So much for the 'Sh-t Northern Division' narrative.

Beezeral

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You build your team around an elite goaltender for exactly these reasons.
sure, good luck getting playoff price for 50+ games next season, because he hasn't shown the ability to do what he just did in the playoffs over a full regular season in a very long time.
 

Beezeral

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Why?

I take the Habs roster over Panthers any day of the week.
What the Panthers have over the Habs is more elite talent (Barkov is IMO a top 5 center in the league) but who knows what Suzuki and Caufield will look like next year, together.

They looked awesome in the playoffs at least
show your work on this, because this is an extremely hot take here...
 
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haseoke39

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sure, good luck getting playoff price for 50+ games next season, because he hasn't shown the ability to do what he just did in the playoffs over a full regular season in a very long time.

Fair enough, but that just means that the strategy relies on Price living up to his contract. Not that the strategy is illegitimate on its face.

The 1993-2001 Buffalo Sabres would be happy to listen to your advanced stats and say f*** it, let's ride Hasek again.
 

Gamimenos

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This is absolutely false.

They were out shot and out chanced in every series they played except the WPG series. They get full credit for finding ways to steal games again and again, but they did not outplay their opponents.

There is quantifiable data showing this.

Whether it be by finding ways to win, godlike goaltending, or amazing defense, you outplayed the opponent because you won the game
 

Jimmy Firecracker

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It was a shit division. Ottawa is rebuilding, Calgary and Vancouver are nothing special, Winnipeg and Edmonton aren't true contenders, neither is Toronto and the Leafs are led by choke artists to boot. Montreal took advantage because of the lack of competition and the fact that their team is built to take advantage of the relaxed playoff rulebook, not to mention Carey Price is a pretty major X factor. All credit to them getting all the way to the Finals but the first two rounds for them were nowhere near as taxing as what other teams had to go through. By the time they faced Vegas the Golden Knights were exhausted, plus they're build is pretty flawed what with their lack of a true #1 Centre.
 
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BFLO

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We'll see what the northern division teams do in the off-season, but I'll maintain that there was more parity there than in any other division -- that is, the bottom of the north was better than the bottom of any other division. No Buffalos up there to beat up on.
Parity in this case means mediocrity from top to bottom.
 

haseoke39

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Parity in this case means mediocrity from top to bottom.

Fair enough. But 7 teams in the B to C+ range get the same average as 8 teams in the A to F range.

And if your B teams get to beat up on some bottom feeders throughout the year, that does inflate their record.
 
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Bouboumaster

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For the short term. Definitely not sustainable, though.

I'm a Stars fan. I have the same opinion about my team.


We'll see!

Suzuki, Caufield and Romanov are all looking promising for next year! If we can get a good LHPMD and a good left wigner, who knows?
 

ZeHockeyFan

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We'll see!

Suzuki, Caufield and Romanov are all looking promising for next year! If we can get a good LHPMD and a good left wigner, who knows?

Maybe.

I've learned to keep my feet on the ground and not take one off successes and outliers as the norm, but... you do you.
 
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drktmplr12

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Why?

I take the Habs roster over Panthers any day of the week.
What the Panthers have over the Habs is more elite talent (Barkov is IMO a top 5 center in the league) but who knows what Suzuki and Caufield will look like next year, together.

They looked awesome in the playoffs at least
so you take Caulfield, suzuki and weber over barkov, huberdeau and ekblad?

okay
 
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Jets

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If I want Winnipeg to win, I'd much rather play in a division with LA, Anaheim, San Jose and Arizona for the season than Ottawa, Vancouver and Calgary, but that's just me.
 
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Bouboumaster

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so you take Caulfield, suzuki and weber over barkov, huberdeau and ekblad?

okay

Reading is hard, it seems.

I'll make it simple:
Panthers best players > Habs best players
Habs overall roster > Panthers overall roster

Suzuki, Caufield and Romanov are possibly elites (Suzuki and Romanov didn't look like it during the season but Suzuki and Caufield most certainly look like they were in the playoffs, so we'll have to see)
 

Beezeral

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Reading is hard, it seems.

I'll make it simple:
Panthers best players > Habs best players
Habs overall roster > Panthers overall roster

Suzuki, Caufield and Romanov are possibly elites (Suzuki and Romanov didn't look like it during the season but Suzuki and Caufield most certainly look like they were in the playoffs, so we'll have to see)
Show your work, because outside of price, the panthers have the advantage pretty much across the board. They have better forward depth and better talent on D. Ekblad, Weegar, forsling> Weber, Petry, Romanov.

also the panther finished better in the standings in 19-20 and put up a much better fight Against Tampa without Ekblad.
 

Chips

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Fair enough. But 7 teams in the B to C+ range get the same average as 8 teams in the A to F range.

And if your B teams get to beat up on some bottom feeders throughout the year, that does inflate their record.
Not entirely wrong but looking at it the other way around a C team in a division of C and B teams will mostly likely end with a higher standings than an equal C team in a division with multiple legitimately great teams beating up on them, idk if I articulated that well but the gist is it goes both ways

it’s debatable how much a team was genuinely a D teams vs a C team who gets to play way more games against legitimately great teams who were already great the year before and finished more or less where everyone expected them to

maybe if you replace Toronto and Edmonton with Vegas and Denver and keep all the rest, those teams you rate as C based on their standings look like some of the D teams you’re saying gave fluff points in the other division


A division having parity doesn’t say they’re good or bad in itself, it just means that wherever they’re at, good or bad, they’re all the same. That there was parity in the a north isn’t in itself an argument that the north wasn’t weak. The second best team flamed out because they have tremendous depth issues to exploit, as did the team who exploited them. The Habs to a large extent rode a hot goalie on a god streak, until it ended because one man isn’t a whole team and hot streaks cool off eventually
 
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KevFu

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I mean, look, I love Canada, but let's be objective here... the North was not full of great teams. Montreal beat Vegas, and got clownstomped by Tampa. Tampa clownstomps everyone, so nothing to be embarrassed about.

But it limits the sample size of comparing the North to the rest of the league to one series, one match-up. Against a Vegas team coached by DeBoer.

By the same metric of "We beat Vegas and made the SCF..." (where you were outscored 1.8 GPG in 5 games)
The Panthers, without Ekblad, went 6 games with Tampa (outscored by 1.67 GPG)
The Islanders, without Lee, went 7 games with Tampa (outscored by 1.28 GPG, and toss Game 5 and it's 0.17 in 6 games)

So I don't know exactly where the North Division teams slot in with the rest of the NHL, but God Bless you all, it's not among the elite teams.
 

KevFu

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And I know some of you will think there's some USA vs Canada thing going on, but I assure you that Americans feel absolutely none of that. You Canadians are proud of hockey; it's your CREATION, your CULTURE, and borderline religion. You feel territorial about that. But American hockey fans LOVE YOU GUYS for that. Hockey is your gift to the world and thank you, thank you, thank you. We know all the words to O Canada, and we'd probably move there for Tim Horton's and universal health care if it wasn't colder than a penguin's taint. The only time we hate you is during the Olympics (Even then, we're like "okay, my team's best player is on their team...")

We just think it's amusing that the Leafs should be the "New York Yankees of hockey" and haven't won in 54 years; Or that the Habs ARE the French Yankees and they haven't won in 28 years; and the Canucks fans will riot again if they lose in the finals. (And I was rooting for the Canucks HARD in 1994).

If you actually win the Cup (against "not MY team"), we'd all be like "Good for them." Faster for some teams that others, of course, but it has nothing to do with "They're Canadian!"



I just think it's harder to build a really good team in Canada because the Canadian dollar/cold makes it harder to lure free agents and more importantly: your GMs face more pressure to make moves and that leads them to screw up more.

I'm sure the Edmonton sports section lead story was about who the Oilers were going to protect in the expansion draft. And Lou Lamoriello opened the New York papers to the read about whether the Yankees should buy or sell and which starting pitcher the Mets should target at the trade deadline; and then probably like 7 stories about the NBA finals and the NFL before seeing if anyone mentioned the Islanders.

Canadian teams are 22.5% of the league and were participants in 27% of the trades this past season. The pressure to act doesn't automatically make every Canadian GM bad at their job, but it's clearly a factor.

Glen Sather went to the Rangers from Edmonton, and I remember a Rangers/Yankees fan friend saying to me "He doesn't get it. He's acting like (Yankees GM Brian) Cashman all the time, when Rangers fans don't expect them to be like the Yankees. The Yankees are SUPPOSED TO WIN EVERY YEAR; the Rangers went 54 years without a Cup, you can BUILD for 3 to 5 years, just get us really deep in the playoffs 2 or 3 times a decade, win a Cup every 20 years and you'll be a legend."

Sather came from Canadian pressure to the Rangers and Yankees fans could see the similarities with the pressure NY Yankees GMs are under. GMs of the American teams have the luxury that the media will be jumping down the throat of another sports GM during the off-season. And that's why there's a lot more quality teams in the other divisions than this year's North.


And by the way, I could write an essay on why the "Usual Metro" or "This Year's East" is clearly the deepest division full of the most good teams... but the fans in the West and Central wouldn't make a thread like this!

God Bless you Canadian hockey fans. May your team eventually win a Cup, just not at the expense of my team.
 

TheBuriedHab

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The north division sucked, period. I said it 10 games into the season so this isn't hindsight. Every game in the regular season looked like shinny hockey. No teams could play defense. The Habs going on a Cinderella run doesn't change anything
 

Kraken Jokes

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Montreal took advantage because of the lack of competition and the fact that their team is built to take advantage of the relaxed playoff rulebook, not to mention Carey Price is a pretty major X factor.

Why wouldn't teams build this way? It's not like it's a secret that refs call the game differently in the playoffs. It's also not a secret that Price heats up in the playoffs. Having a great playoff goaltender is allowed, right?
 

Beezeral

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Why wouldn't teams build this way? It's not like it's a secret that refs call the game differently in the playoffs. It's also not a secret that Price heats up in the playoffs. Having a great playoff goaltender is allowed, right?
I’d rather build like Tampa, but that’s just me.
 
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BFLO

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Fair enough. But 7 teams in the B to C+ range get the same average as 8 teams in the A to F range.

And if your B teams get to beat up on some bottom feeders throughout the year, that does inflate their record.
Conversely there's no A or A+ teams in the division to push those C and D teams into the F range.

Its much harder to be in the top 4 of a division with 4 A's, 1 B, 1 C and 2 F's(East) than a division with 1 B+, 1 B, 3 C's and 2 D's(North).
 

haseoke39

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Conversely there's no A or A+ teams in the division to push those C and D teams into the F range.

Its much harder to be in the top 4 of a division with 4 A's, 1 B, 1 C and 2 F's(East) than a division with 1 B+, 1 B, 3 C's and 2 D's(North).
Eh, we'd disagree on the actual grades.

We probably agree at this point that the mix of talent up and down the division does matter when there's no interdivisional play, as everyone's record is a product of the specific mix of teams they play.

Leave it at that and let's see how the offseason goes for all these clubs.
 

TaLoN

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I mean, look, I love Canada, but let's be objective here... the North was not full of great teams. Montreal beat Vegas, and got clownstomped by Tampa. Tampa clownstomps everyone, so nothing to be embarrassed about.

But it limits the sample size of comparing the North to the rest of the league to one series, one match-up. Against a Vegas team coached by DeBoer.

By the same metric of "We beat Vegas and made the SCF..." (where you were outscored 1.8 GPG in 5 games)
The Panthers, without Ekblad, went 6 games with Tampa (outscored by 1.67 GPG)
The Islanders, without Lee, went 7 games with Tampa (outscored by 1.28 GPG, and toss Game 5 and it's 0.17 in 6 games)

So I don't know exactly where the North Division teams slot in with the rest of the NHL, but God Bless you all, it's not among the elite teams.
Montreal, the champions of the weak north beat Vegas the champions of the weaker west.

That a team from either of these divisions made the finals says absolutely nothing about either division vs the league as a whole.

The only way to answer that is to play more vs the rest of the league, which didn't happen so it will be debated to the end of time.
 

BFLO

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Eh, we'd disagree on the actual grades.

We probably agree at this point that the mix of talent up and down the division does matter when there's no interdivisional play, as everyone's record is a product of the specific mix of teams they play.

Leave it at that and let's see how the offseason goes for all these clubs.
Yeah I was being mean/snarky with my leafs ranking.

You can rank teams into tiers within their own division but you can't compare the tiers between divisions. But it does paint a picture of how difficult the divisions were.

East:
Tier 1: Pit, Wsh, Bos, Nyi
tier 2: Nyr, Phi
tier 3: Nj, Buf

North:
Tier 1: Tor
Tier 2: Edm
Tier 3: Wpg, Mon
Tier 4: Cal, Ott, Van

West:
tier 1: Col, Veg
tier 2: Min
tier 3: St louis
tier 4: Ari
tier 5: La, Sj, Ana

Central:
tier 1: Car, Fla, Tb
tier 2: Nsh, Dal
tier 3: Chi
tier 4: Det, Cbus
 
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