Weekend rankings: A Kings slump, a Penguins dilemma, and all-star weekend

Welcome to the all-star break. Almost. We’ve technically still got three nights to go, but the schedule for the rest of the week is very light, with only six games over the next three nights before we all head to Toronto. With all due respect to marquee matchups like Sens/Preds, Blue Jackets/Blues and Sharks/Ducks, it feels like we can start shifting our attention to the break.

As you know by now, the NHL has shifted things around this year. Will it work? That’s to be determined, but here’s five things I’m looking forward to when I head down to Toronto to take it all in.

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Which teams have the best (and worst) odds of winning a Cup by 2028? Part 2

Welcome the second of half of this week’s two-parter, in which we’re trying to figure out which NHL teams have the best and worst odds of winning a Stanley Cup in the next five years.

Yesterday was the league’s bottom half. If you didn’t see your team then, the good news is I think their odds are better than any of those teams. The bad news is I’m bad at this, so take it all for what it’s worth.

If you didn’t see yesterday’s post, go check it out so that you’re familiar with what’s happening here. Remember, the numbers will all seem low, because that’s the reality of the parity era. If you think your team’s number should be higher, cool, but let me know which teams I should be subtracting from.

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Which teams have the best (and worst) odds of winning a Cup by 2028? Part 1

The question is simple enough: Which teams have the best and worst odds of winning at least one Stanley Cup over the next five years?

The answer isn’t simple at all. I know, because I’ve tried to figure it out three times now. The first was way back in 2015, when there were only 30 teams and some kid named Connor McDavid was about to debut. More recently, I tried again in 2018, in an effort I revisited a few weeks ago.

Did I get those lists right? No, and that’s part of the problem – you can’t, really, when you’re dealing with probabilities. Was I wrong to say that the Devils had just a measly 1% chance to win a Cup back in 2015, dead last in the league? They didn’t win, so in that sense I was right, but the actual correct answer would have been zero. Was I right to have Tampa in the top spot back in 2018? Yes, since they won twice in the next three years, but that means the 40% odds I gave them were way too low.

It's impossible. It’s futile. So needless to say, I’m trying again this week.

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Weekend rankings: Second-half storylines, Patrick Roy, and a new number one

The NHL hit an important milestone over the weekend, as the Ottawa Senators became the last team to hit the halfway mark. Nobody’s quite sure why Ottawa has had 14 games in hand on every other team all season long, but here we are.

Great. So now what?

A typical second half of an NHL season has certain built-in storylines. There’s the playoff push, of course. There’s the tank battle in the other direction. There’s plenty of speculation about the trade deadline. This year is no different. But today, let’s use our bonus five to list five specific stories that I’m looking forward to tracking.

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Ray Bourque’s Stanley Cup win was bad, actually: It’s the return of The Contrarian

It’s Friday, and it’s a good time to have some fun. Except it isn’t. Unless it is. Which it isn’t. But really, you moron, it clearly is.

Yes, it’s time for another round of The Contrarian, the feature where you send me your most obviously correct hockey takes, and I tell you that you’re wrong. We tried this back in October, when you forced me to make the case that Mark Messier was a great Canuck, the puck-over-glass penalty works, and Kerry Fraser wasn’t to blame for missing that high stick in 1993. And I succeeded, because I’m a sportswriter, and our most important skill is to make loud and convincing cases arguments for things we don’t actually believe.

If you have a statement you’d like to submit for a future edition of The Contrarian, you can do that here. But fair warning, the bar has been set high, as you’re about to see. Or not see. As always, feel free to try to figure out which of these I actually believe.

The Stanley Cup handoff to Ray Bourque was a great moment in hockey. – Adam S.

On the contrary, Adam, you blockhead.

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Tank Index: Which bad teams are best positioned to boost their lottery odds?

It’s the second half of the season. Do you know where your draft pick will be?

You don’t, of course, because even if your team is absolutely terrible, we still have a draft lottery that prevents us from knowing anything other than that the Red Wings will move down. Apart from that, the ping pong balls will keep us guessing.

But while you may not know exactly where your team is picking, you might have already shifted gears to hoping the pick is as high as possible. That’s the reality of the NHL season – at some point you have to throw in the towel and start thinking about the future. And when that happens, it means it’s time to start hoping for losses.

It’s not easy for fans. But it can be even tougher on GMs, who may not want to admit defeat. Other times, it feels like a team is more than happy to embrace those losses, and might even be willing to nudge the process along. Most of us call that tanking, although Gary Bettman says that doesn’t exist and the media made it all up. He’s lying, so let’s check in on the tank index and see which teams are best positioned to make a dedicated push for Macklin Celebrini.

As always, we’ll be looking at four key factors.

Season so far: This one’s pretty simple. How bad are you? It’s all well and good to activate tank mode now, but if you’ve spent the first half racking up unexpected wins then you may have too much ground to make up.

Seller potential: With the deadline approaching, there’s no better way to tank than to trade a bunch of useful veterans. Your team gets worse, you gather future assets, and nobody can accuse you of anything shady. The problem, for some of these teams: Do they have anyone on the roster that anyone else wants?

Goaltending problems: You want to be bad everywhere on the roster, but this is by far the most important position, because nothing ruins a well-planned tank quite like a hot goalie.

Motivation: Maybe the most crucial factor of them all, this one looks at whether a team will have the stomach for an all-out tank job. Is the owner on board? Will the fans accept it? And does the GM feel like he has enough job security to reap the rewards, or is he going to hesitate to pull the trigger on a plan that will only benefit his replacement.

We add it all up, and let the math tell us who wins and who loses, and who might not stop losing. By my count, there are 11 teams that look like potential tankers. (For the record, I considered the Capitals, Islanders, Predators and Penguins but figured they were are all too close to the playoffs with veteran rosters to be worth including right now, and that’s pretty much where I drew the line.)

Let’s run the numbers and see who’s in the best shape to be in the worst shape.

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NHL weekend rankings: Five slumping teams that should be worried right now

The NHL went into the weekend in a weirdly streaky mood, with four teams owning win streaks of at least eight games. The Jets and Panthers lost, while the Oilers and (spends several seconds staring at notes in confusion) Kraken remain unbeatable. Also, the Hurricanes are good again, the Red Wings are getting everyone’s hopes up, and the Canucks are going to eventually have a game where their PDO is over 200 and they don’t really care about the math saying that’s impossible.

Also, several teams should be very worried right now.

We’ll get to the good and the bad down in the rankings, but first let’s take a look at five teams that are either in the playoffs or trying to get there who are not having a fun time these days.

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Comparing the PWHL’s first season to the NHL’s launch, more than 100 years ago

We’re two weeks into the inaugural season of the PWHL, and despite a handful of hiccups along the way, the new league is receiving near-universal praise for unifying the women’s pro game.

But is that deserved? Has the league’s debut been a success?

After all, it’s one thing to compare the new league to some imagined worst-case scenario, or even to the failed women’s leagues that came before. But that’s setting the bar too low. If the PWHL wants to be viewed as big-league hockey, then it should be compared to other top leagues.

So today, that’s what we’re going to do. Rather than handle the new league with kid gloves, we’re going to compare its first season directly to the biggest hockey league of them all: the NHL.

Let’s see how the new kid on the block really stacks up, by measuring them against the NHL’s debut season in 1917-18 in 10 important categories.

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We are not smart, and other midseason lessons from the prediction contest

Every year, right before opening night, I run a prediction contest for the upcoming NHL season. And two things always end up being true: The questions seems very easy at the time, and everyone does terrible.

That “everyone” includes me, by the way – I’m not any better at this than all of you are. The lesson is that none of us know anything. Or maybe it’s that the NHL product is more unpredictable than any of us give it credit for, throwing us constant twists and turns and unexpected swerves to keep us guessing all year long. And also, none of us know anything.

Today, we’re going to do the annual midseason check-in and see how we’re all doing. Spoiler: Not great!

If you’d like a refresher, you can find the original 2023-24 contest post here, along with the roughly 2,000 entries in the comment section. A summary of the consensus, in which nobody understood the Bruins, followed here. But that was all months ago, and a lot has happened since, so let’s see where we’re at.

This year’s contest featured 10 standard questions, plus the dreaded all-or-nothing bonus. If you like feeling smart, this is your last chance to look away.

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NHL weekend rankings: A top 5 shakeup and some great potential playoff matchups

We’re into the second week of January, and if the playoffs started today, that would be way too early.

After all, there’s still half a season left to go. But on the other hand, well, there’s still half a season left to go. We need something to look forward to beyond eight weeks of trade deadline speculation. And since the NHL loves to tell us that success in the playoffs is all that matters, they can hardly blame us for wanting to fast-forward ahead to the good stuff.

So let’s do that, with five of the best quasi-realistic playoff matchups that could be on the horizon.

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The five teams shaping up to have the most intriguing deadline dilemmas

We’re past the holiday freeze and Winter Classic, and most teams are just about to hit the halfway mark. If you’re an NHL fan, you know what team means: Get ready for eight weeks of trade deadline speculation.

For some teams, that’s a good thing – the deadline is something to look forward to, because it means an influx of new talent on the way to save the season and/or firmly establish a contender as a Cup favorite. Those are the buyers. For other teams, the feelings may be mixed, as it becomes obvious that the deadline will be about players leaving and a view of the future. Necessary, maybe even exciting in its own way, but also an admission that the season is already lost. Those are the sellers.

But what about the teams that are somewhere in between? Right now, they may be the most interesting, because the how the next few weeks play out could determine not just their fate, but how the entire market could shift based on who is or isn’t available. So today, I’m going to look at the five teams who have the most interesting calls to make over the next month or two, and where I think they may end up.

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Which of the league's worst teams could recreate the Blues' worst-to-first miracle?

Happy anniversary, Blues fans.

Five years ago today, your team woke up in the NHL basement. Not near the basement, or closer to it than you might have hoped – you were there, all alone, dead last in the entire NHL in total points on the morning of January 3, 2019.

We all know what happened next. The Blues turned it all around, going on an unprecedented second-half run and then winning the franchise’s first and only Stanley Cup.

Here’s the question I pitched to my editors: Can any of the teams that are in the mix for last place right now pull off the same miracle?

And here’s the answer: No. What the Blues did in 2019 was a cautionary warning from the hockey gods, meant to remind us of how random this sport can be, and will never come close to being repeated.

Cool, good post. See you all in a few days.

(Editor’s note: Uh, when we greenlit this idea we kind of assumed you’d be doing more than 150 words on it.)

Huh. Weird. OK, in that case let’s see if we can dig a little deeper. Let’s look at the league’s eight worst teams, the ones that went into last night's action below .500, and see if any of them have what it takes to serve up a repeat of the 2019 Blues. We’ll judge them based on five criteria that, in hindsight, could have tipped us off to what that Blues team was really capable of.

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NHL weekend rankings: Five offseason moves that haven't worked (yet)

Happy new year. And happy holidays. Here’s hoping you got all the gifts you wanted. And if not, here’s hoping you at least kept the receipts, so that you can send the junk back where it came from.

That’s a luxury that NHL teams don’t have. If they go shopping in the summer, they’re stuck with whatever they land, even if it doesn’t pay off. So today, let’s take a look at five offseason acquisitions that haven’t worked out so far, and the teams may be wishing they had access to a return policy.

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