Mailbag: Devils, Bruins better than expected; Rangers issues

Here is the Nov. 30 edition of the mailbag, where we answer your questions asked on Twitter using #OvertheBoards. Tweet your questions to @drosennhl.

How about three surprises thus far this season? What team(s)/player(s) have surprised you the most? Could be good or bad. Is there one storyline that you didn't see coming? -- @theashcity
I'll give you three good and three not so good.
Let's start with the good.
1. The New Jersey Devils are really good. That's something I did not see coming. I thought they'd take a step in the right direction; I didn't think they'd climb the stairs. They've won 19 of their first 23 games (19-4-0), including 16 of their past 17 and 10 straight on the road. They're deep, fast, skilled and relentless. Centers Jack Hughes (12 goals, 14 assists) and Nico Hischier (10 goals, 15 assists) have taken huge steps. The Devils are 17-0-0 when Hischier gets at least one point and 9-0-0 when Hughes scores a goal. Vitek Vanecek is playing like a No. 1 goalie. The Devils are for real.

2. The Boston Bruins are better than I thought. New coach, missing key players at the start of the season, goalie questions, age questions. They had it all going into the season, but they haven't blinked. I love the way they play, the way they move the puck, how quickly they make plays, how stout they are defensively. The third period is their best period. They are 13-0-0 when scoring the first goal and have outscored their opposition 34-12 in the third.
   3. Quietly, Martin Necas is having a strong season. He is tied with Sebastian Aho for first on the Carolina Hurricanes with 25 points (11 goals, 14 assists) in 23 games this season. It's surprising to me because the 23-year-old forward looked lost in the Eastern Conference Second Round against the New York Rangers last season. I covered that seven-game series and Necas left me unimpressed. It looked like he was on a different page, the wrong one, but his game has matured and he's on the same page. He didn't score his 10th goal until his 59th game last season. He got No. 10 in the 22nd game this season. It's not a big story around the NHL, but it looks like Necas is starting to live up to his potential as the No. 12 pick in the 2017 NHL Draft.

The not so good:
1. I picked the Vancouver Canucks to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs as the third-place team in the Pacific Division. They are starting to play better, but it floors me that they routinely have the same problem holding leads. Entering Tuesday, they had lost seven games while holding a multigoal lead (0-5-2). They blew third period leads against the Minnesota Wild on Oct. 20 (a 4-3 overtime loss) and against the San Jose Sharks on Sunday (4-3 overtime win). Mind boggling.
2. The three finalists for the 2022 Vezina Trophy voted as the best goalie in the NHL were Igor Shesterkin (Rangers), who won it, Jacob Markstrom (Calgary Flames), the first runner-up, and Juuse Saros (Nashville Predators). None of them received a top five vote from the panel of 14 NHL.com writers that recently participated in first in-season installment of our
Trophy Tracker series
. Shesterkin called himself out after a 5-3 loss to the Devils on Monday, saying "goalie played expletive
has three goals. Kaapo Kakko has four. They need more offense from both. Artemi Panarin and Vincent Trocheck, New York's big offseason free agent signing, have not meshed like the Rangers hoped. The lack of a solid and reliable veteran defenseman on their third pair is apparent.
So, worry about the Rangers now, the fact that they're tied for fourth in the Metropolitan Division and lost three straight before Wednesday's win, including two blown multigoal leads, and not getting the saves they need at key times from Shesterkin or the power-play production they require. But don't panic yet. Let's see how they handle the rest of this week, with another game against the Senators and one against the Chicago Blackhawks. If they want to get back on track, they need to win all three.
Ilya Sorokin is the goalie Islanders fans have been waiting for since Roberto Luongo was traded to get Rick DiPietro. If he keeps up this level of play, does he deserve Hart Trophy nods at the end of the season, or not quite there yet? -- @mikeybox
I'm not ready to say Sorokin deserves Hart Trophy votes, but he should be in the Vezina Trophy conversation. He has a chance to play his way into the MVP conversation, but it's hard to compare what he's doing for the Islanders to what Shesterkin did for the Rangers last season, when he was the second runner-up for the Hart Trophy. Shesterkin earned his Hart votes because he was the main reason why the Rangers stayed in the playoff race leading into the 2022 NHL Trade Deadline, when they upgraded their forward depth and started to play better in front of the goalie. He saved them on a lot of nights. He was the reason they were winning. The Islanders are mostly solid in front of Sorokin. They're a better team now than the Rangers were at this time last season. They're better than the Rangers are now too. But Sorokin has been outstanding, arguably the best goalie in the NHL with a 2.18 GAA and .933 save percentage in 17 games (16 starts). But for a goalie to get into the MVP conversation he has to be having a generationally good season. I'm not ready to put Connor Hellebuyck (Winnipeg Jets), Linus Ullmark (Bruins) or Logan Thompson (Vegas Golden Knights) in the MVP conversation yet either. All four should be in the Vezina conversation.

How do you see Alex Galchenyuk fitting in with the Avalanche? -- @avrilanche
This is a necessary and relatively risk-free addition because of all the subtractions the Colorado Avalanche are dealing with because of injuries at forward. Galchenyuk isn't coming in cold. He had seven points (three goals, four assists) in seven games for Colorado of the AHL after signing a PTO with them Nov. 9. He can play center or wing. He can be a dangerous scorer, and the Avalanche need forwards who can do that. Galchenyuk's deficiency is away from the puck, but when he has it, he's dynamic. The Avalanche are missing
Gabriel Landeskog
(knee surgery), Valeri Nichushkin (ankle surgery), Darren Helm (lower body), Evan Rodrigues (lower body) and
Martin Kaut
(illness). If Galchenyuk is a hit, the Avalanche will be that much deeper when their injured players return and will have some insurance if more go down. If he's a dud, they're not tied into him for long. It's a pro-rated one-year contract. If he skates and creates chances, he'll be a hit.
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