It’s finally September, which means it’s time to start thinking (seriously) about hockey again! Just a quick programming note before I get into my preview of the NHL for this upcoming 2025-26 season: my Mediocrity Project is regrettably on hiatus as I lost my spreadsheet when my previous MacBook had coffee spilt on it. I was able to recover the drive but for whatever reason the file is lost. Shit happens!
Very often I start these previews with a reflection on the NHL’s efforts to provide parity to the League, not just in terms of success on the ice but also financial equality. There’s been a hard salary cap and floor in the NHL for a couple of decades now and many teams have been to both the top and bottom in this relatively short span of time. Coincidentally the teams at the bottom of the salary discussion are those teams in the process of a rebuild, whereas the teams at the top are those actively searching for postseason glory. Some teams, like the Pittsburgh Penguins, are in transition from being one of the higher spending teams, while others are stagnating, not quite able to succeed nor are they quite able to straight up fail. The Mediocrity Project was my way of highlighting, hopefully over the course of several seasons, those teams which are not just mediocre but seemingly stuck there for one reason or another.
Last summer there were four teams I highlighted as being particularly mediocre: the Ottawa Senators, the Winnipeg Jets, the Calgary Flames, and the New York Islanders. Their 2024-25 seasons ended in very different ways: the Senators made the playoffs for the first time since 2017 (the Penguins know all about that), but were dismissed in six games in the first round by the Toronto Maple Leafs; the Jets were Presidents’ Trophy winners but could not escape the Dallas Stars in the second round; the Flames just missed the playoffs by virtue of losing a tiebreaker with the St. Louis Blues; and the Islanders finished the season with as mediocre a record as a team could muster, 35 wins, 35 losses, and 12 overtime wins. Considering how their seasons ended, you would think they would all be maintaining a position of mediocrity.
Adjacent to this conversation, one of the metrics in my Mediocrity Project was giving a team points based on their ranking in Dom Lusczczyn Luszczyszyn’s offseason improvement rankings, which he posts a couple of weeks after free agency opens. He ranked those teams as follows: Ottawa 8th, Calgary 17th (smack-dab in the middle), the Islanders 24th, and Winnipeg 30th. Between this ranking and how they drafted, I think I can comfortably say the Flames are going to remain dead-ass in the middle of the NHL standings this coming season. The Islanders are clearly heading towards a rebuild: they’ve finally gotten rid of Lou Lamoriello and they took three picks in the first round of this past June’s Entry Draft, including the first overall pick with Matthew Schaefer. The Jets are a constant disappointment despite having a goaltender in Connor Hellebuyck who is capable of winning the Hart trophy as League MVP.
This leaves the Ottawa Senators, who are seemingly finally angling to be a more serious competitor in the Atlantic Division. The Atlantic is home to two of the last four Stanley Cup champions (Florida and Tampa Bay, both with wins in consecutive years bookended by a third Finals appearance), and both of those teams are waning in their strength, although they are still quite formidable. Add in Boston, which has quickly sunk into the division basement, and Toronto, incapable of getting out of its own way (and ranked 31st in Dom’s offseason rankings), and the whole division has become more competitive for the likes of Ottawa as well as Buffalo and Montreal. I will get to my division rankings in a bit, but the opportunity is there for a reshaping of the Atlantic Division.
My overall impression of the NHL this year is that there are very few certainties in terms of the teams at the top or the bottom of the League. Yes, the Panthers are two-time defending champions, but they’ll start the season without Matthew Tkachuk and being defending champions already puts you at a disadvantage, let alone for a three-peat. The Oilers are in an increasingly perilous situation with Connor McDavid’s contract expiring after this season, and their offseason moves were not very inspiring. The Maple Leafs suffered an even worse offseason with Mitch Marner departing and their window to win a Cup may already be shut as a result. On the other side of the discussion, the teams at the bottom of the League ‒ Anaheim, San Jose, Chicago, Columbus ‒ are all improving and, even if they’re not quite ready to leap into the playoff fray, it won’t be long before they are.
With this apparently very large midsection of teams this season, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this turned into a very competitive season.
The Vegas Golden Knights have followed up their division-winning 2024-25 campaign with a great offseason, adding Mitch Marner, Colton Sissons, and Jeremy Lauzon to an already very strong roster. While they are going to be without the retired Alex Pietrangelo, I see them as the front runners again for the Pacific Division. Their chief competition will come from an Edmonton Oilers team that will be all too desperate to give Connor McDavid a reason to hang around past this season (if he doesn’t already sign a contract extension by the time you read this). Obviously it doesn’t matter who wins the division when the Oilers placed third last year and still ended up Stanley Cup runners-up, but Edmonton will need to have a great start to build the foundation of confidence that they’ll need as the season wears on.
Behind them are the Los Angeles Kings, who seem to have run out of ideas for getting themselves deeper into the postseason and have opted for the likes of Veterans (with a capital V) Cody Ceci, Brian Dumoulin, and Corey Perry for their offseason acquisitions. This is sure to lead to a regression and gives the Vancouver Canucks an opportunity (albeit not a great one) to perhaps sneak themselves back into a playoff spot, if for no other reason than to simply be fodder for some other team on its way to the second round and beyond. I am tempted to consider Calgary continuing its impressive run of mediocrity, but I would not be surprised if they saw this season as the opportunity to tank (and fail?), permitting at least Anaheim and possibly even San Jose or Seattle to eclipse them in the standings.
- Vegas Golden Knights
- Edmonton Oilers
- Vancouver Canucks
- Los Angeles Kings
- Anaheim Ducks
- Calgary Flames
- San Jose Sharks
- Seattle Kraken
Of the four divisions, the Central Division is perhaps the most mediocre. First you have the Winnipeg Jets, who won both the division and the Presidents’ Trophy last season but were cut down in the second round of the playoffs by the Dallas Stars. Dallas made the Conference Finals for the third season in a row last year, but they have gotten diminishing returns in their efforts to get past the Edmonton Oilers. There’s no knowing if the Colorado Avalanche will be able to push past either of those teams after an offseason of losing key depth players. God only knows what’s going to happen to the Minnesota Wild if they end up trading Kirill Kaprisov. Neither Minnesota nor the St. Louis Blues seem poised to escape their seemingly endless spate of mediocrity.
My feeling is that Dallas will swap with Winnipeg for first in the division, while Colorado should maintain third in the division, especially if the Wild move Kaprisov at some point in the season. In fact, trading Kaprisov could be what bumps Minnesota down the standings, giving St. Louis and Utah enough opportunity to jump into the Wild Card race. Nashville should rebound after last year’s disaster of a season and make that race even more congested. The Chicago Blackhawks are not in any position to get out of the basement yet.
- Dallas Stars
- Winnipeg Jets
- Colorado Avalanche
- St. Louis Blues
- Nashville Predators
- Minnesota Wild
- Utah Mammoth
- Chicago Blackhawks
As I mentioned above, the Atlantic Division is ripe for change. The Florida Panthers are two-time division and Stanley Cup champions and are probably still the early favorites to at least win the division again, but the quality of their peers is slowly improving, largely because the teams which have been at the bottom of the division over the last few years are starting to become more competitive. Montreal and Ottawa both were playoff teams last season and Buffalo wasn’t too far off. Each of those teams improved this past offseason, and they really ought to start competing with Toronto and Tampa Bay in the playoff race in the division. If Detroit gets lucky, they could be competitive as well, leaving the Bruins as the only team that really doesn’t seem in position to be serious about a playoff spot.
So I will prohibitively leave the Panthers at the top of the division, but I will give Tampa the nod for second in the division. I think Toronto cedes third to Montreal as the Maple Leafs tumble a lot without Mitch Marner. I’m gonna give Buffalo fifth in the division over Ottawa but not by much, while Detroit still hasn’t done enough to convince me they’ll be able to eclipse either of those teams. Boston is headed for a rebuild, and could be a sleeper for the first overall pick in June.
- Florida Panthers
- Tampa Bay Lightning
- Montreal Canadiens
- Toronto Maple Leafs
- Buffalo Sabres
- Ottawa Senators
- Detroit Red Wings
- Boston Bruins
Last but not least, the Metropolitan Division is full of several teams with serious intentions but disappointing results. The Carolina Hurricanes made their second Conference Finals appearance in three years but couldn’t solve the Florida Panthers in as many tries. The division winners last year, the Washington Capitals, were quite the surprise in that finish, but fell to the Hurricanes in the second round in five games. The New Jersey Devils made the playoffs for the second time in three seasons, but only barely beat out the (also surprising) Columbus Blue Jackets, and they were wiped out by Carolina in the first round with Jack Hughes injured. The Rangers had a bad year last year and made little effort to improve from without in the offseason. All this to say that I really don’t know if any of these teams are to be taken seriously as contenders for a championship this season, because none of them can be trusted!
The Hurricanes did add Nikolai Ehlers in the offseason, which is huge for them for taking the next step forward and maybe getting themselves in the Cup Finals this season. A healthy Devils team is definitely a competitive team, and I have hope for them that they’ll be up towards the top of the division. The Rangers will be almost certain to rebound under new head coach Mike Sullivan, and probably edging into a playoff spot as a result. I can’t expect the Capitals to repeat their Cinderella season last year but, because they’re not worse on paper besides the fact that they’re older, I don’t see them falling all the way out of the playoff race either. Columbus’ only hope for moving up is due to their prospects improving, but even then I don’t see enough game-changers to make that much of a difference. It’s hard to sort out the Islanders, Penguins and Flyers, so I’ll let them be in that order and rest with the idea that the Penguins will still be the team to beat in Pennsylvania, if not in any other fashion.
- Carolina Hurricanes
- New Jersey Devils
- New York Rangers
- Washington Capitals
- Columbus Blue Jackets
- New York Islanders
- Pittsburgh Penguins
- Philadelphia Flyers
LGP