Demons.

We're all haunted by them in some form and we either rise to the occasion or succumb to the depths the demons so desperately seek to drag us into. This truth extends to the hockey rink and reaches into players and teams alike. Every year there are multiple story lines that revolve around a player or team either exorcising their past demons or falling victim to them yet again. For example, Scott Gomez scoring last night means one less demon floating around the ice in a haunted Montreal season.

Closer to home in the Northwest Division, each team faces their own demons as they head into the stretch run of the season and the questions of whether or not they will exorcise them ring louder and louder with each passing game.

Calgary has finished each of the last two season in 10th place, missing the playoffs by 5 points two years ago and 3 points last year and with them currently in 11th place it's become obvious the team in Calgary may not be built to achieve much more than they already have in the past two seasons. Will the Flames figure it out and find the consistency that's going to be needed to leapfrog the 3 teams in front of them and hold off Colorado and suddenly hard-charging Anaheim?

Colorado's struggles after the All-Star break were recently broken down by overlord DDC so I won't rehash work already done.

Edmonton's primary demon seems to be GM Steve Tambellini, who refuses to upgrade the hilariously AHL-quality talent on the roster and for the second straight year is likely to trade away an established NHL player or two for more prospects/picks. This is still a much-improved roster from recent years but injuries and the looming trading deadline threaten to further sink the once-promising Oilers season.

Minnesota's tendency to get outplayed nearly every night but still come out ahead in games would seem unsustainable but we're nearing 60 games played and the Wild continue to defy every piece of hockey logic in the history of forever by picking up 2 points more often than not. Just kidding. They really need to send the NHL a fruit basket because the 8 loser points they've obtained is keeping them afloat. Still, if they can overcome their injury issues and offensive struggles, the Wild are unfortunately likely to be in it at the end.

Vancouver doesn't really have any regular season demons to worry about. Their overall talent combined with a weak division means they're an easy shoe-in for postseason play. Once there, however....hahahaha.

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The current weather in Denver seems to be particularly symbolic of how the direction the Avs season seems to be headed in and after last season I'm absolutely terrified of potentially losing all of the next 22 games. So uh...yeah. Let's talk about other teams. Immediately.

Calgary! I love talking about them. Their fans are passionate, their history rich....ish, their GM feisty, and the team is mediocre enough to torture the Calgary Corsiatti Contingent into believing their might be hope on the horizon and they could be more than a perennial 10th place team. The Flames have been consistently mediocre all season and I could honestly get away with copy and pasting this paragraph every week and it would still be accurate.

Edmonton has finally caught fire after two straight months of futility. I imagine their recently-improved health has played a big role in their recent record leap (who knew having your best players play their best would lead to wins!?). Also an outrageous 8 point night from Sam Gagner really helps. Cool goaltending, Chicago. The Oilers are not realistically a playoff threat but can definitely ruin the party for some teams because that offense has the potential to go off on anybody on any given night. I have no interest in playing them ever again.

Minnesota can suck it. I don't wanna talk about it.

I'd go on about how Vancouver and Detroit are going to battle to the end for Western Conference supremacy and Vancouver being a top 10 team in the NHL in essentially every important statistical category and have a top 6 most teams would be envious of but I don't want to be accused of "being on Vancouver's sack" and have my Avs fandom called into question again. That said, the Canucks are terrible and they'll surely fall from their lofty position in the division because I don't like them grrrr!

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Apologies in advance for the much, much shorter NWC this week but I've been battling Pyelonephritis all week and haven't been able to watch any hockey.

Calgary continues to be just good enough to hang around in the playoff picture but not quite good enough to overtake any of the teams in front of them.

Edmonton's paper tiger defense has been unable to stop the losing as the Oilers' season has been completely derailed thanks to an outrageous amount of injuries to key players and, you know, not being very good.

Minnesota continues to teach their fan base harsh lessons about things like "regression" actually, you know, existing. I know it's a cruel world, Wild fans, but keep on keepin on because the rest of us are enjoying your plight quite a bit.

Vancouver should have run away with this division already but they don't seem to have found that extra gear quite yet and while 8 points is a pretty significant lead, it really should be more. With the Avs suddenly in second place, the more the Canucks dillydally around, the more exciting the second half of this season is likely to get.

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What a difference a week can make, right? Colorado came back to Earth last week against some pretty good hockey clubs and only managed to scrape by with 3 of a possible 8 points, scoring just 3 goals in the final 3 games of the week.

Meanwhile, Calgary came charging hard after a long and soul-crushing road trip that concluded with the incredibly-fun-to-watch Beatdown in Beantown and won all of their games. Still, the division standings remain exactly the same, with Calgary still behind Colorado, Minnesota, and Vancouver and all of them pulling away from Edmonton.

The Edmonton Oilers continue their indefensible slide towards the bottom of the league. Anaheim is somehow managing to catch them in the standings because Edmonton has scraped out just 3 points in their last three weeks. Naturally they went ahead and re-signed a journeyman defenseman in the midst of a career year to help shore up their defense. Corey Potter to rescue, y'all. To. The. Rescue.

Minnesota managed to win a game! Take THAT regression! Of course they sandwiched the win between two losses but hey, regression doesn't exist and that one win says so. Despite their recent reliance on ineptitude, the Wild still hold the 8th and final playoff spot in the Western Conference. On January 13th. At least they have that, right?

Somehow our fifth and final division foe, the Vancouver Canucks, are first in the division and starting to run away with it. They're first in the Western Conference and daring teams to catch them, are in the top 10 of all the major statistical team categories, and they still can't seem to stop crying and whining about how the NHL is out to get them. Then they prove lessons haven't been learned from the Steve Moore incident when their head coach goes public with what looked an awful lot like a threat to an opposing player to the rest of the hockey world. All of this was followed by the Vancouver writers taking up arms and playing the "Poor us wah wah waaahahhh" card and asking why everyone hates them because they don't have any toughness and that's apparently the only loathsome quality in hockey teams. You want to know why I personally hate you guys? You've proven you can't lose with class by tearing apart your city and then blaming it on anarchists. You've proven you can't win with class by winning and then asking why you aren't better liked. You play the games themselves with a certain lack of class and respect for the game with the reprehensible diving and incessant crying. What exactly are outsiders supposed to like about you, Vancouver?

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Writing this column every week is always a lot more fun when the Avalanche are winning and the other teams in the division that I care about are really struggling. It likely won't last too much longer but I'm definitely enjoying the wave while it lasts. Finally I can relax knowing the NWC isn't a curse upon the Avalanche. Anyway, the week in review.

Calgary continued their amusing and well-earned descent, falling to 4 points behind 3rd place Colorado and a whopping 12 behind division-leading Vancouver. The Flames hilarious beatdown at the hands of the Bruins last night threatens to become the defining moment of the season and was the final game of a seven game road trip, on which the Flames finished 2-4-1 with both wins coming in the first two games of the trip.We'll see where Calgary goes here but I have a feeling over the next month and a half we'll be hearing an awful lot about the whopping 11 No-Movement Clauses currently littered across the Flames roster as they battle for another 9th place finish. At least they have Iginla's Quest for 500!

Edmonton's struggles only seem to worsen by the week, this time losing stud rookie and likely Calder Cup winner Ryan Nugent-Hopkins to injury. The Oilers are six games into their seven game road trip with a record thus far of 1-5. Looks like all that early home-cookin created an unsustainable pace for this young, beat up Edmonton squad. Besides just the injuries, the defense and goaltending, always a huge question mark, no matter what Oilers fans on the internet spent all off-season talking themselves into, are showing the cracks everyone else recognized before the season began. Just a testament to how consistently they get outplayed is G Devan Dubnyk's over-3 GAA and yet he maintains a save percentage above .900! Color me impressed.

Ahh, Minnesota. Everyone's favorite team to mock over the last three weeks because the Wild fans have been equally consumed with sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting "la-la-la!" and wondering aloud (keyboard wise, anyway) if they started chopping the heads off their players if the NHL might actually notice. Luckily for all parties involved Raffi Torres and his douchebag character traits came rolling in to solve the question of what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Fans all over the NHL wanted to see a Torres suspension for any of the three extremely questionable hits he laid on opposing players last week and Wild fans just wanted someone, ANYONE, suspended for ANYTHING they did to the Wild. Everybody wins, except the Wild who lost two more games to continue their obsession with regression.

Vancouver took a break from winning constantly to practice the build that broke Terran vs. Protoss for the past 6-8 months and allow the Avs to gain one point on them in the standings. That's right. One point. Vancouver's chance to extend their lead into something more significant comes this week with a busy schedule but at least they let the rest of the division pretend they still had a chance. Honestly, even the webmaster of their official site knows it's over. The poll on their website right now is something about celebrating Luongo's 57th career shut out by asking who the fan's favorite #57 was in any sport. Broncos great Tom Jackson makes the list but unfortunately the runaway winner is former Canucks scrub and recently-retired Lee Sweatt. Huh.

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Holy balls what a week in the NHL. Lots of movement in the standings on a daily basis and the regression bug continued to nestle happily in Minnesota, infuriating their fan base and delighting everyone else because Wild fans make themselves absurdly easy to hate. It's not me, it's you. I promise.

Outside of the Weeping Willows in the Kind of North (get it? They look like Christmas trees and are constantly crying!), the rest of the division remained productive and helped themselves in the ways they needed to. Calgary continued their push for another 9th place finish as they've dug themselves out of the early season hole and straight into contention for being eliminated on the second-to-last day of the season. Have to admire the consistency, at least.

Edmonton continued to sink back down to expectations, bringing into question the validity of the great off-season debate: DOES ANYONE HAVE A DEFENSE WORSE THAN COLORADO? The answer is, of course, yes. Edmonton does. It's starting to show through because they suck and are losing a lot (quality sentence, AJ). I absolutely love their online communities, though. High quality chaps, they are.

Vancouver won't stop winning. PLEASE STOP WINNING.

See you next year <3

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Winning is kind of cool.

Sadly, due to the curse of this column (uhh..don't go look that up) and the upcoming matchup against the impossible-to-beat Minnesota Wild, I sure hope Avs fans everywhere really enjoyed these last couple of wins and look forward to our 2 minute (max) blip on 24/7 next week. I know I had plenty of (mostly drunken) fun. Moving away from the team we all know about, the division had a pretty interesting week (I honestly could say this every week).

Calgary played pretty well and ended up picking up 5 of a possible 8 points this week, ultimately gaining ground on Minnesota and surpassing struggling Edmonton. I still can't quite figure out this Flames team. They have an interesting mix of good and bleh talent but really need their stars to produce in order to stay successful (cough). Last week, they produced, results followed. Math is ez.

Edmonton is experiencing the kinds of growing pains that come with being a very young hockey team (COUGH). Stretches of hot goaltending overshadowing shaky offense and then white-hot offense making up for porous defense/goaltending and then everything falling apart together. These things happen. Still far too much talent to expect this two week trend to continue.

Minnesota is unbeatable and I refuse to accept their last two weeks as a regression to any sort of stupid mean, you hear me Jibbles? THEIR TRUE IDENTITY IS UNBEATABLE. They have the power to be the sort of heroic team the NHL needs. The other teams just need to stop getting in the way of true justice.

Vancouver...screw you. I hope Lapierre breaks both legs getting off the airplane. (They've been crazy hot for a month and are back to their division-trampling form)

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Yo.

It's been two weeks since I last rolled this sucker out so let's get back in the swing of things. While I currently ignore the Avs latest meltdown, this time at the hands of the hosting Sharks, the division has a chance to look quite a bit different next week.

While the Avs have a very tough 3-game schedule this week, the rest of the division largely plays each other and slugs it out to see if anybody can stop the whirling dervish that is the Minnesota Wild. If someone can manage it, surely it's the up-and-coming powerhouse Calgary Flames, right? No? Maybe the spry Edmonton Oilers can hand a dose of Earth to them? How about the old dominate guard Vancouver Canucks? No? Yes? PLEASE someone beat these clowns so the world can start to return to normal.

Thanks in advance, rivals <3

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