The NHL can be wildly unpredictable and every season there is going to be a handful of teams -- and players -- that do the exact opposite of what everybody expects. And that is certainly true through the first month of the 2015-16 season.
So far this season we've seen that the Penguins and Ducks can't score, the Bruins and Canadiens can, the return of John Tortorella to an NHL bench, and the development that the best rookies in the NHL might right now be playing in Arizona, and not Edmonton or Buffalo.
Let's take a look at all of that as we examine the biggest surprises in the NHL so far.
1. The Anaheim Ducks' season might already be finished
No team won more games over the previous two seasons than the Anaheim Ducks' 105. They were a Game 7 away from reaching the Stanley Cup Final last spring. They have a roster that has a few superstars, some nice young pieces on defense, and a ton of salary cap space to work with. They should have been one of the biggest contenders in the Western Conference this season. And just one month in they might already be done.
That's what happens when you start the season 1-7-2 in your first 10 games. Even though the Ducks have won back-to-back games heading into the weekend, they are still tied for the second worst record in the NHL and as of Friday are already six points out of a playoff spot. Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman noted this past week that only five of the 44 teams that were at least five points out of a playoff spot on Nov. 1 since the 2005-06 season (the Ducks were seven points back on that date) came back to make the playoffs.
The points in October count just as much as the ones in March, and you have to look no further than last year's Blue Jackets, who went 16-2-1 to finish the season and still missed the playoffs because they started the season 6-15-2.
2. The Montreal Canadiens aren't just about Carey Price
Even though they've won a lot of games during Michel Therrien's second go-around with the Canadiens, everything about their success the past couple of years seemed to be a house of cards just waiting to topple over. The only thing keeping everything in place and looking good: Carey Price.
This is a team that just last season failed to score more than two goals in half of its games, more than any other team that made the playoffs.
It was a bizarre development because it was a roster that had a ton of talent but seemed to be restricted by an ultra-conservative system. But so far this season the Canadiens have done a complete 180 and are not only scoring goals, they are the highest scoring team in the league entering the weekend and have scored at least three goals in all but two of their games. Seven different players on the roster already have four goals this season as of Friday, while they are also 4-0-1 without Carey Price in the lineup after going 6-6-4 without him just a year ago.
3. John Tortorella is back in the NHL
The first coaching change of the NHL season brought on the return of John Tortorella as he attempts to turn around what has started as a dumpster fire of a season in Columbus. When we last saw Tortorella in the NHL he was finishing up what had been a nightmare of a one-year coaching tenure with the Vancouver Canucks in 2013-14 that saw a skilled team miss the playoffs, have yet another year-long goaltender controversy, and a massive brawl that resulted in Tortorella himself trying to storm an opponents locker room.
After spending the 2014-15 season away from the NHL, Tortorella landed two new jobs for himself within a couple of months when he was hired to lead Team USA at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, and then taking over for Todd Richards in Columbus following his dismissal in the midst of an 0-7 start to the season. Like Anaheim, though, it might already be too late for a Blue Jackets team that was supposed to contend for a playoff spot with a healthy roster and the addition of Brandon Saad. But bad goaltending and a weak defense has ruined all of that and for the second year in a row they've put themselves in a hole in October and November that may be impossible to climb out of.
4. Arizona's rookies look ready for primetime
Even when they've had good teams in recent seasons the Arizona Coyotes were never really an exciting team to watch. They won a lot of tight-checking, close, low-scoring games thanks in large part to goaltending that was able to keep them in games long enough to scratch and claw their way to a couple of goals. But this year's team could be the start of something big in the desert as they begin to receive contributions from an impressive collection of rookies that look like they not only belong in the NHL right now, but could become must-see stars in the coming seasons.
While most of the attention in this year's rookie class has gone to Edmonton Oilers forward Connor McDavid and Buffalo Sabres forward Jack Eichel (the Nos. 1 and 2 picks in the 2015 draft, and two of the most highly anticipated rookies to enter the NHL in more than a decade), the Coyotes duo of Max Domi and Anthony Duclair were able to fly in under the radar. And so far they have been spectacular by not only putting up impressive numbers in their debut seasons, but also playing a highly entertaining style of play in a league that doesn't have enough teams doing that in 2015.
With Domi, Duclair and Tobias Reider making an impact in the NHL right now, and the arrival of 2015 first-round pick (No. 3 overall) Dylan Strome in the very near future, the Coyotes are starting to build something special.
5. The Penguins aren't scoring ... or giving up goals
Here is a truly weird one. A team with Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Phil Kessel, Patric Hornqvist, and Kris Letang (with a questionable defense around them) is having trouble scoring goals.
Their 27 goals through the first 12 games of the season is the fourth-worst mark in franchise history, ahead of only the 1968-69 team (the team's second year of existence in the NHL) and the 2001-02 and 2003-04 teams that were among the worst in franchise history.
The only thing crazier than that? Their 22 goals allowed is the best mark through the first 12 games in franchise history. The team that, on paper, looked like it might need to win every game 5-4 is somehow winning every game 2-1 or 2-0. And it's not because of their defense; it's because of their goaltending.
The offense will eventually come, they're too talented not to score and have four lines that should be able to contribute. The big concern is still how much rubber their asking their goalies to face.
6. The Bruins' offense is bailing them out
After missing the playoffs last season the Bruins went a little crazy over the summer and not only fired their general manager, Peter Chiarelli, but also made a series of moves to the roster that saw Milan Lucic, Dougie Hamilton, Reilly Smith and Carl Soderberg leave, and Matt Beleskey, Jimmy Hayes and a bunch of draft picks come in.
Given that they were 23rd in the NHL in goals scored last season and were putting a defense on the ice that not only wasn't that good to begin with, but was also hit by early season injuries to Zdeno Chara and Dennis Seidenberg it seemed that if they had any chance of success this season it was going to require Tuukka Rask to be a one-man band in the crease. And he hasn't. In fact, he's off to one of the worst starts of his career through eight starts.
It's actually been a fast start by the Bruins offense that's keeping the team in it right now and a healthy David Krejci is leading the way. They're not going to keep scoring on 12 percent of their shots, so that scoring is probably going to dry up at some point, but that will likely coincide with Rask stopping more pucks (because he's not going to finish with an .876 save percentage). For right now, though, it's the offense that is bailing out everything else. And nobody saw that coming.
