Weekend NHL rankings: Second-half storylines, Patrick Roy and a new No. 1

The NHL hit an important milestone over the weekend, as the Ottawa Senators became the last team to hit the halfway mark. Nobody’s quite sure why Ottawa has had 14 games in hand on every other team all season long, but here we are.

Great. So now what?

A typical second half of an NHL season has certain built-in storylines. There’s the playoff push, of course. There’s the tank battle in the other direction. There’s plenty of speculation about the trade deadline. This year is no different. But today, let’s use our bonus five to list five specific stories I’m looking forward to tracking.

Bonus Five: Second-half stories I want to see play out

5. How low can the Sharks go? — They won’t be as bad as the worst of the worst, having already passed the 1974-75 Caps (and presumably celebrated by passing a garbage can around the dressing room). But the mark for the worst full-season team of the cap era is very much in play. Somewhat surprisingly, that doesn’t come from one of the notable tank years — it was in 2016-17, when the Avalanche finished 22-56-4 for 48 points. Right now, the Sharks are on pace to finish just ahead, but that’s before any kind of second selloff that might make them even worse.

4. The Presidents’ Trophy race — I know, I know, nobody cares about the regular-season standings. And after last year, it’s hard to argue. But there are a few interesting things in play here. First, the Jets have never won the Presidents’ Trophy, in either iteration of the franchise. They came close in 2018 but just missed, so getting their name on a trophy would be a neat moment for Canada’s only likable team.

And here’s something I only recently realized: In the history of the NHL, the league has never gone more than seven years without having a team repeat on top of the standings. That’s been true even in the expansion era, where we’ve hit six or seven years a few times, but never more. It’s been exactly seven years since our last repeat, when the Caps finished first in both 2016 and 2017. The Bruins have a chance to keep that streak alive this year, even as their fans might be fine with letting someone else take home the curse honors.

3. The decline of Alexander Ovechkin — The Capitals have had a bit of an under-the-radar season, mainly because they’re not good enough to be contenders but nowhere near bad enough to get trainwreck status. They’re just plugging along, right on the wild-card bubble. But the bigger story is Ovechkin, who’s somehow made it to the halfway mark while still sitting with single-digit goals. He hasn’t scored in his last six games, and only has one multi-goal game all year (and that was back in the second week of November).

He’s 38, and for the first time, he seems human. Maybe worse. And that’s huge, because his Wayne Gretzky record chase was shaping up to be an enormous story as early as next season. Now that milestone is on hold, and maybe even in question.

Whether…