2018-19 Season: 1st Half
The 1st half started with the early-season signing of Joe Thornton by the Dallas Stars, who needed depth at the Center position. Another team who needed depth at said position was the New York Rangers, who ended up signing Pavel Datsyuk. The only other major signing of the season was Ilya Kovalchuk (and you people thought you were gonna get away with not hearing about this person) to the Pittsburgh Penguins.
The Kansas City Scouts may have had a terrible outing as a team, placing dead last in the league, but their star player Thibaux Girard's shot-blocking heroics cannot be questioned. Among the young players who shined early in the season was Canucks Right Winger, um excuse me here, BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOCK Boeser (sorry, the joke was there), who nearly led the league in goals, assists, and points at one point in the season, before being overtaken by Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid.
Carolina's Tae Sun-yung started off the season in the worst, or should I say, the most emo way possible: By slitting Brad Marchand's throat with his own skate after being slewfooted by Marchand earlier in the game. Tae Sun-yung wouldn't get into any more trouble afterwards and Marchand appeared to have learned his lesson after that near-death experience.
One of the biggest trades of the season came when Jeff Carter and eventual AHL player Mikko Kalteva were traded to the Ottawa Senators for Colin White and AHL player Nate Thompson late in the 1st half of the season by the Los Angeles Kings. Needless to say, the Kings staff thought they were joking.
and now for the rest of the Central Division...
As you can see, Minnesota is on top of the league standings. Efforts from Devan Dubnyk in goal have helped the team keep pucks out of the net.
As for the Hurricanes, even though they have been one of the most successful teams this season, have had their Capacity Use % stuck at 80%, good for 29th out of 32 teams. I guess you can call them the Anti-Toronto Maple Leafs. There were talks of moving the Hurricanes to Quebec City or Houston, that is until a certain someone from my NASCAR Racing 2003 Season universe who is a WRA and NASCAR legend, and is the biggest donor to the club (and who also just happens to be the person running this dynasty), named Josh Drake, said no. This created a ton of ill-will towards Drake from hockey fans in Quebec City and Houston, who badly wanted a franchise and objected towards Drake using his celebrity to keep the franchise in Carolina. Who knows, maybe we can have a heated division rivalry in the Metro between the Canes and the Nordiques that always ends in riots and useless politicians being deposed and World War III and the end of time as we know it? Furthermore, he even wanted a 25,000 seat arena built in Shelby, North Carolina, a city that has a population of 20,260 people. Most people across the NHL thought he was crazy, building an arena that had more seats in the building than people in the city itself, but Drake was determined to make this work. He even convinced the GM of the Canes to have heavy metal acts perform during the intermissions, as Drake was known for his love of the music genre.
Who will make the playoffs? Find out in the 2nd half of the 2018-19 season.