from Ed Willes of the Vancouver Province,

Under normal circumstances, NHL teams will slot into one of four categories as a season unfolds.

At the bottom there will be the truly wretched, the no-hopers who are destined for the league’s cellar. Above them you’ll find the mediocrities, teams who’ll bluff at the playoffs before their true nature is revealed. Then there’s the above average — teams that are good enough to make the playoffs but not good enough to win a Stanley Cup. And finally there is the aristocracy, those few teams who legitimately have the stuff of champions.

True, there might be sub-categories within each group: the over-achieving mediocrities who sometimes make the playoffs, the above-average who are sabotaged by injuries. But at about the time they put the red line into the game and took the rover out, the NHL has adhered to this pattern.

Until this season.

OK, it’s still early but when you study the 2016-17 NHL landscape, it seems the league is divided into two camps: playoff teams and young teams. No one is truly wretched. No one is truly dominant. There are just some pretty good teams. And then there’s a whole bunch of teams who’ve committed to building through the draft.

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