Hockey World Blog Power Rankings: Week 10

 I had not been impressed with how some teams in last week’s rankings performed. Detroit, Washington, and Montreal struggled by losing games last week. I decided to shake things up by putting teams that had not been in the rankings very much this season. Even hot teams like Pittsburgh lost consecutive games after their long losing streak. I can only hope that the games on tap this week will be much better. I am personally looking forward to Thursdays preview of the Winter Classic between Washington and Pittsburgh at the Verizon Center.

Rank Team Last Week Team Notes
1 PHI 2 The Flyers are 7-1-1 in the month of December. The biggest win was snapping the 12-game losing streak intrastate rival Pittsburgh had Tuesday night. Only game this week is against Florida tonight before three games in four nights next week.
2 COL NR Look out now, the Avalanche has been playing solid hockey this month. They lead the division, which is starting to become a two-team race with Vancouver. They keep winning games despite losing 164 man-games in 33 games due to illness or injury.
3 PIT 1 It will be interesting to see how the Penguins will react this week on 24/7 when two controversial calls went against them in their two losses this week.
4 ATL 5 They have taken the most advantage of Washington’s misfortunes as they have pulled to within one point of the Caps. Only if they can get more people to watch them, people would care about hockey in Atlanta.
5 DAL NR Anytime someone can pull off two victories in less than 24 hours is impressive. Beat Columbus Saturday night, then beat Detroit in shootout fashion Sunday afternoon.
6 VAN NR Another team with one loss in the month of December. They have a three-game road trip in the Central division this week, as they hope to repeat the Detroit-Columbus success Dallas had over the weekend.
       
25 OTT 25 They were doing a good job picking up points whenever they could. But last night’s collapse at home against the Capitals is what helped land them in this spot.
26 FLA 28 The three-goal lead collapsing against Carolina shows that no lead is safe. They could return to this spot next week should they lose difficult games against Pittsburgh and Philadelphia this week.
27 BUF NR Three of last four games have not been good to them. The good news is that its two games this week are both at home as they take on Anaheim and Florida.
28 TOR 26 J-S Giguere is on the shelf again, which means more games for Jones Gustavsson to get more experience and prove what he can do. Leafs must improve on 4-10-1 record away from home.
29 NYI 30 Looks like we have a two-team race for the bottom two spots between the Islanders and Devils. Islanders take over 29th because they managed to earn their first three points of the month with a win and shootout.
30 NJ 29 One thing they have in common with the Islanders is they took points away from Phoenix last week. Score more than one goal three times in last eight games. Devils and Islanders play Thursday in a game I’m calling the “Toilet Bowl”.

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