News

Nothing is ever won in October in the National Hockey League, which may provide some small comfort to Toronto Maple Leafs fans, who've watched their team go oh for the first month of a season in which far more was expected.

For proof, just turn the clock back one year to when two of the hottest teams out of the gate were the Montreal Canadiens in the East and the San Jose Sharks in the West. Both looked unbeatable in the first month, and looked promising all the way through to the All-Star break (San Jose was a sparkling 34-6-4-1; Montreal a more than adequate 27-13-2-4).

By the time April rolled around, all that early promise had evaporated. And by the time it was June, the celebrations were on in Pittsburgh, which was glacially slow out of the gate, out of the playoff picture in early January and subject to the same sort of scrutiny that is going on now in half-a-dozen different locales in the topsy-turvy, up-is-down NHL.

The Phoenix Coyotes and the Colorado Avalanche inexplicably lead the way in the West, while two of the three heavy favourites, the Detroit Red Wings and the Vancouver Canucks stumble along.

Meanwhile, in the Eastern Conference, no quality team is struggling more than the Carolina Hurricanes, a Stanley Cup semi-finalist a year ago who were bad early last year too, only to turn it around after the coaching change from Peter Laviolette to Paul Maurice energized them in the final third of the season and into the playoffs.

There is an all-or-nothing quality to the Hurricanes organization this past decade, marked by one championship (2006), a second trip to the final (2002), a startling run through the playoffs last year – plus four seasons in the past six years in which they missed the postseason altogether.

Still, it is not how Carolina imagined it would start the year, considering the club's comparative off-season stability. Much of what's gone wrong in Toronto could be attributed to massive personnel changes, which usually take months for a team to absorb. The Hurricanes – with the exception of a Dennis Seidenberg here and an Anton Babchuk there – are not demonstrably different than the club that upset a 106-point New Jersey Devils team and the 116-point Boston Bruins in two stirring seven-game series last spring.

“Absolutely, we are concerned with where we're at,” Maurice was saying on the telephone, just before his team dropped its fifth game of the season earlier this week, a 4-3 decision to the previously winless New York Islanders. “We haven't got our fight on yet, our level of compete. That, more than anything, is what our team is all about. The names here, with a couple of exceptions, are not household names and they've been able to have some success last year based on being able to compete every night at a high level. That's not an easy thing to do. We haven't fully committed to that yet – and that's why we are where we are.”

Carolina's two household names are centre Eric Staal and goaltender Cam Ward, both strong candidates to make Canada's 2010 men's Olympic hockey team. Without Erik Cole, who broke his leg in the second game of the season and is out of action until late November or early December, Staal was off to a slow scoring start with just two points in his first seven games before doubling his season output with a pair against the Islanders.

Ward, meanwhile, has gone all the way in goal for Carolina, with the exception of a 29-minute, 23-second cameo appearance by back-up Michael Leighton.

“Funny enough, we've had excellent goaltending,” said Maurice. “That has not been an issue. We've had one game in which we've scored more than two goals (now two). We never look at that as a skill issue ever. We look at our offence as a work-level issue – and it's not there yet.”

SINGING THE BLUES: Another team dogged by early-season inconsistency is the St. Louis Blues, which this week, followed its best game of the season (clobbering Anaheim), with its worst (getting clobbered by Pittsburgh). The Blues are an interesting club on one level – most of its best young talent up front is also capable of scoring goals (the quartet of David Backes, David Perron, Patrik Berglund and T.J. Oshie possess oodles of ability; none has had any kind of success at all around the net in the early going).

According to Al MacInnis, the team's VP of hockey operations, the Blues desperately miss ex-Maple Leaf Alexander Steen, who had been one of their most consistent forwards before breaking his wrist last week. Steen, who was surrendered by Toronto along with Carlo Colaiacovo in the deal that brought Lee Stempniak to the Leafs, will miss about six weeks.

The Blues were getting good play out of their checking line – Steen, Jay McClement and B.J. Crombeen – which coach Andy Murray was matching against the opposition's top line.

“Steen was excellent for us – playing well and skating hard,” said MacInnis. “He was really the best player on the line and maybe our most consistent forward. Paul Kariya, Andy McDonald, Brad Boyes can finish. We've had a little inconsistency with the young players, but so far, so good.”

The Blues expect to get back both Barrett Jackman and Eric Brewer to bolster their blue line within the next couple of weeks, which should stiffen the defence in front of goaltender Chris Mason, who is off to just a so-so start as was the case last year. In the second half, however, Mason took off, and so did the Blues, qualifying for the playoffs for the first time since the lockout.

The lesson again: It's early. Don't read too much into the early-season sorting-out process. It can often provide a skewed perspective.

“It's a close league,” cautioned MacInnis, “and the one thing about the start of the season, every team is the same way. You just don't want to fall too far behind.

IN SHORT: The Los Angeles Kings' Alexander Frolov, benched last week for the first of a home-and-home series with the Dallas Stars for indifferent play, responded to the message sent by coach Terry Murray and contributed two assists in his return. Still, with Frolov set to become an unrestricted free agent following the season, it is hard to imagine that he has a long-term future in Los Angeles. Frolov led the Kings in goal scoring last season with 32 … Michael Nylander, a free-agent bust with the Washington Capitals, agreed to a voluntary minor-league conditioning assignment with a view to getting him into game shape and possibly shipping him out to a team in Russia's Continental Hockey League. Maybe he'll land in Omsk, where Nylander's former New York Rangers teammate Jaromir Jagr plays. The Capitals placed Nylander with Detroit's AHL affiliate in Grand Rapids, rather than their own team in Hershey … After starting the season with a sparkling 5-1 record, the Columbus Blue Jackets saw their defensive structure slip in a disastrous run through Alberta, twice giving up six goals in back-to-back losses to Calgary and Edmonton. And yes, that was the much-maligned Dustin Penner, continuing his hot start, with five points vs. the Blue Jackets, propelling him into third place in overall NHL scoring through Friday. Astonishing … Historically, the one thing about Pat Quinn-coached teams is that they could always score. Quinn has the Oilers, a team where no player scored more than 23 goals last season and only one – Ales Hemsky – had more than 53 points tied with Calgary for the league scoring lead. Also astonishing … If Quinn isn't an early choice for coach of the year, it's because the Phoenix Coyotes' Dave Tippett is topping the charts. Tippett has the Coyotes at 6-2-0. They are the only team in the league to defeat both the defending Stanley Cup-champion Pittsburgh Penguins and last year's finalists, the Detroit Red Wings … San Jose has given up the first goal in seven consecutive games, one of the reasons for the Sharks' early-season inconsistency. The other: goaltender Evgeni Nabokov has been downright awful. Could the Sharks ever ponder a deal in which they would reacquire slumping Vesa Toskala from the Leafs? Yes, San Jose has salary-cap issues, but if Nabokov continues to struggle and they show little faith in back-up Thomas Greiss, the Sharks' unsettled goaltending situation could evolve into a full-blown controversy … Ron Wilson got a new coaching job this week. No, not the Leafs' Ron Wilson, who's still trying to get Toronto out of its early-season slump. The other Ron Wilson – Toronto-born, who played in the NHL for 14 seasons, eight of them with the Winnipeg Jets, landed in Chicago, as an assistant to newly appointed Don Lever with the AHL Wolves. Wilson also worked with Lever in Hamilton; Lever had been mentioned as a possible candidate for the Montreal Canadiens' coaching job that eventually went to Jacques Martin. Lever, who replaced Don Granato and was scheduled to make his Wolves debut on the same night as defenceman Chris Chelios, had been working for the Blackhawks in the scouting department.