The NHL season is well underway with the puck dropping to begin the 2020-21 season just over a month ago.
A month is a significant enough amount of time that we can start to see which teams are the pretenders and contenders this season. There is still a lot of middle ground to sort out, but it is already becoming clear who the best teams in the league are and who the worst teams will be.
The Arizona Coyotes might not win ten games this season. They have been just terrible. They have only played 16 games but have been outscored by 62 goals. They actually had decent goaltending early in the year from an unknown source in goaltender Karel Vejmelka who only allowed 21 goals in his first nine games but couldn’t get a win.
The Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators and Chicago Blackhawks have all firmly declared themselves as not contenders this season fairly quickly as well.
It appears that the Toronto Maple Leafs, Tampa Bay Lightning and Washington Capitals are going to have successful regular seasons, though that should surprise no one.
There are a few teams who look out of place in the standings to begin the season. Previously, we looked at the three teams who are currently in a playoff spot but would not be able to hang on to it for long.
Today, we are going to look at the three teams who are not doing so well to begin the season, but will be just fine and are about to climb the NHL standings any day now.