NHL catch-up: Canadian players hot, Canadian teams cold

This is an excerpt from The Buzzer, CBC Sports' daily email newsletter. Stay up to date with what's happening in sports by subscribing here.

Last Thursday, the NHL regular season officially reached the quarter mark. For now, it was Colorado and everyone else, as the Avalanche reeled off nine straight wins to extend their record to 16-1-5 and open up a seven-point lead over the rest of the league. Meanwhile, 25 of the remaining 31 teams are within six points of each other heading into today's games.

Here are some other early season trends around the league:

The trauma beetle bites hard.

The list of stars currently out of the lineup with significant injuries includes Toronto's Auston Matthews, Ottawa's Brady Tkachuk, Florida's Matthew Tkachuk and Aleksandar Barkov, Vegas' Mark Stone and William Karlsson, Tampa Bay's Victor Hedman, New Jersey's Jack Hughes and Winnipeg goaltender Connor Hellebuyck.

Matthews and Brady Tkachuk are expected to return this week – the latter missed all but the Senators' first three games with a thumb injury Oct. 13 that required surgery. But the Stanley Cup champion Panthers will likely be without Barkov the entire season after the captain tore two knee ligaments during training camp, and Matthew Tkachuk won't return until likely mid-December after surgery in August to repair a torn adductor muscle and sports hernia. With its top two players out, Florida (12-9-1) is 12th in the Eastern Conference.

Along with the Panthers, the U.S. Olympic team has been particularly hit by injuries, with brothers Tkachuk, Matthews, Hughes and Hellebuyck expected to star for the Americans at the Winter Games in Italy this February. Hughes is likely out until January after reportedly cutting his hand during a team dinner, and Hellebuyck, the reigning NHL MVP, will miss four to six weeks after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery last week.

Meanwhile, the Canadian team is keeping an eye on Stone (wrist) and Vegas goaltender Adin Hill (lower body), both of whom are on injured reserve for at least a couple more weeks, as well as young Dallas defenseman Thomas Harley, who has been dealing with a lower-body injury week-to-week.

It's unclear if anything is to blame for the string of injuries, but some point to a compressed schedule due to the nearly three-week Olympic break.

The leaves have fallen.

After finishing fourth overall last season (and then, as always, faltering in the early rounds of the playoffs), hockey's most talked-about team sits in last place in the Eastern Conference with a 9-10-3 record and has lost seven of its last eight games heading into Wednesday's visit to Columbus.

Free agent Mitch Marner's departure to Vegas deprived Toronto of last season's leading scorer, and the Leafs were also rocked by injuries to Matthews, rising star Matthew Nice and goaltender Anthony Stolarz, among others. William Nylander (sixth in the league with 29 points) and John Tavares (27 points) helped keep the offense afloat. But there is a real malaise around struggling coach Craig Berube's team, which ranks 31st in the league in goals per game after finishing eighth last season.

In the rest of Canada, things are not so rosy either.

The other six Canadian fans' gloat over Toronto's failures was tempered by concern for their own teams. Currently, the only Canadian team in the playoffs is the Ottawa Senators, who sit third in the Atlantic Division with an 11-7-4 record despite missing Brady Tkachuk for most of the season.

Canada's disappointments include Edmonton, which sits fifth in the Pacific Division and two points behind the wild card after reaching back-to-back Stanley Cup finals. The Oilers (10-9-5) have just five major victories. Latest result: Nashville is the only team with fewer players.

Just above the lowly Predators are Calgary and Vancouver, who rank 31st and 30th, respectively. Toronto ranks 28th, while Winnipeg (last season's Presidents' Trophy winner) and Edmonton are mired in the mid-20s. The young Montreal Canadiens, a surprise playoff contender, started 9-3-0 but have since lost seven of nine and fallen out of the Eastern Conference playoff picture.

But Canadian players are on fire.

The top four players in the scoring race – Colorado's Nathan MacKinnon, San Jose's McLean Celebrini, Edmonton's Connor McDavid and Chicago's Connor Bedard – all hail from Canada. Additionally, the Avalanche's Cale Makar is tied for sixth and leads all defensemen with 29 points, seven more than any other blue liner.

Celebrini and Bedard are only 19 and 20 years old, respectively. And 18-year-old Canadian defenseman Matthew Schaefer is also turning heads as he is tied for the rookie lead with seven goals.

At the other end of the age spectrum, old Nova Scotia buddies Sidney Crosby, 38, and Brad Marchand, 37, are tied for sixth in the league with 13 goals.

This obviously bodes well for Canada's chances of winning Olympic gold. After an emotional victory over the United States in a thrilling 4 Nations match last February, the Canadians are slight favorites over the battered Americans.

And so it should be, given the wealth of high-quality talent that Canada has boasted for generations. Crosby, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2005 NHL Draft, has passed the torch of the league's best player to McDavid (the top pick in 2015), who could one day pass it to Bedard, Celebrini or Schaefer, the No. 1 pick in the last three drafts.

It will be interesting to see how many, if any, of this young trio will be selected when Canada announces its Olympic roster in early January. Canadian management has historically been hesitant to draft very young players (Crosby was cut from the 2006 Olympic team in the midst of a 102-point rookie season), but Celebrini and Bedard are especially raising the issue with general manager Doug Armstrong and his staff.

To find out more about whether the three young guns will qualify, watch the latest episode CBC Sports' Hockey North.