Coming into the season, it wasn't hard to broadly project the outcomes in the Central Division.

Tampa and Carolina seemed like a clear one-two, Dallas a smidge behind them, then a pick-'em of Florida and Columbus. Nashville didn't offer much promise but appeared to have enough talent to not be as bad as Chicago and Detroit.

That felt like a widespread consensus. And give or take a Columbus being a bit worse than that, Florida being far better, and Dallas seemingly not being able to play five games in a row without some new catastrophe befalling it, things are more or less going as projected. Except…

Except Chicago — sans Jonathan Toews, sans Kirby Dach, sans anything even vaguely resembling a proven goalie or a passable-on-paper defence — is currently sixth in the league in points, tied for 1