Sunday Standings: Lots of Metropolitan action ahead!
This coming week features a ton of inter-Metropolitan games, including three the Penguins are involved in
Are you ready for some division games?
The NHL schedule is treating us to a seemingly rare occurrence this week of multiple Metropolitan Division matchups.
Today
NY Islanders @ NY Rangers, Washington @ Carolina
Tuesday
Philadelphia @ Carolina, Pittsburgh @ NY Islanders
Thursday
Pittsburgh @ Carolina
Friday
Pittsburgh @ Washington
Saturday
New Jersey @ NY Islanders
Those should be some good early-season measuring stick games, and good for this website since many of them involve the Penguins. Before those games begin, here’s how the standings within the division are stacking up this morning. Given the differences in games played, we’ll sort again by points percentage to give a more true outlook of where each team is at.
Washington: The Caps’ offense is heating up with 5, 6 and 7 goals scored in their three games this week, all victories (over NYR, Montreal and Columbus). Alex Ovechkin is leading the charge with 3G+3A in the last four games, raising himself to 859 career goals. That last game of the year in Pittsburgh could be absolutely massive with Wayne Gretzky at 894.
Carolina: The Hurricanes had that one game postponed earlier in the year by an actual hurricane, so they sit with a division-low nine games currently. A slow schedule has been the only thing stopping Carolina, they haven’t lost a game since October 19th! They’ll get back in the swing of things with four games this week, including three against Metropolitan foes so we should be seeing a lot more of them in the near future.
NY Rangers: Not much action for the Blueshirts, they lost 5-3 to Washington on Tuesday night and then beat Ottawa 2-1 on Friday. The Sens outshot NYR 40-18 but Igor Shesterkin was in his bag making a ton of ridiculous looking saves. When he’s on his game there’s few more entertaining goalies to watch in the league, and he pretty much stole a victory for NY on that night.
New Jersey: The Devils started the week off strong, putting 6-0 and 6-2 beatdowns on Anaheim and Vancouver, respectively. They cooled off with a 3-0 loss on Friday night to Calgary. NJ stays out west to play Edmonton in what should be a great game before coming back to the east coast.
Columbus: It’s been a wild week for the Blue Jackets; they started out beating Edmonton 6-1, and then shutout NYI 2-0. That was the good part, but a rough weekend ensued with 6-2 and 7-2 losses on Friday and Saturday nights to Winnipeg and Washington, respectively. CBJ is pretty variable right now, with blowout wins and losses coming out of no where.
NY Islanders: Injuries are striking hard on the Islanders. Mat Barzal and Adam Pelech are both on injured reserve and each expected to be out 4-6 weeks with upper body injuries after getting hurt this week. Alex Romanov and Mike Reilly are day-to-day. Anthony Duclair was previously on the IR. That makes for a big storm to weather for key players all dropping at the same time. NYI fought back with a 4-3 win on Friday against Buffalo but dropped games to Anaheim and Columbus earlier in the week.
Philadelphia: It was a 2-2-0 week in Philadelphia, they won two low-scoring games (2-0 over Boston and 2-1 against St. Louis) sandwiched around a 4-3 loss to Montreal to start the week and a 3-0 defeat to the Bruins last night. The immediate road ahead looks tough, the Flyers travel to Carolina and then visit both of the Florida teams in the coming days.