A year ago, it was Chris MacFarland in the middle of all kinds of in-season wheeling and dealing.<\/p>\n
There was the Mikko Rantanen-Martin Necas blockbuster, the full-swap of his two-man tandem in goal, the Brock Nelson addition \u2014 you name it, and the Colorado Avalanche general manager was in the middle of it.<\/p>\n
This season has been more about sitting back and letting his roster settle into itself. And boy, has it ever, led by Nathan MacKinnon\u2019s Hart Trophy-worthy season so far.<\/p>\n
But in the meantime, the rival Dallas Stars keeps winning games, too. And the rising Cup contender Minnesota Wild just took the biggest swing of all<\/a> with the Quinn Hughes blockbuster<\/a>. And let\u2019s not forget the Winnipeg Jets, who are struggling these days but won the Presidents\u2019 Trophy last season with the top record in the NHL.<\/p>\n The Central Division, yeesh.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was a big trade for both teams and those deals are not easy to get over the finish line, so you have to give Billy (Guerin) and Patrik (Allvin) a lot of credit for finding common ground,\u201d MacFarland told The Athletic on Monday. \u201cObviously, there are so many good teams in our division, and it will make for some great hockey the rest of the way in what should be an exciting second half.<\/p>\n \u201cMinny was already a very good team, and adding an impact player like Quinn Hughes will only make them that much tougher.\u201d<\/p>\n A year ago, the Stars jumped at a chance they never could have envisioned in getting Rantanen from the Carolina Hurricanes at the deadline. Now it\u2019s the Wild\u2019s turn.<\/p>\n \u201cGreat move by Billy,\u201d Stars GM Jim Nill told The Athletic on Monday. \u201cThere was an opportunity, and they grabbed it. The part that people don\u2019t understand is they had the assets to do it. So they\u2019ve done a good job to have the assets to make that trade. It\u2019s similar to the trade we made for Rantanen last year. I don\u2019t think Billy Guerin started the year thinking, \u2018Boy, we\u2019re going to get Quinn Hughes. Let\u2019s plan for that.\u2019 You can never plan for those things, much like we didn\u2019t plan for Rantanen. But if you\u2019ve done a good job with your organization and your team, and you have the assets, it gives you a chance to get those types of players.<\/p>\n \u201cSo hats off to him. That\u2019s a great job.\u201d<\/p>\n In the meantime, the NHL\u2019s top division just got even tougher.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what makes us all better, though,\u201d Nill said. \u201cWe keep challenging each other. It\u2019s the competition part we all love, and I think it\u2019s made all our teams better.\u201d<\/p>\n If the Hughes blockbuster has emphasized anything now in the crazy Central Division, it\u2019s this: There\u2019s a hell of a carrot to finish in first place.<\/p>\n Because second and third mean the nightmare matchup in the opening round.<\/p>\n A year ago, that nightmare matchup was Colorado and Dallas, a series of Western Conference-final level that predictably went seven games, with Rantanen playing the role of hero and villain all at once.<\/p>\n If the playoffs started today, it would be Dallas and Minnesota in a behemoth of a first-round series.<\/p>\n Not that there are any easy first-round matchups in the playoffs anymore, but first place in the Central at the moment means a first-round matchup with the San Jose Sharks or Utah Mammoth. A little more favorable than playing any of the Colorado-Dallas-Minnesota juggernaut triumvirate.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re always trying to be the best you can be during the season,\u201d said Nill, the winner of the NHL\u2019s past three GM of the Year awards. \u201cI don\u2019t think the regular season gets enough recognition. To be first in your division or first in the league is a pretty big honor over 82 games. I think that\u2019s the goal of everybody. But in saying that, does it matter in the playoffs? I don\u2019t think it matters. Maybe a Game 7, it\u2019s nice to have a Game 7 at home.<\/p>\n \u201cBut in the end, you\u2019ve got to beat everybody to win it all anyway. You hope you\u2019re healthy when you go into it and give yourself a fair chance. That\u2019s all you can do.\u201d<\/p>\n After losing that gut-wrenching Game 7 in Dallas last spring, the Avalanche have seemingly used the devastating experience as rocket fuel, coming out of the gates on fire this season. Their players look extremely motivated.<\/p>\n \u201cThey do,\u201d Joe Sakic, the Avs\u2019 president of hockey operations, said last week at the NHL Board of Governors meeting. \u201cIt was a tough way to end the season last year, the way it happened. The guys were very disappointed. They came to training camp and they were hungry. You play a long regular season \u2014 you\u2019ve got 82 games \u2014 now you\u2019re positioning. You want to play well every day. You want to be prepared. You know you want to play your best at the end of the year, but you want to play for home ice as well. Try to get home ice if you end up in a Game 7.\u201d<\/p>\n And Sakic was saying that a few days before Hughes ended up on a division rival.<\/p>\n Those comments about wanting a Game 7 at home have taken on even more emphasis now.<\/p>\n Still, it\u2019s interesting how he just came out and said that\u2019s what they wanted, flying in the face of the modern discourse in the parity-filled NHL. Usually you hear, \u201cJust get in and anything can happen.\u201d And there\u2019s some truth to that.<\/p>\n But also, if the Avs have a third consecutive date with Dallas in the spring, of course they\u2019d rather have Game 7 at home.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the end of the day, you want to get in, because there\u2019s a lot of parity in the league,\u201d Sakic said. \u201cBut ultimately, if there\u2019s a Game 7, you\u2019d prefer it at home.\u201d<\/p>\n So the Avs are approaching the grind of an 82-game season like every game matters, which is not easy mentally or physically, especially not with the condensed schedule of an Olympic season.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a good group. They believe in each other,\u201d Sakic said. \u201cThe goaltending has been great. I will say, the team has been good \u2014 you\u2019re not always going to be on, but on those nights, the goalies have been good. So it\u2019s just been everybody as a whole has had a great start.\u201d<\/p>\n Another piece of motivation for the Avs? They\u2019ve got just one playoff series win since lifting the Stanley Cup in June 2022. There are legitimate reasons for that \u2014 losing Nazem Kadri and Darcy Kuemper to free agency, captain Gabriel Landeskog to a career-threatening knee injury and Valeri Nichuskin because of off-ice issues. Still, had someone told Sakic as he left Tampa that night in June \u201922 after his team won the Cup, he would have been surprised to learn the Avs would win one playoff series over the next three years.<\/p>\n \u201cFor sure,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re in that window where you want to win every year. Salary cap-wise, we weren\u2019t able to keep that \u201922 team together, so we did lose some guys. But now we feel we\u2019re as deep as that team. Having our captain back. The depth of our team. It\u2019s a cohesive unit right now.\u201d<\/p>\n So deep that the Avs don\u2019t feel the stress of needing to make a big in-season move, though Cup contenders always look to see what\u2019s there closer to the deadline to add depth.<\/p>\n \u201cWill you look to add? Yeah,\u201d Sakic said. \u201cBut for the most part, our team is together from the start of the year, and they can grow together.\u201d<\/p>\n In the meantime, the first-place chase is real. For Colorado, for Dallas, and now realistically for Minnesota.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also a reminder yet again that the NHL needs to dump its current playoff format and go back to the traditional conference seeding \u2014 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, etc. The vast majority of team executives I\u2019ve talked over the past few years are in favor of that, and so are many players, as I found out in September<\/a> in Las Vegas at the player media tour.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s a change that won\u2019t come until there\u2019s a new commissioner aboard. Gary Bettman strongly supports the current format.<\/p>\n And in that format, avoiding the 2-3 matchup in the Central has never been more pressing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A year ago, it was Chris MacFarland in the middle of all kinds of in-season wheeling and dealing.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":450946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[2995,1320,3112,293,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-450945","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-colorado-avalanche","9":"tag-dallas-stars","10":"tag-minnesota-wild","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115729371671327305","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}