Texas Tanev, busy Bruins, and the five biggest NHL storylines to watch in March

The NHL’s trade deadline is less than a week away, and while speculation has come to dominate the hockey news cycle, the action on the ice is as engrossing as ever. Western Conference powerhouses like the Dallas Stars are engaged in a rapidly escalating arms race ahead of the postseason, while in the East, a desperate struggle for three tightly contested playoff berths is well underway with the Detroit Red Wings in the driver’s seat. With the 2023-24 season reaching a fever pitch and the home stretch just around the corner, these are five of the hottest storylines to follow over the next month.

Does Chris Tanev make the Dallas Stars Stanley Cup favorites?

Chris Tanev has received one non-Lady Byng award vote in his 14-year NHL career, a fifth-place Norris shout in 2022. He’s never played in an All-Star Game, never scored 30 points in a season, and has just three postseason runs to his credit. That makes it ironic that the media has spent most of this season hailing Tanev, effective but unsung for so long, as the missing piece in many a contending team’s Stanley Cup puzzle. They might be right.

The Maple Leafs and Oilers probably needed a gritty, right-sided defenseman like Tanev more than the Dallas Stars, but the player himself could not have landed in a better situation. The 34-year-old will likely partner Essa Lindell on an airtight pair that blocks shots (Lindell is ranked 28th in blocks, Tanev 2nd), denies the zone, and stays out of the box at an elite level; they have just 24 PIM combined. The best part? That’s only Dallas’s second pair behind do-it-all stud Miro Heiskanen and breakout sophomore Thomas Harley, who is a Norris sleeper in his own right. The duo controls over 63% of expected goals and scoring changes. If veterans Ryan Sutter and Jani Hakanpaa play primarily in the defensive zone starts that best suit them, this team becomes a nightmare to solve. 

The Stars are level on points (79) with the Winnipeg Jets atop the Central Division but, with a league-high 61GP and a season-long win streak of just four, have yet to find their second gear. With Tanev on board, they can fix that in time for the Stanley Cup Playoffs, especially if scuffling goaltender Jake Oettinger (3.04 GAA, .900 SV% in 2024) can rediscover his best hockey behind a revamped blue line.

Is this the closest MVP race ever?

When Connor McDavid stumbled out of the gates to begin the 2023-24 campaign, Hart Trophy oddsmakers turned their gaze to Nathan MacKinnon and Nikita Kucherov, this year’s representatives in the never-ending battle between the best player in the league and the most valuable one. Then it became clear Auston Matthews would not ease up on his historic 70-goal pace. Then McDavid re-entered the Art Ross picture as his Oilers rattled off 16 straight wins to start the new year. It’s all getting a bit confusing.

Awards season can reduce hockey writers to bitter factionalism in even the most clear-cut scenarios. What happens if four candidates have ironclad Hart Trophy qualifications at season’s end? It gets worse. Jets’ netminder Connor Hellebuyck and Canucks’ captain Quinn Hughes lead the races for the Vezina and Norris Trophies, respectively, and are the signature players on first-placed clubs. David Pastrnak’s Bruins are once again a Presidents’ Trophy contender, and the Czech leads the team in scoring by 35 points. A reasonable hockey writer could tab any of the three for the award without being blatantly biased, but blatant bias will muck up the proceedings anyway. 

MacKinnon could benefit from his perennial runner-up status to ward off previous winners Kucherov, McDavid, and Matthews, even as Hellebuyck, Hughes, and Pastrnak run interference. He probably deserves it; the guy’s lugging 23 minutes a night, laying it on the line defensively (T-20th in blocks by a forward), and is just four points adrift of Kucherov (104) for the league lead. Still, he’s got a fight on his hands. The first player in this crowded field to hit a cold snap is likely toast, but no one has blinked yet. I’m (almost) glad I don’t have a vote.

The Bruins are taking on water, and March could sink them

The Boston Bruins have taken a step back from their record-setting best, but it was supposed to be much worse than this. The same B’s that lost Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Taylor Hall, Dmitry Orlov, Nick Foligno, Tyler Bertuzzi, Garnet Hathaway, and Connor Clifton in the same offseason have the joint-highest points total in the NHL through 61 games. The problem? That joint part represents the Florida Panthers, who have graduated from the plucky underdogs that pantsed the Bruins in the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs to a genuine powerhouse.    

The Panthers boast the league’s premier all-situations line (Verhaeghe-Barkov-Reinhart) and have a leg up on Boston because of their game in hand. What happens if they add another top-nine scorer to Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Bennett’s unit? The Bruins, meanwhile, are running out of time to reverse the momentum of the Atlantic Division race after limping to a 3-3-5 February record. Those loser points have kept Boston competitive, but an inability to win close games is hardly a good problem with the postseason on the horizon.

If the Bruins want to prove the Atlantic still runs through TD Garden, now would be the time. The historic goaltending that established their points bank has leveled out slightly; neither Jeremy Swayman nor Linus Ullmark has cleared the .910SV% mark in 2024, an attainable goal for players of their caliber. Outside of Pastrnak’s connection with Brad Marchand and Charlie Coyle, the forward group is still lacking despite excellent second-half showings by Trent Frederic (17P in 26GP since 1/1) and Morgan Geekie (16P in 26 GP since 1/1). Are the Bruins just cold, or is this who they really are? They’ll find out soon; Boston plays 16 times in March and has the fourth-toughest remaining schedule in the NHL

The Nashville Predators are a signature trap team

You have to hand it to Andrew Brunette. He has steered a roster with seemingly nonexistent offensive potential into the Western Conference Wildcard picture, and his men have a chance to lock down the eighth seed in the coming weeks. They ran their hot streak up to seven games last night when they bulldozed the Minnesota Wild 6-1 at home, effectively ending their rivals’ own playoff aspirations. Whether denying the troops a U2 concert after a hideous 9-2 loss is much of a punishment depends on how insufferable you find Bono, but it’s worked for Brunette, who has done nothing but succeed during his young coaching career.

The strange part about this heater is that nothing has had to change stylistically for Nashville. Star sniper Filip Forsberg (29G, 61P in 61GP) and crafty veterans Ryan O’Reilly and Gus Nyquist have done the heavy lifting on offense. The rest of this group, skilled sophomores Tommy Novak and Luke Evangelista notwithstanding, is composed of hardworking matchup players like Colton Sissons and Yakov Trenin. At the blue line, franchise great Roman Josi (4th among defensemen in scoring, 15th in average ice time), former Rangers’ captain Ryan McDonagh (team-high 60.23% share of high-danger chances), and gritty Quebecer Alex Carrier (team-high 112 blocks) are split across three pairs so that they can cover an entire game.

All of this has been true since the beginning of the season, so what’s different now? Mainly, Juuse Saros is back. The Finn must have heard all the trade speculation because he’s 5-0-0 with a 1.40 GAA and 953SV% during this win streak. Nashville can already hit, fight, and, surprisingly, score (14th in team offense). Saros won’t be this dominant the rest of the way, but if he can use this momentum to turn around an uncharacteristically lackluster season, the Predators will be a cagey playoff matchup. A physical team with great goaltending is always an undesirable first-round draw.

Despite its flaws, the Yzerplan is working

Detroit Red Wings’ detractors love to drag their unsustainable success and remind their fans that the team will fall off a cliff Wile E. Coyote style any minute. The Wings faithful rebut that a 98-point pace can’t be wrong, and nastiness ensues. In a world where analytics are so accessible, it’s easy to see the former’s point; the Red Wings are getting killed in chance creation and have some of the best puck luck in the league.

To paraphrase their fans, so what? There’s no denying that the Red Wings are a fun team. Their wide-open style is more from their inability to defend than by design, but by loading all four lines with skill players, there’s always a chance Detroit can outscore its admittedly ugly puck possession stats. Throwing as much skill as possible into a lineup and hoping for the best is not a winning strategy, and GM Steve Yzerman hasn’t been perfect; he may have hit on Patrick Kane (31P in 29GP) and Olli Maatta (team-high +18), but he also paid term and money for cooked defensemen Justin Holl and Ben Chiarot and made Andrew Copp ($5.75 AAV for 68P in 141GP) the league’s priciest third-liner. That the Red Wings are decent without having yet tapped into their wealth of blue-chip prospects is incredibly encouraging nonetheless.

This team has a half-dozen NHL-ready reinforcements on deck. When stopgaps like Fabbri and Jeff Petry are gone, standout AHL prospects like 6-foot-6 defenseman Simon Edvinsson and two-way pivot Marco Kasper will step into their minutes, likely as upgrades. If current top players Dylan Larkin, Alex DeBrincat, and Lucas Raymond gain some badly needed playoff experience in the meantime, what’s the harm? The rebuild is still moving in the right direction; despite Yzerman’s occasional contract gaffes, he has been an excellent drafter since his return to Detroit.