NHL's five biggest surprises: Shocking goal leader emerges

There have been some teams and players that have been disappointments through the first two months of the 2023-24 season, and we looked at them here.

On the opposite side of that have been teams and players that are exceeding their preseason expectations.

Let's take a look at them now. 

1. Brock Boeser, Vancouver Canucks

If you had to take a wild guess as to who the NHL's leading goal scorer is entering play on Thursday you might start with Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, David Pastrnak, Auston Matthews or perhaps even Alex Ovechkin.

All of those guesses would be wrong. 

The answer is Boeser, the veteran Canucks winger who is off to one of the best starts of his career and pacing the league with 18 goals through the team's first 26 games. He is one of the driving forces behind a Canucks team that has been one of the biggest surprises in the league. If he keeps scoring goals at this same rate he would be on a 56-goal pace over 82 games. That might be asking a lot of a player who never scored more than 29 goals in a single season, but you can not take away this start or the fact that he might be the biggest individual surprise in the league. 

2. Arizona Coyotes

The Coyotes have been a league-wide punchline for the past decade due to their constant arena issues, ownership issues and threats of relocation. That's not even mentioning all of the losing. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel for them in their rebuild, and the team is actually maintaining a playoff spot in the Western Conference entering Thursday. 

The arrival of top prospect Logan Cooley has played a big role as he has been a great complement to a competitive veteran core. The Coyotes are scoring 3.33 goals per game, the 10th-highest mark in the league. They averaged just 2.74 a season ago (27th in the NHL).

3. Winnipeg Jets

The Jets have been a perpetually mediocre franchise that never takes any steps to change their roster or their core.

That always leaves them in the middle of the league standings, never good enough to win a Stanley Cup and never bad enough to fully commit to a rebuild. But they do have a handful of high-end forwards (Mark Scheifele and Kyle Connor) and an elite goalie (Connor Hellebuyck) that can mask a lot of flaws. So far this season that core group of players is masking a lot of the Jets' flaws with scoring depth and defense and has them in a playoff spot in the Central Division. 

4. Philadelphia Flyers

The Flyers finally committed to a rebuild and entered the season with what looked to be one of the worst rosters in the league on paper. But head coach John Tortorella has them playing a rugged defensive game that is keeping them competitive most nights, while the return of a healthy Sean Couturier and Cam Atkinson at forward (both of whom missed the entire 2022-23 season) has helped the Flyers hang around in the Eastern Conference playoff race a quarter of the way through the season. 

They still might not make the playoffs, but this was supposed to be one of the league's worst teams. They are anything but that and giving every team they play everything they can handle. 

5. Cam Talbot, Los Angeles Kings

The Kings have one of the best rosters in the NHL and have almost every ingredient you could want in a Stanley Cup contender. Deep group of forwards that form a great offense, they are relentless defensively and one of the toughest teams in the league to score against and they are very good on special teams. 

The one big question was always going to be in goal where they did not seem to have a clear No. 1 option. 

But Talbot has stood out early on as one of the top goalies in the league and helped secure the position. Entering play on Thursday his .930 save percentage is fourth in the league among goalies with at least 10 starts and has helped lead the Kings to the best points percentage (.750) in the Western Conference and one of the best in the entire NHL.