The enormity of the situation facing the Boston Bruins isn't lost on their players.
They know life with Zdeno Chara, the 6-foot-9 behemoth on the back end, won't be the same.
"I don't think one player can fill Z's shoes," defenceman Dougie Hamilton said after Saturday's 4-1 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs. "That's impossible."
Which is true. But the reality is it's impossible for the entire team to fill them either. Chara has been so incredibly healthy, consistent and dominant as a Bruin that Boston is a completely different team when he's not on the ice.
Even at 37 years old.
Since Chara signed in Boston way back in 2006, he had missed only 20 games – and only 11 of those were due to injury. Without him, one of the best teams in the league won eight times and lost 12 (8-7-5), well below a playoff pace.
But if you extend that analysis to when Chara's been on the ice and when he hasn't, his absence is even more glaring. The last seven years, the Bruins have scored nearly 60 per cent of the goals at even strength when Chara has been on the ice, the rough equivalent to outscoring the opposition a goal a game every game for a full season.
They've also been a 55-per-cent possession team, which is as elite as it gets over that kind of extended time frame.
Without him, they've been close to average, even with all their other talent, barely outscoring teams and barely outpossessing them (50.7 per cent).
For an awful long time, he has made such a huge difference on his team – almost singlehandedly the difference between Cup contention and mediocrity. His impact may tail off as he ages, but the next 15 or so games will tell the tale of how they make do without him.
History says it will be anything but easy.
"When you lose a guy like Zdeno, you have to rely on [your structure] a lot more," coach Claude Julien said. "It's got to be a total team effort."
RISING
Taylor Hall, Edmonton
“Between Nuge [Ryan Nugent-Hopkins] and Hall and Ebs [Jordan Eberle], they have to not only want that matchup, they have to enjoy it.” That was Oilers coach Dallas Eakins on his young top line taking on the Steve Stamkos assignment, which they did quite well in one of three impressive (and badly needed) wins last week. Hall has gone a little more under the radar than he should have so far in his career, but at 22, he’s already a superstar and has the ability to turn games singlehandedly. Watching him continue to evolve into one of the NHL’s top talents is going to be one of the better storylines to follow as far as Canadian teams are concerned. Don’t miss it.
The Minnesota Wild’s top line
When the Wild went spend crazy and brought in Zach Parise and Ryan Suter on enormous 13-year deals for $98-million (U.S.) in 2012, few thought it would work out like this. Which is to say: very, very well. Parise in particular has become the engine that drives this team, and his line could help them threaten some of the Western Conference powers. Only six games in, they’re a dark horse.
Andre Burakovsky, Washington
One of the league’s top scoring rookies with nearly a point a game, an early Calder Trophy nominee and straight out of Klagenfurt, Austria. A name worth keeping in mind.
FALLING
The Leafs play at home
That odour wafting up off the ice on Saturday at the Air Canada Centre wasn’t from some stale Burkie Dogs left behind a concession stand for a few months. It was the play of the home team, yet again, with their third stinker on home ice to the depleted Bruins. Toronto has now been outscored 19-10 in their five home games this season and has won only four times at the ACC in their past 14 games. The result after the latest display was a closed-door team meeting that stretched some 15 minutes after the final horn. Their conclusion? They need to compete harder. Which might sound familiar.
The San Jose Sharks
They lost to Buffalo. On home ice. Enough said. They get this week’s stone of shame.
Mika Zibanejad, Ottawa
The Senators have a hole at centre and had hoped the young Swede could fill it but the early returns are awful. Zibanejad has no points and more troublingly looks out of his depth in other areas as well.
What’s happening here?
ZONE MATCHING
We’ve all heard of line matching, where a coach uses home-ice advantage and last change to put out the group of players he wants to get long looks at the opposition’s lines.
Against Sidney Crosby, or Stamkos, or any of the NHL’s other elite stars, this is imperative.
But some NHL coaches are using a different type of deployment with their lines that we’ll call zone matching, which means they have certain units that only are sent out to play in certain zones of the ice.
If there’s a defensive zone faceoff, the coach will always put out a line that excels at winning the draw, retrieving the puck and exiting the zone, preferably to get a faceoff in the neutral or offensive zones.
If there’s an offensive zone faceoff, out come the scorers who you’d rather not have playing in their own end.
Two teams are doing this much more dramatically than any others early on – Edmonton and Nashville – and it’s been working well for both.
For the Oilers, they want to keep a lot of their kids sheltered from defensive situations, so Boyd Gordon’s “fourth” line has started in the defensive zone 73 times and the offensive zone only nine.
Paul Gaustad’s usage in Nashville is even more extreme, as he’s taken only four offensive zone faceoffs out of 89.
This is another example of how specialized roles are becoming in the NHL, especially for teams that can’t simply run power versus power every night.
GAMES OF THE WEEK
Tuesday
St. Louis at Dallas. Frankly, just fire up GameCentre and watch any game involving the Stars right now. They don’t get a lot of attention down in Dallas, but this is perhaps the most exciting team in the league, in both good and bad ways, as Saturday’s 7-5 loss to the Islanders showed. But the Stars have loaded their top line with Jamie Benn, Jason Spezza and Tyler Seguin, and they’ve been the most dangerous trio leaguewide to date.
Thursday and Friday
Los Angeles at Pittsburgh, and then Detroit. The defending champs are winning a pile of games (On Sunday, they buried the Blue Jackets, 5-2), but they haven’t exactly wowed while doing so. They’ve been outclassed by Phoenix, St. Louis and Minnesota and gotten great goaltending from Jonathan Quick to pull out wins that weren’t always otherwise deserved. Only the Jeff Carter-led 70s Line is generating much on offence and the blueline looks thin minus Slava Voynov (due to suspension). You can’t call it a Stanley Cup hangover given their record, but something is a little off in LA. How they fare on the road against two good Eastern Conference teams will speak volumes.