It's too soon for the NHL's slow-starting teams -- and their followers -- to panic.

Really.

	The Maple Leafs' poor record isn't Eddie Belfour's fault ... yet.

Let's put it this way: If the disappointing starts of the Maple Leafs, Rangers and others this season are irreversible and automatically indicative of long-term problems, then the converse should be true, right? Is everyone counting on that Tampa Bay Lightning-Minnesota Wild Stanley Cup final? Vinny vs. Marian? St. Petersburg (and Tampa and Clearwater) vs. St. Paul (and Minneapolis and Bloomington)?

We thought not.

There's a looooong way to go.

Yet as the NHL's early season perceived underachievers are trying to get back on track, and in fact in some cases seem to be making progress, a few high-decibel alarms predictably have been sounded around them. Commissioner Gary Bettman is smiling about one lesson driven home last season, and the point has to be conceded. The over-expansion of the NHL, coupled with the league's wise refusal to expand the playoff field beyond 16 teams, has added to the significance of the regular season as a filtering process.

Now, because nearly half the teams now don't make the postseason, the league still can be bottom-heavy and the overtime rules have thrown some extra points into the mix, there are going to be annual examples of teams finishing with 90 or more points -- but not making the postseason. It happened to Dallas and Edmonton last season; it will happen again. So, yes, teams that just miss out or lose a potential home-ice advantage often will be looking back at the Daylight Savings Time part of the season and lamenting lost points.

Viewed from that perspective, the teams that should be the most alarmed about the apparently underachieving starts are the Rangers, Coyotes and Oilers, who all might be on the playoff bubble next spring. But they've got company in early season underachievement, including -- for different reasons - the Maple Leafs, Sharks, Thrashers, Predators and even the Avalanche.

We'll get to the others in due time, but we better quickly make this pre-emptive point about the Thrashers: Despite Ilya Kovalchuk and Dany Heatley, we didn't expect much from the fourth-year Atlanta franchise this season, either. But no wins in the first eight games is underachievement for anyone ... except for the Cincinnati Bengals, who call that "Business as Usual."

Now, on to the others.

No place like home ... except the road
The Maple Leafs' problems have been embarrassing, and it isn't even the fault of Eddie Belfour, who hasn't been bad. But the potential recovery offered by a seven-game homestand has backfired: The Leafs opened it with losses to Boston, Florida, and -- of all people -- the Rangers. And Pat Quinn had been griping going in about the long homestand, on the theory that being at home that long isn't necessarily an advantage, and the compensating long stretches on the road can be disastrous.

"We've asked (the NHL) time and again not to have it work out that way, but it seems to. When I played and coached out West," Quinn said of his days in Vancouver and Los Angeles, "sometimes we'd have that seven games at home, seven games away and it was terrible. You had to have an extra special good team to overcome that. We've asked several times to have it changed. It hasn't worked out. It's there, so we have to do something with it."

Quinn has tried breaking up his top line, the so-far defensively challenged Mats Sundin centering Darcy Tucker and Alexander Mogilny, by sliding Mikael Renberg into Tucker's spot. But this is a team that will right itself, unless Belfour is a disaster.

The Manhattan Project
The Rangers? They beat Toronto and Phoenix over the last few days, but that hasn't eliminated the concerns that their offseason spending again will prove to be ill-advised. Trottier already was being judged to be on the hot seat, and this time he can't pass the pressure over to Mike Bossy. Trottier has been stubborn in his insistence on using Bobby Holik as just another skater, and not as the nemesis of the opposing marquee center. Darius Kasparaitis has looked lost.

Trottier has to hope that Kasparaitis, whom the coach saw go through a tough transition period at Colorado last spring before adapting and playing well in the postseason, again comes around. Brian Leetch, Pavel Bure and Eric Lindros have been mediocre (and worse). And the Rangers too often have been guilty of brainlock, taking stupid penalties and also acting as if they believed the obstruction crackdown had just been waved off.

But the biggest joke of all would be if the Rangers and Glen Sather, who seemed so enamored of Trottier during the interview process last spring, give up on him as a head coach too soon. He is quiet and reflective. Those who should know better can mistake that for bewilderment. He will be stubborn, even quirky, as a head coach. But it's not as if this is some guy who didn't play in the NHL, coached as major junior and climbed up the ranks. Sather and everyone around him should have known what they were getting in Trottier, and to act shocked now is to admit inexcusable ignorance.

Trottier will be fine. The Rangers will continue their recovery, even when the schedule gets tougher, and will return to the postseason.

The economically challenged
The Oilers have struggled, but perhaps they've taken the inspiration from an ownership bragging about how economically responsible it is being in positioning itself for less-than-expected losses this season. That's a real rallying cry: "Win one for the comptroller!" Plus, given that inertia and the limited resources Kevin Lowe has had to work with, making the playoffs again will be a praiseworthy accomplishment.

Can Greise QB the power play?
Why is Colorado, with only one regulation loss as of this typing, included among the underachievers? The Avalanche have been awful at home, getting only three points in four games, and is looking up at the Wild.  
 
It's your crease, we just skate in front of it
San Jose? That one's easy. When the Sharks all but caved into Evgeni Nabokov's demands, it was confirmation of what everyone had figured out: Management's faith that Miikka Kiprusoff might be as good, and perhaps even better, than Nabokov turned out to be well wide of the net, so to speak. Now that Nabokov is back in the fold, and back in the crease, the Sharks will be moving up. The biggest concern there, though, is that the slow start indeed could be costly in what should shake down as the race with the Stars for the division title and the conference's No. 2 or 3 seed.

When they build it ...
Bobby Francis did a terrific job getting the most out of the Coyotes last season, and this terrible start -- plus the specter of being without goalie Sean Burke for a few weeks -- only re-emphasizes that Phoenix is in trouble, even after the signing of Tony Amonte. Even more jarring, the hockey honeymoon is over in downtown Phoenix, because the fans have stopped buying those horrible limited-view seats in America West Arena and will have to be won back when team moves into its suburban arena at some point in the middle of next season.

Stuff country western songs are made of
And speaking of honeymoons ending, the Dixie Chicks and Vince Gill -- those rabid Predators fans -- could get together and harmonize in heart-wrenching fashion about the apparent regression in Nashville. The Preds seemed to be an expansion model, balancing surprising competitiveness and hope for the future. While the Wild obviously are going to slide, Minnesota has at least taken over that role.

Terry Frei is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. His book, "Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming" will be released by Simon and Schuster in December.