NHL Power Rankings: Preds Rule the Roost, Wild Rising

A year ago, this man was the cause of all of the Oilers ills.  He was holding back the greatness that was Edmonton's 3rd rebuild through his horrendous goaltending.  Edmonton dumped him and their rebuild was saved by Ben Scrivens, the goaltender leading them into the playo...

Devan Dubnyk left Edmonton, but couldn't get his game back together in Nashville and ended up signing in Arizona for peanuts in the off-season.  Dubnyk posted a .916 save percentage in 19 games for a bad Coyotes team before he was traded to the Minnesota Wild for a 3rd-round pick.

Dubnyk has started 13 straight games for the Wild, posting a .938 save percentage, winning 10 of his 13 starts for a Wild team that had a .895 save percentage prior to Dubnyk's arrival.  The Wild are now just two points behind Calgary and should Dubnyk drag the Wild into the playoffs come April, the man who torpedoed the Oilers third rebuild should get consideration for the Hart.

About these rankings:

Two seasons ago, I set out to eliminate the non-sense behind power rankings by building a power rankings model based on underlying statistics and their predictive ability. The rankings were built on points earned, special teams, even strength play and goaltending, so they were constantly in flux.

I'm still playing around with the model, but here is my best effort at predicting the standings and playoff pairings at the end of the season. One item of note - 38% of the game is luck, and I don't attempt to predict or model that 38%, and I don't plan to.

• The rich get richer: Nashville adds Cody Franson and Mike Santorelli to an already strong lineup.  Nashville's defensive depth is enviable.
• What a bizarre season from Jim Nill.  He added Spezza and Hemsky but basically threw the season away by not fixing the defense.  It's a very Oilers-like management approach.
• Arizona fixed their lottery problems by trading Devan Dubnyk, and now Toronto is trying to do the same with the Franson and Santorelli trade.  Will Edmonton respond?
• Edmonton's much-ballyhooed "improvement" is less than inspirational.  Aside from the goaltending problems (which probably can't be blamed on the goaltenders at this point) they're 18th on the power play, 15th on the penalty kill and 23rd at even strength.
  

Playoff Matchups:

• Just give us that Blues - Blackhawks series already...
  

• Detroit is going to trade for a defender, it's just a matter of choosing at this point.  If they stay healthy, can anyone in the Atlantic beat them?