With the 2019 Stanley Cup playoffs starting this week, we're taking a slightly different tactic to get you ready for Round 1. In this column, we're going to rank the forward groups of all 16 qualifying teams, and that will be followed by the same concept for the defense corps.
These lists generate plenty of quality discussion and passionate debate. Everyone loves a good list, after all. But bear in mind that this is ultimately meant to serve as a fun thought exercise rather than some sort of scientific ranking. All of these teams made the playoffs for a reason, after all, so even the club in the No. 16 slot is doing something right. If there's criticism, it's just relative to the competition. This year's batch of teams was also ripe for tiering, and each group of teams in the tier is ranked within; however, the margin between teams within each tier is generally slim.
So with those caveats out of the way, let's count it down from 16 to 1:
On an island all by themselves
16. New York Islanders
There will be people (read: Islanders fans) who will scoff at this ranking because the team has been proving the doubters hilariously wrong all season long, but it was tough to justify putting a team whose leaders in the two major offensive categories had 62 points (Mathew Barzal) and 28 goals (Anders Lee), respectively, anywhere except for at the bottom.
They finished the season as the 22nd-ranked offense, which actually isn't the lowest of the playoff teams. That's a distinction that goes to the Dallas Stars, whom we'll get to shortly. The Isles' finish is a testament to the surprising secondary scoring they were able to get from unexpected sources, but it also raises fair questions of how long they'll be able to continue squeezing juice out of that orange before it goes dry. At the top, the Islanders had just three players exceed 50 points and 20 goals. To put that into some perspective, the Tampa Bay Lightning had three players go over 90 points and 40 goals.
In their defense, that's just one side of the story. The reason they got to this point is because of their work on the other end of the ice, where no team was stingier, and the forwards are obviously a big part of that. The Isles' ability to prevent offense is a big reason why Barry Trotz and Robin Lehner will be taking home some hardware this summer, and why they're a sneaky scary foe to run into in a playoff series where a hot goalie is sometimes all you really need.
The one-liners
15. Dallas Stars
14. Nashville Predators
13. Colorado Avalanche
12. Carolina Hurricanes
Take your pick in terms of the specific order here, but these four teams belong together in terms of lineup composition and how much of their attack is funneled through their top lines.
That's especially true for the Stars and Avalanche, who got 42.6 percent and 41.1 percent of their total offense, respectively, just from their three best forwards alone. The numbers would likely be even more skewed for the Predators, considering that their two leading scorers missed 24 and 18 games each in the middle of the season.
Being so reliant on one line isn't necessarily the worst strategy in the world if that line is as uniquely dominant as these four have shown to be, but it does raise some rather important philosophical questions if they run into the right opponent.
We won't have to wait long to get our answers, because we'll see the Predators and Stars go at it in the first round. It'll be quite telling to see how each coach feels about the rest of his roster by how he approaches things tactically in home games, where they have last change. Every situation is different, but the debate of whether you should go power-versus-power or try to get your top offensive players away from the other team's best is one of the most fascinating subplots of any playoff series. That goes double for when your production is so contingent on your top line.
It's a decision that's presumably made easier for a team like the Stars, which has a traditional shutdown center like Radek Faksa to flank the other team's top line, which then frees Tyler Seguin's group up from having to shoulder all of the defensive responsibilities while also trying to carry the team on the other end of the ice too.
The other wrinkle to this is the dilemma of whether to throw all of your eggs in one basket by loading up the top line, or try to spread the wealth by layering your biggest threats throughout the lineup. We've already seen the Stars and Avalanche experiment with that by mixing and matching.
While it looks like Stars coach Jim Montgomery is justifiably hesitant to split up Seguin and Alexander Radulov, he's been moving Jamie Benn up and down the lineup while giving other players cameos on the top line. At this point, it's fair to wonder how much Benn has left in the tank, and whether he can actually carry his own line for an extended period of time or whether they're just better off putting him in a position to succeed as a supporting player.
As for Colorado, with Gabriel Landeskog and Mikko Rantanen both missing time, they've been forced to try out different combinations alongside Nathan MacKinnon. He's such a singularly dominant force that he can likely carry anyone who happens to be riding shotgun next to him, which gives credence to the idea of moving the other stars down to their own lines. The issue is that the three of them have been so dynamic together that the allure of keeping them together might be too tantalizing to overcome.
There are teams like the Lightning and the Sharks that almost can't mess things up because of the sheer volume of talent they have to work with. For the others, they need to push all the right buttons to maximize their opportunities and cover their flaws. The coach who does the best job of that will be the one who advances.
Strength in numbers
11. St. Louis Blues
10. Columbus Blue Jackets
We're used to saying that Columbus doesn't have the star power others do, but that's simply not true for as long as Artemi Panarin is wearing a Blue Jackets uniform.
He put that transcendent talent on display in getting the team into the playoffs with his dominant performance against the New York Rangers in the final week, putting on a puck-handling clinic and presenting a scoring threat seemingly every time he stepped onto the ice. That type of dynamic skill is ultimately the reason why the Blue Jackets chose to keep him at the deadline despite his impending free agency, because he finally presents them with a player who can take over games single-handedly. There's no sure thing in the NHL playoffs, but with Panarin in the lineup, they at least have a fighting chance, which is something they've very rarely been able to say over the years.
While he's their brightest star, Panarin is hardly the only scoring threat for the Blue Jackets. Their current lineup contains seven players who rank in the top 35 of even-strength goal scorers:
Cam Atkinson: 25, 8th
Matt Duchene: 22, T-17th
Pierre-Luc Dubois: 20, T-28th
Ryan Dzingel: 20, T-28th
Josh Anderson: 20, T-28th
Artemi Panarin: 19, T-35th
Oliver Bjorkstrand: 19, T-35th
A name to watch moving forward is Alexandre Texier. In a surprising turn of events, he drew into the lineup over their final two games and has made the most of it. After dominating the Finnish professional league (Liiga) with 41 points in 55 games, he scored in bunches in the AHL (seven points in seven games) before being called up. His emergence this season surely gave the team added confidence to make the trades they did at the deadline, knowing that a young player of his caliber was on his away (among others like Emil Bemstrom).
As for the Blues, their top line certainly does the majority of the heavy lifting. While Ryan O'Reilly has been worth every single penny they paid for him and then some, St. Louis still runs through Vladimir Tarasenko. It's no coincidence that they were stuck at the bottom of the standings during his early-season malaise. And it's no coincidence that he went off during the 11-game winning streak that saved their season, registering 10 goals and 10 assists during that stretch. When he's running as hot as he's been since then, the Blues are a force to be reckoned with.
But what puts St. Louis over the top is its ability to relentlessly come at you in waves. It's that depth that's made them one of the most dominant puck possession teams in the league in the second half of the season. The fact that they have skilled players like Ivan Barbashev and Alexander Steen on their fourth line makes them a classic example of the modern-day lineup in the NHL, where teams need to have four lines that can be rolled interchangeably, all of whom can skate and score.
The top-sixers
9. Boston Bruins
8. Vegas Golden Knights
7. Winnipeg Jets
6. Calgary Flames
All of these teams could very easily wind up in the next higher group, but I decided to put them into a tier of their own because the Penguins and Capitals belong together forever, and these four have notable gaps between their top-six forwards and the rest of their forwards. "Notable" is one way to put it, although the more accurate operative term might be "sizable," "drastic," or "gargantuan."
Winnipeg is the trickiest group to get a feel for because both the deployment and production have been all over the place lately. While the overall offensive numbers appear to be pretty consistent with those from the dream season of 2017-18, there have been some rather alarming red flags that have been building beneath the surface. In particular, the underlying possession numbers have flatlined, resembling more those of a lottery team than those of a no-doubt-about-it contender.
Part of that surely has to do with all of the injuries key players have endured, not really getting to show us what they look like at full force since the Kevin Hayes trade. But part of it might also be that they're not quite as good as we thought they'd be heading into the season, or that expectations were blown out of proportion and we're just too slow or unwilling to adjust to the new reality. Yet the talent across the board, from the shot-making ability to the passing, is so tantalizing that it's impossible to bump them down any further, because the potential of this group is right up there with the very best in the league.
The other three teams here have had no such struggles. In fact, they're the top three shot share teams in the league over the past 25 games (see table at right), which has been established as a strong predictor of future success in past seasons.
By now, everyone knows about how good the Knights have been since acquiring Mark Stone and what the Bruins' top line is capable of doing. It's the Flames that really deserve more love here. They've been ... on fire lately, surging past the Sharks in the Pacific and winning the West in resounding fashion in the closing weeks.
It doesn't feel like it, but they're actually tied with San Jose for the second-highest scoring offense in the league. If it weren't for a brief hiccup following the All-Star break, not only would Johnny Gaudreau have smashed the 100-point plateau, but he likely would've garnered legitimate consideration as a Hart Trophy finalist.
And yet as good as he's been, their engine is ultimately the second line orchestrated by Mikael Backlund and Matthew Tkachuk. With the two of them on the ice, the Flames have been an absolute territorial juggernaut through which everyone else flows. They don't have the point totals that the top line does, but they're just as valuable.
The reason the Flames got bumped down ever so slightly is just because of some of the tangential questions that linger. What's been up with Sean Monahan's health of late, because the coverage of it has been quite mysterious? Did Elias Lindholm's early-season shooting percentage heater completely throw us off the scent? Does James Neal have anything at all left in the tank? When you're at the very top, these are ultimately the types of nagging things that we nitpick.
Ol' reliable
5. Pittsburgh Penguins
4. Washington Capitals
We know exactly what we're going to get with these two considering the names involved and how long they've been doing their thing, and the roadmap is there for another tremendous second-round showdown. The stars on both sides will get all of the attention and headlines, but with them almost canceling each other out, it'll come down to which team can get more out of its supporting cast.
The Capitals enter the postseason playing their best hockey at the right time, looking like a completely different group since the acquisition of Carl Hagelin at the deadline. While he's way down the list of the most important contributors on the team, his insertion into the lineup has helped a lot of things fall into place.
In the approximately 125 minutes Hagelin has played with Lars Eller and Brett Connolly at 5-on-5, the trio has outscored opponents 9-3 and controlled 64.6 percent of the shot attempts and 64.2 percent of the high-danger chances. Given how lethal Washington's top-six already was, sorting out their third line was key. Now they can roll their lines worry free without any obvious weak spots.
Alex Ovechkin's 51 goals and eighth Rocket Richard Trophy are both immensely impressive, but there's a lot more substance to this Capitals team. They have six other players who finished with between 21 and 25 goals. The most notable of these is Jakub Vrana, because he's finally taken the steps we'd been hoping either he or Andre Burakovsky would after all of the flashes they've shown in the past.
For the Penguins, the key is ultimately going to be whether or not they can get a healthy and fully functional performance out of Evgeni Malkin. For a mere mortal, his production this season has been perfectly fine, but compared to his lofty standards, it's been a bit of a roller-coaster ride. Pittsburgh needs him and Phil Kessel to hold up their end of the bargain, because they know exactly what they're going to get from Sidney Crosby, Jake Guentzel and whoever is lucky enough to get to play with those two at any given moment.
Crosby's performance this season has been right up there with any of his vintage campaigns, with his impact being almost unparalleled. Because of these 5-on-5 figures, he's earned himself not only Hart Trophy votes but Selke Trophy votes as well.
The plan is to outscore our problems
3. Toronto Maple Leafs
2. San Jose Sharks
The collection of talent the Sharks have up front is downright silly. A group that likely already would've been up this high prior to the deadline went out and added another legitimate top-six talent in Gustav Nyquist, only adding to their embarrassment of riches. It was a somewhat surprising move at the time, given their surplus of talent at the position and other needs in the goal prevention department, but this time of year it's impossible to have too many offensive weapons. The fact that they have Joe Thornton and Kevin Labanc playing as far down the lineup as they are is almost unfair, but it frees them up to feast on the power play and against tertiary matchups.
Based on the way Sharks goalie Martin Jones has played this season, they might need every single last one of those goals that group can generate. If anyone can cover for the league-worst save percentage (at 5-on-5 and in all situations), it's the team that was also first in shot share and second in goals.
For the Leafs, John Tavares has certainly lived up to all the hype in his first campaign in Toronto. The 47 goals he scored were easily a career high, and much of that success came in lockstep with Mitch Marner's emergence as a top-flight playmaker. The two of them made sweet music at 5-on-5 together, where Tavares' 33 goals and Marner's 36 primary assists each led the league.
As good as he was, his addition was surely made with this exact looming scenario in mind. For them to finally get over the hump and advance past the first round for the first time since 2004, they'll need to find a way to beat the Bruins in a seven-game series. Doing so means either going through the Bergeron line or finding a way around it, and having a second legitimate scoring line will go a long way toward accomplishing the latter.
Assuming that the deadly combination of Tavares and Marner soaks up the majority of the Bergeron line's attention, that'll free up Auston Matthews to face some softer competition than he has in the past. Hockey is a team game, but getting something closer resembling his lofty regular-season goal production is an absolute must for the Leafs to finally slay their demons.
The cream of the crop
1. Tampa Bay Lightning
I initially considered simply ending this list without adding anything in this section because the Lightning's placement here is so unassailable. But where's the fun in that? Let's dig into some of their achievements by providing historical context for their offensive output.
Their 300-plus goals scored this season puts them in some elite company, making them one of just 10 teams to accomplish the rare feat over the past 25 years. It's especially impressive considering how many of those came in a completely different era and style of play:
The frightening thing about the Lightning is that they can beat you in any number of ways, which makes it almost possible to adequately game plan against them in a playoff series. At 5-on-5 they come at you in waves, with two separate units that could easily be passed off as a bona fide top line on any other team without any hesitation.
Their best player, Nikita Kucherov, not only just set the record for most points in a season by a Russian-born player, but he did something we haven't seen since the mid-90s; his 128 points were the most in the past 20 years. Kucherov finished sixth in goals, but even if we take away those 41 tallies, he still would've finished 17th in points, with his 87 assists.
The Lightning have young players in their bottom six, like Anthony Cirelli and Mathieu Joseph, who play that low down the depth chart purely out of necessity because of the logjam above them. But they are more than capable of stepping up and contributing whenever they have the opportunity. Their power play converted on nearly 30 percent of their opportunities, which is an efficiency you'd have to go back to the '80s to see matched. Even the 2009-10 Capitals during their absolute peak fell short of the 10-plus goals per 60 minutes this Lightning team generated with the man advantage.
What they've managed to accomplish in this current salary-cap era is truly worth celebrating. All of the potential "yeah, buts" are unfounded. Goals are generally up across the entire league this season, yet no one was able to match their output on either an individual or team level.
As we've seen time and time again in the past, regular-season dominance doesn't guarantee you anything in the postseason, when the slate gets wiped clean. But regardless of what happens in the coming weeks, it shouldn't take away from what the Lightning were able to accomplish in the first 82 games. It's unlike anything we've really seen in a long time, and it's something we'll look back and marvel at years from now. They deserve all of the accolades imaginable for that.