Sunday Standings: November moves as intra-division competition heats up

Another week has come and gone, so we’ll check in on the teams in the Penguins’ division. Now that the NHL season is going on a month old, the league has blessed everyone with an increase in divisional games this week.

Let’s go around the division to quickly recap the latest, with records from the last week in parenthesis.

New York Rangers (2-0-0): The Rangers took care of business with a perfect week and out-scoring Detroit and Minnesota by a combined 9-4 score. The schedule stays light with a game today against Columbus and then five days off before playing again on Saturday against the rival Devils.

Carolina (2-1-0): Everything’s been close and tight for Carolina, it took until overtime to beat Buffalo early this week before suffering a 5-2 loss to Florida. The score finally loosened up with a 4-0 win last night against Tampa that could be getting the Hurricanes on track this season.

Washington (2-0-1): The Caps are finally starting to scoring goals - they tallied 11 in three games this year but still are 31st overall in goals/game this season. Finding some offens was just in time for two important wins this weekend over NJ and NYI and move themselves

New Jersey (1-2-0): Sans Jack Hughes this week, the Devils hit some troubles in two losses to Colorado and Washington after beating Chicago early in the week. Even though they lost the league’s leading scorer, it was the defense and goalie who has suffered in giving up 10 total goals in the last two games.

New York Islanders (0-3-0): Tough week on the Island, they’ve conceded 4+ goals in now four straight games. That’s not a recipe for success for those guys and they’ve hit an early season skid as a result to put themselves back in the pack after an impressive start to the season.

Pittsburgh (3-0-0): As it turns out, getting away to California was just what the Penguins needed to get their season on track. At the end of the year, we may look back on Magnus Hellberg of all people ending up playing so well and Bryan Rust’s OT heroics to steal a couple of points from LA as a difference maker in the season.

Philadelphia (2-1-0): The Flyers suffered another LOL moment in handing San Jose their first win of the season but at least rebounded to take wins against Anaheim and LA to salvage their road trip and erase the ignominy of losing to the Sharks.

Columbus (0-2-1): Keeping the puck out of the net has been a major issue, Columbus yielded 5 goals against in each of their three games this season.

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As mentioned above, the week ahead has plenty of action for some of these teams to meet up in the following week:

Today: CBJ/NYR
Tuesday: CBJ/PIT
Wednesday: CAR/PHI
Thursday: NJD/PIT
Saturday: CAR/PIT, NYR/NJD, CBJ/WSH

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