their usual selves.

As for Crosby, he's been on fire, posting 18 points over a ten-game scoring streak and reclaimed a spot in the league's top ten. Barring injury, he's not going to catch Patrick Kane, who's running away with the Art Ross. But at the rate he's going, just about everyone else is in his sights.

That's not to say that everything looks like we expected. The Panthers weren't on too many preseason lists of division winners, consensus lottery teams like the Devils, Hurricanes and Coyotes are still stubbornly hanging around the playoff picture, and the Penguins and Wild still look like less of a threat than expected. And, of course, as the Canadiens have demonstrated, sometimes that whole course correction pendulum can swing all the way to the other extreme.

As we approach the two-thirds mark of the regular season, there's sure to be a few twists and turns left in store. But for the most part, the league is slowly but surely starting to resemble the one we'd expected to see. That's not great news if you love surprises, but it's comforting to know that we weren't all completely out to lunch on opening night.

And as for the fans, we've all no doubt learned a valuable lesson about not overreacting to early-season trends—one we're sure to have forgotten completely by next December.

The five teams with the best shot at winning the Stanley Cup.

5. Tampa Bay Lightning (29-18-4, +19 true goals differential)—Yes, I'm nudging the Lighting ahead of the Panthers for a spot on our list. Too soon? Maybe, but I know who I'd pick in a playoff series between the two teams. Here's hoping we get to see one this year.

4. Dallas Stars (33-15-5, +28)—You never want to overreact to one game, but watching the Stars get stomped at home by the Blackhawks on Saturday had to be disconcerting for those of us still riding the Dallas bandwagon.

3. Los Angeles Kings (31-17-3, +18)—They've gone a little cold lately, losing four of six, and now head out for a seven-game road trip. The good news: They've actually been better away from home this year.

2. Chicago Blackhawks (36-16-4, +30)—Every week I'm this close to moving the Hawks ahead of the Caps for the top spot. And every week, I eventually notice the games played column.

1. Washington Capitals (38-9-4, +52)—Seriously, the Capitals still hold five games in hand over the Hawks, thanks partly to losing a pair of games to weather-related postponements and partly due to a schedule-maker who hates everyone who does power rankings.

This time last week, a bleary-eyed hockey world was filing out of Nashville after a successful All-Star Weekend. The various events had been well-organized, the game itself had been surprisingly fun, the crowds had been enthusiastic and the watering holes had been well-stocked. The verdict was pretty much unanimous: Nashville had been a hit.

One week later, it's back to the regular-season grind. And it has been a grind for much of the year for the Predators, a team that spent most of last season occupying a slot in the top five on its way to a 104-point campaign. This year, not so much; just maintaining a hold on a wild-card spot has been enough of a challenge.

That's not to say that the Predators have been bad, because they haven't. The teams in the next section are bad. The Predators have largely just been… there. They've won 25 and lost 28, which in a loser point-infested NHL still puts them over .500, and they've posted a pedestrian goals differential of -3. If the season ended today, that would be good enough to earn them a wild-card berth and a crossover trip to the Pacific Division. Again, not bad. Just not what Predators fans were hoping for after last year's sudden ascent to the league's top tier.

There have been positives. Shea Weber continues to be Shea Weber, and Roman Josi might be even better these days. They've finally added a legitimate No. 1 center in Ryan Johansen, thanks to last month's gutsy Seth Jones trade, and while Filip Forsberg hasn't put up quite the same numbers as he did during last year's breakthrough, he continues to look like a star in the making. Perhaps best of all, the underlying numbers are pointing in the right direction—the Predators rank in the top three league-wide for score-adjusted possession and in the bottom three for PDO, which would suggest that they're ripe for a strong finish.

But the rest of the roster still features plenty of holes, and the offence has been merely middle of the pack. They're stuck in the league's toughest division, which doesn't leave much room for error. And lately, Nashville just hasn't looked like a team that can hang with the league's best—Saturday's victory over the Sharks was its first win over a current playoff team since December.

And then there's the most glaring problem: goaltender Pekka Rinne, who's struggled badly after an excellent 2014-15 season. His .904 save percentage is the worst in the league among clear-cut starters, largely because guys who put up numbers like that tend to lose their starting jobs. That's not really an option in Nashville, thanks to a contract that will pay Rinne $7 million a year through 2019, a daunting figure for a 33-year-old. Rinne has a solid track record when healthy, so maybe he rebounds. But if he's hit the sort of career-progression wall that he sure seems to have hit, the Predators are kind of screwed.

Does it all add up to a playoff spot? I'm betting that it does, although it will almost certainly be one that comes with the underdog status of an ugly first-round matchup. That's probably not enough for a franchise that has won just two rounds in its 16-season history and was hoping that this year could finally be the big breakthrough. If Rinne can heat up and the offence can find a way to click, maybe the Predators pull off an upset or two and start to roll. If not, well, we'll always have All-Star Weekend.

The five teams with the best chance of landing the No. 1 overall pick.

5. Vancouver Canucks (20-20-12, -22)—They narrowly edge out the Jets, Flames and Canadiens. Hm. I'm sensing a pattern. More on that down below.

4. Buffalo Sabres (21-26-6, -19)—Their loss in Boston on Saturday featured the first overtime penalty shot goal in Bruins franchise history, which is kind of neat.

3. Toronto Maple Leafs (19-23-9, -23)—Now it's time for the Leafs to turn their attention to trading away all those veterans who are in demand around the league, like… um… huh. We may have found a flaw in the plan.

2. Columbus Blue Jackets (21-28-5, -33)—For the first time all season, the Jackets have escaped the bottom of our rankings. For a few days, at least.

1. Edmonton Oilers (21-28-5, -32)—Two more losses over the weekend, by a combined score of 13-2. Run, Auston. There's still time.

Good poutine gravy, Canada, get your act together.

As you've probably seen pointed out by now, all seven of Canada's NHL teams are awful these days, with each occupying a spot in the league's bottom 12. That doesn't seem like it should be possible in a hockey-mad nation where fans throw fistfuls of wadded up bills at anyone vaguely associated with the sport, but here we are.

How bad is it? The Blue Jackets, who've spent the entire season in dead last and only recently discovered that they've been holding their hockey sticks upside down this whole time, just finished playing five straight games against Canadian teams. They won four of them. It's that bad.

In fairness, two of those games came against the Canadiens, which at this point should barely even count. The Canadiens are in the midst of a nearly unprecedented freefall, one that's seen them go from being the league's top team through the first 26 games to its absolute worst through the next 26. General manager Marc Bergevin has already played his vote-of-confidence card, and it was only a few weeks ago that some foolish optimists were still calling the Habs a potential playoff team. Maybe they still are, and their two weekend wins represents the start of a turnaround. But at this point, all hope seems lost.

Out west, the Flames and Jets have both dropped far enough out of the wild-card race that they're solidly into "need a miracle" territory, which at this point in the season starts to look an awful lot like "just give up and start selling" territory. The Canucks are probably one bad week away from joining them. The Senators are approaching that situation in the east, although after last year's ridiculous run you could at least forgive them for clinging to some shred of hope.

Meanwhile, the Oilers are ten points out of a playoff spot, and will almost certainly finish yet another season without having played so much as one truly meaningful game, let alone made the postseason. But with McDavid back in the lineup and looking ridiculous, there's a reason to keep watching in Edmonton, and that's progress at least. Just don't look at the scoreboard from the weekend, OK?

And then there are the Maple Leafs, who can at least claim to be the only team in the country that meant to be here all along. Toronto may be the worst team in the nation, but that was the expectation, so Leaf fans can at least say that things are going according to plans. That's what passes for good news in Canada these days. When Leaf supporters make up the least miserable fan base in the country, it's fair to say that something has gone drastically wrong.

With a good chance at the NHL's first Canadian-free playoffs since 1970, when there were only two teams in the country, there's little reason for optimism right now. It's ugly up here. And it looks like it's going to stay that way for a while.

(At least until the World Cup comes around in September, and Team Canada stomps a mud hole in the rest of the world. Some things never change, eh?)

• Dennis Wideman's appeal of his 20-game suspension will be heard by Gary Bettman on Wednesday. Assuming Bettman doesn't reduce the sentence to less than six games (he won't), the case would then move to an independent arbitrator, which is when things might get really ugly.

• Weird stat of the week: Wideman was the fourth straight player to be suspended in a decision that was not handed down by the Department of Player Safety, joining Shawn Horcoff (drug test violation) and Jonathan Toews and Alexander Ovechkin (All-Star Game absence).

• That streak was nearly ended by Philadelphia's Wayne Simmonds, who was ejected on Saturday for KOing Rangers defenceman Ryan McDonagh. The league reviewed the play and determined that no further discipline was required.

• It sounds like something may be getting close on the Dustin Byfuglien front. If the Jets can't close the deal, the big blueliner would likely become the top name available in the lead up to the trade deadline.

• The Red Wings' 5-1 win over the Islanders on Saturday was interrupted by the dreaded Zamboni-related delay. Play eventually resumed after a wait of over half an hour.

• Bruins prospect Malcolm Subban suffered a fractured larynx after taking a puck to the throat on Saturday. He remains in hospital, and will be out indefinitely.

• A story worth watching in Ottawa: The Senators want to build a new arena closer to downtown, but have run into a competing bid that seems to think it can buy the team from owner Eugene Melnyk. For the time being, Melnyk is adamant that he's not selling.

• The Jets earned a nice 4-2 win over the Avalanche, in a game that included a classic Patrick Roy meltdown. Save it for the alumni game, Patrick.

• Chalk up another milestone for Ovechkin, who joined some exclusive company yesterday with his 11th straight 30-goal season to start his career.

Finally, reports emerged over the weekend that the Blues will host next year's Winter Classic at Busch Stadium. That's a good call—the venue should look great, and working a new team into the mix is the right move for an event that's seen much of the novelty wear off over the years. Their opponent, as per league bylaws, will be the Blackhawks.