Biggest surprises, disappointments at NHL’s quarter mark

Believe it or not, but we are already through the first quarter of the 2021-22 NHL season.

So far, a lot of things have played out as we expected on a team and individual level. Alex Ovechkin is scoring a lot of goals, Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl are raking up points, and teams like Toronto, Washington, Carolina, Colorado, Tampa Bay, and Florida are winning a lot of games.

But there are still a lot of surprises — and disappointments — around the league so far, and we are going to dig into a few of them.

Surprise: Andrew Mangiapane‘s goal scoring

The Calgary Flames have transformed into a defensive juggernaut thanks to Darryl Sutter’s work behind the bench and some fantastic goaltending from Jacob Markstrom and Dan Vladar. But they also have a pretty good offense to go with that defense and goaltending, and there is no bigger surprise among that group than Mangiapane.

He already has 15 goals through the first 21 games of the season. He scored 17 and 18 goals over the past two seasons in 68 and 56 games respectively.

Still solid numbers, but nothing close to what he is doing this season. Maybe there is a shooting percentage regression ahead for him over the last three quarters of the season, but he is still a very good player having a career year.

Disappointment: Seattle’s goaltending

This was supposed to be the position that gave the Kraken a chance this season.

They made a huge investment in their defense and goaltending positions in the expansion draft and free agency, starting with Phillipp Grubauer and Chris Driedger in net.

While the team has been one of the best in the league from a possession, scoring chance and shots perspective defensively, their .873 all situations save percentage as a team (32nd out of 32 teams) has made it all meaningless. There is still time for the Kraken to turn this around if the goaltending gets it together, and that might be starting to happen. They have won three out of their past four during a stretch that saw them play…