A quote I try to live my life by comes from the philosopher Socrates, who said “I only know that I know nothing.” And it’s never been more apparent to me that I, in fact, know next to nothing about the NHL, than through the first month of the 2018-19 season. October has been truly wild, loaded with surprises, disappointments, and eye-popping plays. The chaos of regular season is reflected in this edition of the power rankings, where we see teams with playoff aspirations dropping into the basement, while expected disasters find themselves fighting for early playoff position.

Before we begin, let’s review my grading system. I primarily rank teams based off of how I feel they are playing now. This of course, will reward teams that play better at the end of the month than at the beginning, so I do also try to take the entire month into account. Also, the teams are divided into tiers. This will provide more clarity to where the gaps in the rankings are. For example, I feel that there is a bigger gap between ranks 4 and 5, then there is between 5 and 6. This is reflected in the tier rankings, which will indicate where I feel the big gaps are.