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Barring injury, rosters pretty much are what they're going to be for the rest of the season.
A lot of teams in the Western Conference made trade-deadline acquisitions big and small, and in doing so tightened up what was already a fairly tight race at the top. The three best teams in the Pacific are basically locked in. One of Calgary or San Jose is going to win the division, the other is going to play Vegas in the first round.
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The Flames didn't really make a move of note, adding only a depth defenseman on a team that needed a bit more help than that. San Jose added Gus Nyquist and Jonathan Dahlen to shore up its depth. Vegas, of course, brought in Mark Stone to improve an offense that hasn't lived up to the expectations set last year.
In the Central, the Jets added a ton of players, the most notable of which was Kevin Hayes , but didn't address their key issue, the lack of puck-moving defensemen throughout the lineup. Nashville added a little more sandpaper up front in Wayne Simmonds (probably didn't check his 5-on-5 goal total since Dec. 8, though) and a little more do-it-all in Mikael Granlund . Meanwhile, St. Louis made like Calgary and made a single almost inconsequential addition with Mike Del Zotto.
I'm not sure anyone really thinks Dallas (weirdly big buyers immediately crushed by the injury Gods), Minnesota, or Colorado poses a real threat to any of those six teams, so that's fine.
But you look at those six teams atop their divisions right now and you have to come to the same conclusion on all of them: They're good or even very good, but also obviously flawed.
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Of course, all teams have at least a few flaws, including the Tampa Bay Lightning , but the thing with everyone in the first six spots in the West right now is that theirs could prove fatal.
In a lot of cases, the same could be said for teams in the East, with Columbus having an iffy goaltending situation and poor special teams, Boston not having a lot of offensive depth, Toronto lacking on D, the Islanders not having enough elite scorers, etc. But for those teams, the issues aren't quite so pronounced as they are in the West.
(AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
San Jose? Great roster that's overcome horrific goaltending all year. The fact that they're rolling the dice entering the playoffs with two sub-.900 goalies behind this group seems insane to me, but here we are.
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Calgary? Kinda the same thing. Mike Smith continues to be quite bad (despite what Don Maloney said on TSN yesterday), and Dave Rittich doesn't have the kind of track record he's shown this year. One can very easily envision Rittich turning back into a backup, and then who knows what happens with this otherwise very strong, fun group.
Vegas? That Stone add is great and all, but I still don't like the depth on defense, Marc-Andre Fleury has been all over the place this season, and the offense hasn't exactly lit the world on fire (currently eighth in the West in goals) as expected. Gerard Gallant has repeatedly expressed his frustration with the group, and one wonders if Stone's impact alone can change things.
Nashville? They look good a lot of the time but sometimes they really don't, and the power play is abysmal (12.3 percent?). Granlund and Simmonds help there, but they aren't going to kickstart an offense-by-committee approach to the extent that this team needs to make itself a surefire division winner.
Winnipeg? The fact that they made so many trades at the deadline tells you how the team sees itself. Help was needed, help was obtained, but Nathan Beaulieu and Bogdan Kiselevich aren't going to revolutionize the back end for them. Maybe you can argue that they're a Good Connor Hellebuyck away from being a titan. I get that, but at the same time they needed a better defender and didn't get one.
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St. Louis? They've looked great since Berube took over, can't stop winning, all that stuff. But again, this is a team with Jake Allen and a 25-year-old career AHLer suddenly playing .934 hockey in the NHL. You have to like that they're mostly just going with the group they've got, which has dragged this team back from Hell, but gambling on this goaltending battery seems risky.
It's more or less assured that two of these teams are going to make the conference final, of course. Hard to imagine one of the three others from the West in legit playoff races right now having more than a 10 percent chance to make it.
When teams with potentially fatal flaws play each other, those flaws may cancel each other out. For instance, a Calgary/San Jose series in which neither team can get a save might actually end up being six or seven 5-4 games.
The answers aren't always on the trade market, of course, but it's hard to believe Calgary or San Jose couldn't have found some goaltending depth to at least push their current guys in the right direction.
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Entering the playoffs is always a gamble and the best teams don't always win, but this year in particular, it really seems like a situation in the western conference where you can't be surprised if any one of these teams either advances or gets knocked off early. They're all good, they all have to play each other, and they all have big glaring problems that scream, "this will definitely lead to your downfall."
Should be fun.
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Ryan Lambert is a Yahoo! Sports hockey columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here .
All stats via Corsica unless otherwise noted.
