Does next season's new divisions mean Canucks not in Playoffs?

[BoHorvatFan]

The free ride is definitely over. First time Gillis has to GM a team in a competent division.

 

[MajorCanuck]

And the one team that finished ahead of them was living off of a hot start and probably would've dropped down the standings in a full season. The Ducks had a fantastic start but went 8-9-2 to end the season with a -7 goal differential in that span.

I wouldn't necessarily pick the Canucks to win the division next year but I think people are overreacting to the new alignment. If the Canucks miss the playoffs next year it'll because they play like crap and not because of their competition.

You realize having 5 games against the Sharks, Kings, and Ducks is significantly harder than beating up on the Flames, Oil and Avs.

 

[opendoor]

You realize having 5 games against the Sharks, Kings, and Ducks is significantly harder than beating up on the Flames, Oil and Avs.

As opposed to the 4 games they always had against those teams?

How about getting 80% more games against the Eastern Conference? Or fewer games against Chicago/St. Louis/Detroit?

 

[Archangel]

let us look at the new division

Ducks
Flames
Oilers
LAK
Phoenix
SJS]
VAn


here are the tough teams. Ducks, LAK and SJS and Van, Then Phoenix, Oilers and Flames.

We can say for 100% the Flames wont be in the playoffs, wild card are the Oilers and Phoenix. For the last few years the canucks knew at the start of the season they were going to make the playoffs, Next year, we wont know until March,

 

[Royal Canuck]

I'd say we make the playoffs, but no more Division banners for a while, (which may be a good thing)

 

[Verviticus]

on the other hand, continuing to win division banners after leaving the NW would be really cool

this is the canucks we're talking about, the chances of a championship win are somewhere at exactly 0%. winning every division banner from now until contraction would be pretty cool tbh

 

[David71]

next yr division will be hard and fun to watch. rivalries with san jose/la kings will be a dandy to watch. depends what type of roster the canucks are gonna look like next year?

 

[LiveeviL]

I think the team will benefit from the change, elevate its game.

 

[iFan]

There's not 4 teams in that divs that's better than the Nucks, well I guess we shouldn't say that yet depending on offseason trades, but Canucks are likely in for another 1st round bounce if nothing is done. LA is a beast! Sharks look really good too.

 

[me2]

I'd say we make the playoffs, but no more Division banners for a while, (which may be a good thing)

division banners are a curse for getting better draft picks as we just found out.

One of the problems with focusing on just this division is the wild cards. We may well not finish top 3 in this division which means we need to beat out 4 and 5 from the central

Blackhawks, Blues, Wild, Jets, Stars, Predators, Avalanche

On paper the wild cards are going to be interesting - we should be better than the Jets/Stars/Pred/Avs though our division may set us back 2-4 points - so there should be at least a wild card. In many ways they should be our starting point for the playoffs more so than the Pacific, top 3 in the Pac is the 2nd benchmark.

 

[Tanevian*]

I think the team will benefit from the change, elevate its game.

I agree, change is good.

 

[Aphid Attraction]

We win this division in season 2014-15 book it




PS: It gets on my nerves when people say book it, but this is my prediction

 

[Hammer79]

There's no doubt that it has gotten easier to make the playoffs in the West. Let's also not overlook that it will be 8 out of 14 making it instead of 15. The top 3 spots in the division are guaranteed playoff spots, and 7th and 8th are wildcards. Our conference is subtracting two teams, one playoff team and one that was close, in exchange for a Jets team that was close in an arguably weaker Eastern Conference.

If the re-alignment had happened before this season, this is what we would have had.

Chicago (Central #1) vs Winnipeg (wildcard #8)
Anaheim (Pacific #1) vs San Jose (wildcard #7)
LA (Pacific #2) vs Vancouver (Pacific #3)
St Louis (Central #2) vs Minnesota (Central #3)

Anaheim gets arguably a tougher matchup than the Red Wings, although they got knocked out so that's tough to say.

Chicago gets an easier matchup.

Vancouver's matchup is a wash.

St Louis probably advances with the easier matchup.

 

[RandV]

The teams that are ranked ahead of us are considered so in the playoff sense. If there's one thing I'm confident this team can do, it's make the playoffs. We are a regular season team at the very least, so let's not wallow in pity and state that we aren't going to make the playoffs.

Agreed. Matching up in a best of 7 series is not the same as playing a different team every night over the course of an 82 game season. Anything can happen in a season but for the latter Vancouver and San Jose should be the best here, with LA keeping in the race.

In my opinion Anaheim is the wild card as they've been wildly inconsistent in the regular season, will be losing some core vets to retirement and will have to manage the cap with Perry and Getzlaf's monster contracts. On the other hand while I don't think it will happen immediately, with all the youth they're injecting into the lineup they could end up being the top team in the division for some time.