Week 3: Memories of Perfection and the Magic of October
By Cooper Gould
As a Boston fan, I often find myself trying to feel better about nights like this — down 0-2 to a winless Nashville team — by grasping onto the memory of our historic season two years ago. Most wins ever, most points ever, the President’s Trophy, and a first round playoff loss that I try not to include in my reveries. Since then we’ve obviously reverted to our perennial above-average but not spectacular ways that I’ve been privileged enough to enjoy for my entire lifetime. Most wins in the NHL since the year 2000 by a significant margin is the kind of success that’s tough to scoff at, even when it’s only been rewarded with a single cup in that time period. But it feels like we’re always there or thereabouts, doesn’t it? Making the playoffs feels more like an expectation than a hope, and anything less than another cup after the success we’ve had — even though 2011 is now well over a decade ago — seems somehow like a letdown. Which made the season two years ago all that much more painful when it came crashing to an end in the postseason.
At this point, it already seems clear that Boston fans will not be enjoying another record-breaking season of success. (By now we’ve already gone down four to the Preds in the third period, and a loss in this one will take us to a .500 points percentage on the season which doesn’t seem like it’ll be enough to cut it in the brutal Atlantic.) But, we know better than anyone how possible a season like that is. We had no expectations going into the 22/23 season of the kind of greatness that was produced, and yet there we were. With win after win after win.
All of that is to say, the magic of possibility is still very much alive going into week three. We’re early enough in the season that nothing that has happened so far will necessary have any impact on the landscape of the NHL in May. But it could. Reigning President’s trophy winners, the Rags look like the real deal. Undefeated in regulation and boasting the largest goal differential in the league, it seems like New York might have what it takes to brush up against or surpass the 120-point marker on the season. So too might the Jets, who might be a more appropriate comparison to the 22/23 Bruins. Goaltending that everyone knew was good but playing at hyper-Vezina level — and Hellebuyck is doing it on his own — and a team of goal scorers and supporting cast who can get the job done at the other end of the ice. It seems inevitable that the perfection they’ve produced thus far will eventually come to an end, but it seems less clear with every game that this level of success has a similar expiration date. (And I, for one, have no desire to see their streak come to an end any time soon — at least until December 10th.)
The Golden Knights, the Stars, the Devils, and the Panthers are all just as successful as they were supposed to be coming in to the season. They’ve won the games they’ve been supposed to and they each look like genuine cup threats. They haven’t seen quite the level of points percentage that some teams have, but they’re winning at rates that will grant them trips to the postseason, and they’re demonstrating a level of talent that could produce big things once they get there.
We also have the Wild and the Flames, performing above expectations, and at least thus far maintaining their level of play through several weeks. It seems like analysts and commentators around the league expect things to turn around for teams like this but my question is: why? Why not believe that this is what the season truly has in store for us? Of the major North American sports, hockey is by far the least predictable, and we see anomalies all the time. Just ask me, I’m a Boston fan. What I’m trying to say is that we’re in a window of unbelievable, magical hope for a large number of teams across the league, and that number is only goin to shrink as the season goes on. Why believe that we won’t see historic performances from teams we didn’t expect them from? I understand it wasn’t exactly everyone else’s dream to watch it happen when it was Boston in that hot seat, but I can honestly say I’d love to see it happen again.
Another little nugget of magical hope that I’m maintaining for this season is the fact that so many of the favorites coming into the season are sitting at or near the bottom of their respective divisions. The aforementioned Predators are about to put their first points on the table against my Bruins, which would be fine for them, if it hadn’t taken six games to get the first win with their revamped roster. But I don’t want to rag on them or echo the noise that they aren’t playing well or that something needs to change “in the room” as the broadcast I’m watching repeated several times during pre-game. They’re shooting a lot and well, they have the most goals below expected in the league, and they have a bunch of guys plying together who never had before. A team with multiple former-captains playing alongside multiple kids who haven’t turned twenty-four yet is a tough team to build momentum with. Given what we think this team is capable of, I’m not worried at all about dropping five games early in the season. The fact that they were the first five games makes sense, but also doesn’t matter at all where they came when we tally up at the end of the season.
The Oilers and the Avalanche, too, maybe got off to starts that left fans shaking their heads and experts scratching theirs. Obviously the Oilers aren’t looking to make a habit of starting out seasons poorly, but I’ve heard a lot more chatter about how they started the season last year in the opening weeks of this season than when they were playing in the Stanley Cup Finals in the spring. The Avalanche, too, most likely have nothing to worry about. They’ve had the most or one of the most talented rosters for about half a decade at this point and that isn’t any different this season. Like the Predators, dropping four games early in the season is nothing to be concerned about in the long run, and the fact that they happened to be the first four won’t make them count any differently once the postseason race heats up.
If anything, the particular balance of performances we’ve seen thus far in the season has me excited for the rest of the season. At least for however much longer our window of opportunity lasts in which we can look at all the teams and say, “why wouldn’t we expect them to continue improving?” If the teams at the top keep playing lights out, and the juggernauts who have started slow pick up to what we expect, all that means is that we have an extremely exciting and competitive season of professional hockey on our hands.
And, I hope that this window of hope and excitement and uncertainty lasts beyond October. It feels like the analogous part of the season has just recently come to an end in the NFL. Trends have mostly emerged and outliers have been mostly controlled, and there are only a few games each week that feel like they are really up in the air in any consequential way. But even a few weeks ago it still felt like we were in a place where truly anything was possible. I mean, we could probably guess the Browns weren’t going to the Super Bowl, but still, It was so exciting.
The NBA season kicked off as I am writing this, and so we may very well have a month of magical uncertainty in store for basketball. And all of this is happening while two of the most storied teams in baseball are playing in the World Series. A different kind of uncertainty, for sure, but a backdrop to the tumult of the other three major sports that almost imperceptibly raises the energy of the casual fan and imbues the early stages of the other sports with an feverish excitement. It’s a subtle reminder of what it is they’re actually playing for, setting the tone for the rest of the season.
Boy do I love October.
