EHEC Season Preview - Central Division

[Jungle Cats]

Keokuk, IA (ZP) - The sixth season of EHEC is already upon us and the editors of EHN must now scramble to put together a preview of what you're about to see before you see it and it's already happened. That is, consider this season preview as a warm-up, an apértif to the fine programming available on EHN's coverage of the 2015-16 season before the exclusivity deal runs out and EHEC ends up on Fox Sports World Canada and OLN.

Beginning with...

The Central Division

1) Winnipeg Jets
Last Two Seasons -
12/13 46 29 7 99 Lost in WCQF
13/14 51 26 5 107 Lost in WCS

Despite an on-going reshuffling of the front office, the Jets are still a major player to contend with in the Central. Perhaps in part due to uncertainty with who's manning the controls, we're looking at largely the same team we saw last year, which was an excellent defensive team with the best goal differential in the league (+70) and overall the third best GAA and also the fifth highest scoring team.

Keys to Success - The pairing of Bogosian and Pietrangelo is among the best in the league, and the combination of talented rover Kevin Shattenkirk, stalwart Jared Cowen and puckmovers Gilbert and Russell give the Jets a defensive group with no obvious weaknesses. Upfront, Patrice Bergeron, Martin Havlat and Brad Boyes should lead the way, but again, the Jets run a lineup deep with talent, and youngers Huberdeau, Couturier, Toffoli and Kitsyn are more than capable of providing secondary scoring.

Questions/Concerns - 22 year old netminder Jack Campbell is entering his 4th season with the Jets, and while he has put up respectable numbers in the regular season, he's been thrashed within an inch of his life in the last two playoffs. Overall, the Jets don't have an abundance of leadership on the ice, which could make it a grind to chip away at returning to the Stanley Cup Final.

Top Five Scorers -
Bergeron (35+45)
Boyes (40+40)
Havlat (35+35)
Huberdeau (25+50)
Couturier (25+40)

2) Colorado Avalanche
Last Two Seasons -
12/13 34 43 5 73 Did Not Qualify
13/14 37 42 3 77 Did Not Qualify

After the Jets, the Central opens up into a vast expanse of okay-to-good teams, most of which have at least an outside shot at a playoff berth, and the differences between these semi-contenders is perhaps negligible at best. The Avalanche haven't impressed in the last two seasons, but they appear to be trending up with the acquisition of Semyon Varlamov and the continued maturation of some of their young core. The goaltender is the most important member of a penalty killing unit, and Varlamov definitely has the goods to help the Avs improve on their 22nd ranked PK. That might be enough.

Keys to Success - Varlamov, clearly, but also Johnson and Doughty focusing on their defensive prowess could help turn the goal differential around here. Young Captain Gabriel Landeskog sets the table on a forward group that includes a lot of heavy hitters to compliment the sublime talents of Matt Duchene.

Questions/Concerns - While the Avs boast a wealth of scoring talent on defense - Whitney, Klein, Doughty - much of the responsibility for scoring up front lies with their top line, and most of the rest of the team are there to take the body and clog up the middle. The Avs could win a lot of tight games this year, but depending on winning 1 goal games is usually like rolling a bunch of dice.

Top Five Scorers -
Landeskog (35+40)
Duchene (37+37)
Gusev (40+30)
Doughty (10+50)
Whitney (15+40)

3) Chicago Blackhawks
Last Two Seasons -
12-13 51 25 6 108 Lost in WCQF
13/14 36 36 10 82 Lost in WCQF

Chicago's a good candidate to place higher than third, and certainly has the talent to bounce back into contender status pretty easily. They have five forwards that could easily match up with any five forwards on any team in the league, and that quality of offense is hard to dismiss. An excellent group of puckmoving defensemen with solid defensive credentials slot in behind the likes of Toews and Kane and you've got very little reason to doubt this group. And yet... doubt exists. Two straight first round exits and no one to blame, per se. The Hawks have scoring, defense, physicality, no obvious weakness in net... but they're not quite there. And It's not as though continuing to try the same thing will have markedly different results. TL;DR? The Blackhawks are a good team, but there's a timed bomb somewhere in the roster.

Keys to Success - The likes of Toews and Kane continue to be world beaters offensively, but one imagines JT will not repeat his 110 point effort of a season ago. Chicago will be most successful if scoring is done by committee, because few teams have as ridiculous a committee.

Questions/Concerns - What isn't working here? Is the defense just a little too ordinary after Seabrook? It's damned mysterious.

Top Five Scorers -
Toews (35+45)
Sharp (35+40)
Kane (35+35)
Hossa (30+40)
Keith (10+45)

4) St. Louis Blues
Last Two Seasons -
12/13 38 37 7 83 Did Not Qualify
13/14 41 35 6 88 Lost in SCF

Not fair, you say. Surely the Stanley Cup Runner-Up deserves your respect, you say. Ho, does one Cinderella run a contender make? The Blues are definitely in the mix to make the playoffs once again, and they've certainly got as much a shot as any team once they're there, but aside from an above average defensive group, there are some reservations about this roster.

Keys to Success - The ageless Marty St. Louis continues to be ageless (okay, fine, he's 39), and he'll be the central offensive force on a team that's mostly characterized by solid veteran defensemen like Regehr, Bouwmeester and Carle. Dmitry Kulikov is the stand-out exception on the blueline, and could be a breakout star this season. The Blues are talented up front, but lack some of the brutal edge that opponents have in their bottom six.

Questions - The Cinderella team had a lot of turn-over this off-season, big trades and acquisitions - Derrick Brassard, Daniel Sedin, Bouwmeester, and while on paper the Blues have gotten a lot better, there's no guarantee that the spark is still somewhere in the locker-room. If the spark turns out to have been Martin St. Louis all along, the Blues could punch their ticket for another long playoff run now.

Top Five Scorers -
Brassard (35+45)
St. Louis (30+45)
Sedin (35+30)
Junttila (25+35)
Kulikov (15+40)

5) Minnesota Wild
Last Two Seasons -
12/13 29 47 6 64 Did Not Qualify
13/14 37 39 6 80 Did Not Qualify

"Trending up" are the Minnesota Wild, who have some brilliant talent on the lineup ready to make good on their potential. Now, we'd never purposefully lie to get more viewers to tune in to another sad selection of teams for EHN's Wednesday Night Hockey, but the Wild are one of the most exciting teams in the Central and poised for a breakout and coincidentally will be playing the Oilers, Jets, and Flames a whole bunch of times on Wednesday Night Hockey.

Keys to Success - The trio of Yakupov, Kabanov and Nugent-Hopkinsov are ready for their close-up. Minnesota's top line is all under 23, and instead of waiting for boys who want call, they've got to get out there and get their strong independent woman on.

Questions/Concerns - Alexei Marchenko is a fascinating offensive talent and an excellent weapon on the powerplay, but can his defense keep up to an NHL level? Minnesota's got a good mix of buttery soft and salty grit, but will 'dem popcorn kernels pop?

Top Five Scorers -
Yakupov (30+45)
Nugent-Hopkins (30+40)
Kabanov (30+35)
Mueller (30+30)
Del Zotto (15+45)

6) Dallas Stars
Last Two Seasons -
12/13 26 50 6 58 Did Not Qualify
13/14 34 40 8 76 Did Not Qualify

There are no small parts, just small actors. That's still kind of a mean thing to say, isn't it? How many times has Peter Dinklage heard that inane adage? Anyway, Dallas. Dallas has been slowly improving over the last few seasons and while they're not ready to strike quite yet, they're ready to be step-up and win some tough games.

Keys to Success - Vicious meanies Nathan Horton and Brandon Saad are two of the league's better power forwards, Horton among the true artisans of the modern art of scoring pretty goals and stapling fools to the boards. Tom Kuehnhackl has emerged as one of the better triggermen in the league, and Mikhail Grigorenko is a lucky playmaker indeed, to have a full field of good targets.

Questions/Concerns - There's a distinct lack of premium scoring talent on the Stars blueline - though the Stars certainly don't lack for options on the powerplay, there isn't a gamechanger back there. Enroth/Bobkov don't make for one of the strongest tandems in the West, which maybe speaks to the strength of competition than any direct comment on Enroth, who isn't an all-star, but gives the Stars a chance to win most nights.

Top Five Scorers -
Grigorenko (30+55)
Kuehnhackl (35+40)
Armia (30+30)
Horton (30+25)
Saad (25+25)

7) Nashville Predators
Last Two Seasons -
12/13 36 36 10 82 Did Not Qualify
13/14 29 48 5 63 Did Not Qualify

Similar to Dallas in the sense of 'here's a re-building team, they've got some good pieces, now complete the puzzle,' Nashville finished last year -67 on the season, the second worst mark in the league. There's definitely a sense of progress being made in Tennessee, but there's still work to be done. Obvious ground-work has been laid in the defensive group - the Weber-Suter pairing at least rivals Bogo-Pietrangelo on the successful Jets, Staal and Siemens are also very accomplished at a young age on the back-end.

Keys to Success - Well, there's Kuznetsov. In his first full season with Nashville the Russian put up 75 points, and looks geared for takeoff. The excellently entertaining Steven Shipley (He shoots, he hits, what else could you want) highlights a group of forwards that really bash - add Drew Miller, Steckel, King, Jacques, Stewart, Storres and Astrom to the group of forwards who play big. Add to that group the strong core of defenders and well... Smashville, indeed.

Questions/Concerns - Siemens may be a great leader one day, but that Nashville has turned to the twenty-one year old defender so quickly puts a lot on his lanky shoulders. This is overall a very young team, and though there's some scoring talent already in evidence, there isn't a lot going on offensively with the bottom half of the roster, and that lack of depth could hurt them.

Top Five Scorers -
Kuznetsov (40+50)
Wilson (35+50)
Kugryshev (35+30)
Weber (15+40)
Suter (5+45)

[Commish Bub(NYR)]

Good stuff.

[Singin the BLUES]

Nice, very good write ups

[SharksGM]

Nice writeup. It seems like you're predicting some heavy goalscoring from this division, though... ~24 30-goal scorers between the 7 teams when there were just 69 (heh heh) in the whole league last season. Only around 55 managed 70 points, for that matter.

[Jungle Cats]

EHN staff writer Eugene Aardvark still thinks it's 1992. He was in a skiing accident.