The first month of the 2014-15 National Hockey League season has seen its fair share of surprises, but not all of them have been good.
A couple of teams with high hopes of getting deep into the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 2014-15 have hit the ice with sluggish starts through the first couple of weeks of the season.
Wednesday, Sports World News looked at five of the biggest surprise teams of the NHL season through the first month-plus, now SWN takes a look at five of the most disappointing teams to start the 2014-15 slate.
New York Rangers: Starting with the Metropolitan Division, the Blueshirts don't resemble the same team that made a surprising run to the Stanley Cup Final last season here in Alain Vigneault's second year at the helm. New York went through a lot of turnover in its roster and has been plagued by injuries prior to and during the campaign, which explains the slow start. The Rangers are just 7-6-2 (16 points) thus far and have dealt with injuries to Derek Stepan (broken leg) and new captain Ryan McDonagh (shoulder) among others. While Rick Nash (12) is tied for the NHL lead in goals, New York's power play has converted at just a 14.3 percent clip, good for just 21st in the league. The Blueshirts lost a pair of back-to-back games against the Toronto Maple Leafs and lowly Edmonton Oilers over the weekend that could come back to haunt them in the long run.
Columbus Blue Jackets: The Blue Jackets were expected to be one of the better teams in the Metropolitan Division, but they have been simply decimated with injuries this season. Columbus is 4-10-1 with nine points and sits in dead last in the division while owning the second-worst record in the NHL behind the Buffalo Sabres. Plenty of players have missed time for Columbus, including goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky (broken finger) and centers Artem Anisimov (upper-body) and Brandon Dubinsky (abdominal surgery). Columbus ranks just 24th on the penalty kill (77.2 percent) and 21st in goals per game (2.53) thus far this season. The most glaring stat is that the Blue Jackets have allowed a league-worst 3.67 goals per game. Columbus is in the midst of a nine-game losing streak heading into a game with the Philadelphia Flyers on Friday.
Colorado Avalanche: Moving on to the Central Division, after winning 52 games and notching 112 points to win the division last season, the Avalanche are off to an abysmal 4-8-15 record, tying them for dead last in the Western Conference with 13 points. Colorado ranks 25th in the league by yielding 3.18 goals per game and 26th by scoring an average of just 2.29 goals per game and it is toward the bottom of the league on the power play. No one on the team has more than 10 points while goalie Semyon Varlamov -- who led the league with 41 wins in 2013-14 -- is just 2-5-4 with a 3.05 goals-against average and a .918 save percentage. Colorado has lost five of its last seven and four of its last five.
Minnesota Wild: Minnesota is coming off of a season where it went all the way to the Western Conference semifinals in 2013-14, but it has limped out of the gate this season with a 7-7-0 record that places it just above the Avalanche with 14 points and just above the fellow disappointing Dallas Stars (5-6-4). The Wild's power play is converting at just a 4.6 percent rate, which is the worst in the NHL. Zach Parise is the team leader with just 11 points in 10 games off of four goals and six assists thus far as the team has struggled to find the back of the net. Minnesota has lost four straight games heading into Thursday night's match with the Buffalo Sabres.
Los Angeles Kings: While the Kings overall mark of 8-4-4 is solid enough, the defending Stanley Cup champions haven't looked like such on a regular basis thus far this season and have been very inconsistent. Los Angeles sits in third place in the Pacific Division and is just five points out of first, but the team has once again been wildly inconsistent in the regular season. The Kings power play ranks just 26th win an 11.8 conversion percentage while its offense ranks in the middle of the pack in the NHL in many team offensive categories. While players such as Tyler Toffoli, Jeff Carter and Jonathan Quick continue to stand out, the Kings recently lost four straight games in a span from Oct. 28-Nov. 2 and allowed the Anaheim Ducks to tie Wednesday night's game with less than two minutes left and eventually lost in a shootout. Though the Kings haven't been too impressive this season, they didn't exactly dominate the 2013-14 regular season and ended up hoisting the Stanley Cup.
While these five teams haven't necessarily had the best start to the 2014-15 campaign, there is plenty of time for them to turn things around as the road to the Stanley Cup Playoffs is a long one.
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