Dylan Larkin, age 23, is feeling a little tired to be going to the All-Star Game this year, so he’s the last guy who wants to be the last guy in. Vote for somebody else please and really, since he is the face of a 10-30-3 team, it’s not so hard to take him up on that. Cut him a break. Larkin needs to conserve strength for the Red Wings’ playoff drive.

Alex Ovechkin has this January thing down by now: If he skips the All Star Game, he gets a two-game vacation, including one contest when he actually would have to exert himself. Gloating about having one-timed his critics, he doesn’t need Nicklas Backstrom this time to get set up for more of the same old, same old but at this stage of the game, it’s worth it to him. By age 34, he has paid his dues and, seriously, is allowed to be zonked.

At this point of the year, playing a game for a living seems the most like work for the vast majority of players, hardly just the Great Eight. Even rookies, to whom the first go-round seems new and wonderful, usually are hitting the wall about now, the nightly effort it takes for kids to compete against fully mature men taking its toll.

We get it. For those both of barely legal age and Zdeno Charas and Joe Thorntons alike, it’s a long way still to April, hell, even a long way to February, a month that most wears down all of us who live in wintry climes. And we’re not the ones whose bodies are getting pounded three or four nights a week.

Okay, so maybe the way the game has evolved, these guys don’t receive the banging they used to, but never mind that, they are expected to put on a show every night, and this time a year the show seems to go on and on and on with just that little widow–a four-day All-Star break- that the players who don’t carry their teams can put to good use,

You know how you are mentally the last week before vacation. It gets a little tough to concentrate–sort of like it is for Juuse Saros these days–and what we do for a living usually is not as competitive as what hockey players have to live day after day.

The aches and pains over a season are cumulative, and February hurts too, but that month really is last call for the 15 teams out of playoff position to put a run together, so focus already has begun to tighten by Valentine’s Day. So we maintain that January, with the holidays just behind, is the hardest month. And looking around the league, it’s easy this season to prove it.

The Bruins, who began 20-3-5, are 4-5-6 since in the last 15. The Blues, who blasted to an amazing 8-game winning streak without the services of Vladimir Tarasenko, finally caught a case of the blues on the last trip, losing all three games, uncharacteristically blowing a big lead in the final one at Vegas.

Fatigue makes cowards of us all, especially Corey Perry. The Islanders, a how-are-they-doing-this 23-8-2 on December 21, are 4-5-1 since. Even the league-leading Caps, who started 24-5-2, are a mortal 5-4-3 in their last 12. The Penguins, who were an impressive 16-6-4 after losing Sidney Crosby, now have to do it without Jake Guentzel, too, and the last three games, it has started to show.

For whatever reason, the Predators appeared tired by November, and in the judgment of David Poile, they are–of Peter Laviolette. Another good coach bites the dust, and that’s an exhausting narrative in itself. But anything for a mid-season pick me-up; the Leafs being an example of that now that ding-dong, the wicked witch Babcock is dead. The Devils and Sharks are playing better after making changes, no reflections on the abilities of Pete DeBoer and John Hynes at all. Hynes already is owrking again, replacing Laviolette. Hey, it worked for the Blues a year ago. Anything for a boost during the dog days of a season even longer than a list of guys who owe Tom Wilson.

The Oilers, 18-10-3 on December 6, are 5-7-2 since. The Wild is 4-5-2 since a 10-game point string. With Sergei Bobrovsky and Artemi Panarin having flown the coop and Cam Atkinson out since December 19, that eight-game point streak by the Blue Jackets was, of course, unsustainable, hard working as they are. The Flyers, comfortably in a playoff spot when they began this six-game trip, are now out after winning just one of the first five.

Guys get hurt. Next man up and all that. But this one-for-all and all-for-one stuff, admirable as it has been in Pittsburgh and on Long Island, inevitably leaves you all-in. Hate to break it to you kids, but Santa is out until next December. In January, its still a long way to the trading deadline and the cavalry seems slower to arrive than even Jori Lehtera.

Meanwhile, the expected contenders who began the season on working vacations—Tampa Bay, Dallas and Vegas—have come on, a reminder that health allowing, the cream will rise to the top. There is no law stipulating that if the conditions are right, and the trainers’ room relatively empty, you have to wait until March to make a run. Eventually they all do, at least to some degree. While Los Angeles and San Jose have seen better days certainly, when you look at their rosters, they probably shouldn’t be as bad as their records. Lately they haven’t been.

By our calculations, come March 1, all 31 teams everybody will be 30-26-8 or close; all flaws having been exposed through at least one skid. Or will be in the slump about to take place.

Things are tough all over, for tough teams included, The Bruins have just one line that scores, the Penguins, while much better filled in on the bottom six and on D than expected, don’t have Crosby and now Guentzel. The Blues, who won it all on depth last year, are not deep enough regardless to keep rolling for five months without their one true game breaker. Coaches don’t want their players to know this, but you gotta win some games easy along the way to do what Tampa Bay did a year ago.

The Islanders have a lot more togetherness and tenacity than they do talent. The Flyers loss of a versatile top six forward, Oskar Lindblom, hits them on many levels. They are on the verge of something pretty good, but haven’t had Nolan Patrick all year and still need to put some meat on Morgan Frost’s and Joel Farabee’s bones, beside their goalie of the future having to be their present at a tender age 21.

So the 1959-60 Canadiens, even the best clubs in this age, are not. A 21-team league, this NHL is not. We’re tired, too, of telling you this, but it is true: Seasons have always been made up of surges and slumps, the better teams having the longer surges, the weaker ones having the longer schneids. But the distribution of the talent pool over 31 teams inevitably pulls even the better ones back towards the middle. And even when the regular season unusually failed to do that last year to the Lightning, the playoffs surely did dramatically.

The 2018 champion, the same one that leads for the President’s Cup in 2020, got beat in the first round of the playoffs last year by a Carolina team that hasn’t taken another step so far this season. But remember it’s still January. And, to the majority of the teams and players in this league, January will be around for a while yet. Or certainly seem like it.

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