Last year’s finish: 2nd in Metropolitan Division

Playoffs: Eliminated in first round

Predicted finish: 5th in Metropolitan Division

The tragedy of North American sports is that you can have a really fun time watching your team in the regular season, only for it all to go up in smoke once the playoffs start and put a damper on the whole thing. That’s exactly what happened to the Penguins last year.

Pittsburgh made it back to the playoffs last year for the first time since 2022. Instead of winning its first playoff round since 2018 and giving Sidney Crosby and co. once last long playoff run, the Penguins immediately crumbled in the first round against the in-state rival Flyers. Pittsburgh lost three straight games to start the series and rallied to win the next two, but the Flyers sent the Penguins home in overtime in Game 6.

After a regular season where the Penguins exceeded expectations — they were supposed to be in the hunt for the Gavin McKenna sweepstakes — can the Penguins make it back to the playoffs? In a wide open albeit competitive Eastern Conferences, it could be in the cards.

Somehow, Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang are all still here. Malkin and Letang have fallen off a bit in recent years (especially Letang), but Sidney Crosby is still, well, Sidney Crosby.

Crosby isn’t the same as he was at the height of his powers, but he’s still a very, very good top-line center, even at 39 years young. In the last three seasons, he’s seventh in the league in points per 60 minutes at five on five. The Penguins will still depend on him to carry the load, and he’s still up to the task.

Last year, head coach Dan Muse seemed to push all the right buttons for the Penguins in his first year behind the bench. The question is if he can do it again with the Penguins’ big names all a year older.

Case in point: Erik Karlsson. Karlsson had arguably his best season last year since he broke the 100-point mark in San Jose in 2023. With Karlsson on the ice at five on five, the Penguins had a 52.4 percent expected goals share while outscoring their opponents 73-53. Plus, Karlsson picked up 26 points on the power play, surpassing the 25-point mark for the second time since 2016-17. The 36-year-old Swede’s game has aged well, but can he turn back the clock again this year? Can the Penguins do the same with, say, Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell?

It’s not just the old guys, either. Yegor Chinakhov was a revelation for the Penguins after being traded from Columbus, scoring 36 points in 43 games. Tommy Novak, acquired two seasons ago from Nashville, really came into his own last year and was arguably the Penguins’ best play-driver. Blake Lizotte did everything you could possibly want from a depth forward.

It’s entirely possible that Muse is just a really good coach, but can the Penguins really get these kinds of performances from these players again this year? Pittsburgh did a lot of the right things last year — it was ninth in the league in expected goals share at five on five — but it’s fair to question how sustainable this is. After all, the Penguins were tied for the second-highest shooting percentage at five on five last year. Banking on shooting just over 11 percent again isn’t really a viable strategy. Also, the Penguins rolling with a goaltending duo of Arturs Silovs and Sergei Murashov, two young goaltenders with minimal NHL experience, could end poorly.

But there’s a lot to like about this Penguins team. In addition to the big names, Ben Kindel, who turned 19 in April, had a strong rookie season, flashing a lot of offensive skill while driving play. Ville Koivunen had some brutal puck luck last year in his NHL audition, but he had really good underlying numbers and clearly has supporters in the front office, given that the Penguins extended him for four times as many years (8) as he does NHL goals (2). Samuel Girard is also an intriguing piece for the Penguins’ blue line as a puck-mover after being acquired midseason last year.

Pittsburgh lost some contributors from last year, like leading goal scorer Anthony Mantha, Ryan Shea and Stuart Skinner. Newcomers Nick Robertson, Trevor van Riemsdyk, Andrei Kuzmenko and Kaedan Korczak should help make up for the losses, though losing Mantha’s scoring could hurt.

If everything breaks right for the Penguins, like Crosby continuing his immortal form, Kindel taking another step forward and their depth stepping up again, they’ll be right back where they were before the playoffs last year. I have them just outside of the playoffs right now, but it’s close enough that they could easily work their way in.

All stats are from Hockey Stats

UNLV and Memphis faced off in Las Vegas last Saturday in a battle of two Group of 6 heavyweights. Both teams came into the season as potential playoff teams, and a win could be important in a potential CFP resume. UNLV entered the game as the favorite, while Memphis was debuting its new head coach, Charles Huff, and a roster that had been completely turned over with transfers.

After a slow start for both offenses, UNLV quarterback Jackson Arnold caught fire and led the Rebels to back-to-back touchdown drives to take a 14-7 lead. UNLV missed a field goal before halftime, which let Memphis tie the game coming out of the break. Arnold fired another touchdown pass to put UNLV back in front 21-14, but it was all Memphis after that. The Tigers shut out UNLV the rest of the way and scored 13 unanswered points to come away with a 27-21 victory on the road.

Memphis turned things around defensively by repeatedly pressuring Arnold. After UNLV took the 21-14 lead early in the third quarter, the Rebels had six offensive drives. Arnold was sacked at least once on five of them. Sacks are a drive killer, and they torpedoed UNLV’s season before it can really start.

This is a problem that’s plagued Arnold at his previous stops at Oklahoma and Auburn. While UNLV left a lot of room for improvement up front, sacks are a quarterback stat. Arnold tends to hold the ball for too long, which leads to sacks. Arnold took six sacks against Memphis after enduring 64 the previous two years combined.

For UNLV, it’s a disappointing start for a team that came into the year with a decent amount of hype behind it. More worryingly, the sacks are a serious problem. If defenses are able to consistently pressure Arnold by only sending four defenders like Memphis did, it’s going to be a long season. The Rebels should still be the favorites in the Mountain West, but they still have Cal, North Dakota State and New Mexico on their schedule. It’s a long season, but this is a huge setback.

Meanwhile for Memphis, it’s a huge win as long as UNLV sorts things out, but a huge tilt against Boise State on Sept. 12 looms large. The Group of Six playoff race is wide open this year. With many of the best Group of 6 teams having their coaches poached last year — like USF, North Texas, James Madison and, yes, Memphis — we’re set for a wild year.

The Group of 6 hasn’t gotten a lot of love from the college football talking heads in recent years, but we really shouldn’t turn up our noses at half of college football. For one, there’s still a lot of talent — these teams losing their best players every winter is proof enough of that. But for another, it’s a throwback to an era that a lot of college football fans miss.

In the era of the 12-team College Football Playoff, there’s room for do-overs. If you’re a Power 4 school, you can lose two games and make the CFP as long as your wins are good and your losses aren’t that bad. Ohio State lost to archrival Michigan two years ago in its biggest game of the regular season and then went on to win the national championship anyway. Last year, Miami made it to the national championship game despite not even making its own conference championship game. Personally, I don’t mind it that much because football is such a volatile sport when it comes to variance and I want the best teams in the playoffs. But college football’s regular season has definitely lost some of its importance.

That’s not the case in the Group of 6, especially after the playoff rules were changed to ensure that the G6 would only get one automatic bid. If you’re UNLV, Memphis, USF, Navy or whoever, you can’t afford to slip up because there’s a number of schools that are good enough to take your place. Every week matters, including Week 0. If this year’s format was used last year, there would have been heated arguments between James Madison, whose only loss was to Louisville, and Tulane, whose two losses were to Ole Miss and UTSA. Throw in what feels like at least a little more balance when it comes to NIL, and it’s a completely different game.

You don’t have to become a total MACtion sicko, but if you find yourself wanting to watch high-stakes regular season games, do yourself a favor and turn on an American or Pac-12 game every now and then.

Other Week 1 stuff to keep an eye on

The Week 1 schedule is pretty rough this year, to be honest. The power conferences moving from eight conference games to nine (plus one non-conference game against another Power 4 team, for the most part) sounds nice on the surface. But some of those “plus one” games are against historic rivals that are historically played at the end of the season (see: Florida-Florida State, Georgia-Georgia Tech, Clemson-South Carolina), and teams don’t really feel like they’re incentivized to schedule more than that (see: Notre Dame and Texas being left out of the CFP last year). Plus, it doesn’t hurt to shake off the rust by beating up on your closest FCS school before getting into the meat of the schedule.

As a result, the Week 1 slate is pretty sparse — the real fun will begin next weekend. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some interesting games to watch.

• Speaking of the Group of 6, we have a couple of interesting tests for two of the better Group of 6 programs in recent years. Up first, new Tulane head coach Will Hall make his debut against defending ACC champion Duke on the road on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. This is Hall’s second tenure as a head coach, as he was canned at Southern Miss in 2024 after going 14-30 overall and 8-19 in conference play.
  In the last four years, Tulane has done a whole lot of winning, including two conference championships and a playoff appearance last year. Duke will be the favorite here (even though Tulane won this matchup last year), but it’s the first chance for Hall to prove that he’s learned from his Southern Miss stint and that Tulane is still going to be competitive. Plus, a close loss to a Power 4 team could look good on Tulane’s resume if they’re CFP contenders.

• At the same time, Boise State will visit No. 2 Oregon. Seventeen years ago, Oregon started its season with a trip to Boise and went 0-1 after a 19-8 loss, punctuated by Oregon’s LeGarrette Blount throwing a punch at a Boise State player after the game. A lot has changed since then, however.
  While Oregon is still a national title contender, Boise State isn’t quite what it once was. The Broncos should still be one of the favorites for the Group of Six’s playoff spot, but they’re not at the level to where they can beat one of the nation’s top teams on the road.
  But the Broncos are the favorite to win the resurrected Pac-12, and they did only lose to Oregon by three points two years ago (though that was with Ashton Jeanty). It’s an early litmus test to see if Boise State can at least hang in there against Oregon. Returning quarterback Maddux Madsen should help the Broncos at least put some points on the board.

• LSU-Clemson is the big game this weekend in a battle of the Death Valleys. It’s Lane Kiffin’s first time coaching under the lights in Baton Rouge, while Clemson tries to regain the prestige it once had when it won two national championships in 2016 and 2018.
  The big thing for LSU is to see how it looks with a whole lot of new moving parts. As per usual with Kiffin, the Tigers brought in 43 transfers, per On3, including a whole lot of big names. Quarterback Sam Leavitt will make his LSU debut, and you know what to expect from a Kiffin offense by now: a whole lot of points and tempo — NFL players hopefully not included.
  For Clemson, it’s all about whether or not the Tigers can keep up with the Other Tigers. Clemson’s offense just hasn’t been the same since Trevor Lawrence graduated. Clemson hasn’t had a top-20 offense by adjusted EPA per play, per GameOnPaper since 2020, and the Tigers slipped to 59th last year. Christopher Vizzina is taking over at quarterback for Clemson, while head coach Dabo Swinney called up an old friend to run the offense in Chad Morris, who was the Tigers’ offensive coordinator from 2011 to 2014 before leaving Clemson to go 18-40 as a head coach at SMU and Arkansas. Trying to relive the glory years seems to be the new fad in college football (see: Rich Rodriguez at West Virginia and Scott Frost at UCF), so we’ll have to see if it works for Clemson.
  

Last year’s finish: 7th in Metropolitan Division

Playoffs: No playoffs

Predicted finish: 4th in Metropolitan Division (wild card team)

When the New Jersey Devils knocked off the rival Rangers in the first round in 2023, it was supposed to be the beginning of a new era of contention for the Devils and their young core. But since then, the Devils have won a total of two playoff games and missed the playoffs in two of the last three years.

The Devils have a lot of the ingredients for a contending team. Jack Hughes is one of the best players in the league when healthy, Nico Hischier is a fringe top-line center who gets to play behind Hughes, Jesper Bratt is one of the most underrated players in the league and Dougie Hamilton can still hold things down on the back end.

The problem has been… everything else. Luke Hughes hasn’t quite developed like the Devils have hoped, Timo Meier hasn’t consistently been the same player he was for San Jose, the Devils paid a premium for Jacob Markstrom only for him to struggle and Simon Nemec’s development stalled out so badly that the former second overall pick was traded to Calgary for a hefty package that included a couple of first-round picks.

New general manager Sunny Mehta had his work cut out for him when he took the job, and he went to work adding depth around Hughes and Hischier. Evan Rodrigues, acquired in a trade that sent Markstrom to Florida, is exactly what New Jersey needs: a play-driving middle-six forward.

New Jersey is also making a somewhat risky bet on Anthony Mantha after a career year last year. Mantha had 33 goals and 64 points for the Penguins last year, but he’s never eclipsed the 50-point mark in any other season. At two years for $4.75 million apiece, it’s not that big of a gamble, but depending on a player over 30 to repeat a career year like that historically hasn’t worked out very well. Mantha missed most of the 2024-25 season, but in his last two full seasons, he’s scored roughly 24 goals above expected. If that’s the guy New Jersey is getting, it’s a great signing. If not, it’s probably not going to age well.

Even after making these moves, it still felt like the Devils needed more firepower with their forward corps. Late Tuesday night, they addressed that by adding Nashville forward Luke Evangelista for Colorado’s first-round pick in 2028 (acquired from Calgary in the Nemec trade) and a second-round pick that same year.

Evangelista is your favorite stat nerd’s new favorite player. Last year, he drove play at both ends of the ice, drew penalties, recorded a career-high 56 points and did a lot of the little things (like helping out in transition). Evangelista had the highest expected goals share at five on five for Nashville last year (53 percent). With Evangelista, the Predators also had a plus-five goal differential. Without him, Nashville had a minus-35 goal differential with a 44.8 percent expected goal differential. Basically, the with-Evangelista Predators were a decent team, while the Evangelista-less Predators were a lottery team.

There are a few risks with Evangelista, however.

For one, last year was the only season where he’s been that dominant at five on five. He’s only 24, so you’d hope that last year was proof that he’s really come into his own. Evangelista is a pending restricted free agent, so he’ll be looking for a pay raise as well. But the big knock on him is that he just hasn’t finished very well. Evangelista has scored below expected in each of the last three seasons, including when he scored five goals less than expected last year.

Goaltending has cost New Jersey in recent years, and it’s still a problem. Jake Allen has played very well for the Devils the last two years, but he hasn’t played in at least 45 games in a season since 2018-19. Backup Nico Daws has just 55 NHL games under his belt, including nine in the last two seasons combined. Journeyman David Rittich is also in the system.

But the key for New Jersey is Hughes staying healthy. When Hughes is in the lineup, they tend to play well and win games. When Hughes is injured — and he’s missed significant time in four of the last five seasons — it hasn’t been pretty. In general, Hughes has won his minutes, but the Devils have struggled when he’s been off the ice. If that changes this year, they’ll be in good shape.

All stats are from Hockey Stats

Last year’s finish: 3rd in Metropolitan Division

Playoffs: Swept in second round

Predicted finish: 3rd in Metropolitan Division

After missing the playoffs for five straight seasons, the Flyers made it back to the postseason last year and won a round over in-state rival Pittsburgh before getting swept by Carolina in the second round. While the Flyers haven’t totally overhauled things, they’ve still had an interesting summer.

Philadelphia has some nice pieces, like Porter Martone (who leapt off the page in a brief stint in the NHL last spring), Tyson Foerster, Travises Konecny and Sanheim and Trevor Zegras. But what they don’t have is a top-line center to lead their budding young core.

The Flyers tried to fix that problem when they made waves this summer by signing Anaheim’s Leo Carlsson to an offer sheet worth $18 million per year for five years, wrecking the entire hockey economy in the process. While Anaheim ultimately matched the offer, it showed that the Flyers weren’t satisfied with just making the playoffs.

While the Flyers still have to figure out who their top-line center of the future will be, they should still be back in the playoff conversation. Philadelphia finished last season with the seventh-best expected goals share at five-on-five (51.9 percent). Flyers head coach Rick Tocchet’s brand of hockey isn’t exactly the most exciting, but it’s effective. Philadelphia wasn’t great at generating offense, but it did allow the third-fewest expected goals per 60 minutes at five-on-five last season.

Philadelphia made a couple of moves on the margins, like replacing backup goaltender Samuel Ersson (league-worst minus-48.5 goals saved above expected in the last three seasons combined) with Joseph Woll (plus-9.32). Not only is that a huge improvement, but Woll should provide serviceable play if the recently extended Dan Vladar falters. Vladar was one of the league’s better goaltenders last year (11.4 GSAx), but he had never played more than 30 games in a season nor had he finished a year with a positive GSAx before last season.

Philadelphia’s goaltending has been in flux for the last three seasons, with seven goaltenders playing at least five games for the Flyers in that span. Aside from Vladar’s heroics last year, the results have been ugly. A Vladar/Woll tandem might not have the highest ceiling, but the floor should be higher than what the Flyers have had the last few years.

The other big issue the Flyers have had in recent seasons is the power play. Philadelphia hasn’t finished a season with a power play percentage above 16 percent since 2020-21. Last year’s unit wasn’t nearly as bad as the 2023-24 team that finished that year at 12.2 percent, but the Flyers were still last in the league at 15.7 percent. Since the 2021-22 season, Philadelphia has scored by far the fewest power-play goals per 60 minutes.

However, last year’s team was a little different. While it still struggled to actually put the puck in the back of the net, the Flyers’ man advantage last year did manage to create some dangerous chances. Believe it or not, Philadelphia generated the 12th-most expected goals per 60 minutes on the power play. The problem is that the Flyers couldn’t cash in on those chances at all, underachieving their expected goals by 15.5 goals.

Four Flyers scored at least two goals fewer than expected on the power play, with Travis Konecny and Owen Tippett being the two biggest culprits. Better finishing luck should take this unit to being league average, and those extra goals would go a long way.

But the Flyers’ season will depend on the further development of Michkov and Martone. Michkov had a stellar rookie season, only to see his production decline in his sophomore campaign. The good news is that Michkov was a very good play-driver last year despite the lower production. With Michkov on the ice last year, the Flyers had a 53.7 percent expected goals share and a plus-6 actual goal differential. The hope is that the underlying numbers turn into more goals this year.

The Flyers looked like a different team with Porter Martone after he signed with Philadelphia when his season with Michigan State ended. That continued into the playoffs, so the Flyers will be hoping for more of that this year. Playing at a high level over the course of an 84-game season is completely different from standing out in 19 total games, but it’s an encouraging start. The Flyers could really use a star forward who can change games, and Martone looks like he might be one of those guys.

Philadelphia returns much of the same team that went to the playoffs, and the Flyers should be good enough to make it back again this year. But there are still long-term questions they’ll need to answer if they want to be more than just a playoff team.

All stats are from HockeyStats

Last year’s finish: 4th in Metropolitan Division

Playoffs: No playoffs

Predicted finish: 2nd in Metropolitan Division

The Metropolitan Division gets interesting once you get past the Hurricanes. For the most part, the next seven teams could land in any spot between second and eighth and I wouldn’t be too surprised. But the Capitals are arguably the deepest remaining team in the division and have some upside, so I’ve put them in second.

I’ve written about this a couple of times, but it was a weird, weird year for Washington last season. The Capitals came back down to Earth and missed the playoffs after finishing the 2024-25 season with the best record in the Eastern Conference. But with Alexander Ovechkin coming back for one more ride, the Capitals are still going for it.

The Capitals made a couple of big additions in Alex Tuch and Jordan Kyrou after struggling to score at times last year. The Tuch acquisition is the scarier one of the two, with Washington signing him to an eight-year deal worth $10.5 million. A lot of Tuch’s value comes from his shot, which can be risky to bet on for a player in his 30s — Tuch turned 30 in May. Tuch and Kyrou should provide plenty of offensive punch and reinvigorate Washington’s top six.

But if there’s one thing that’s become clear over the last few years, it’s this: you have to be an elite play-driving team to win a Stanley Cup. It can’t be all scoring and/or saving goals well above expected. Say what you want about size or grit or whatever, if there’s one thing that those Oilers, Panthers, Avalanche and Hurricanes teams have in common, it’s that they consistently drove play. The Capitals haven’t been near that level in either of the last two years, but those two players should help them improve on that front, especially Kyrou.

Washington made other moves as well, like signing forward Boone Jenner and defenseman Vincent Desharnais for some extra grit and veteran presence. But the big question for Washington is how much of a step do the kids take? Former top-10 pick Ryan Leonard had 45 points last year, but his underlying numbers were terrible. Cole Hutson and Ilya Protas seem poised for serious NHL time this year. If those guys are as good as promised, the Capitals should be back to where they were two years ago.

Also, the Capitals’ power play slumped to 17.8 percent last year. It’s been a strength throughout the Ovechkin era, and it feels weird to even say that it’s a concern. Some of that was due to poor finishing luck, but Washington needs more from that unit this year.

Capitals netminder Logan Thompson deserves to be in the conversation for best goaltender in the league. Thompson has by far the most goals saved above expected (54.8) in the league since joining the Capitals two years ago. The Capitals might not need him to be Superman every night, unlike the other two star goaltenders in this division, but Thompson playing anywhere near that level this year would be huge.

Washington should be deeper and overall better than it was last season, especially if the youngsters really come together this year. There are concerns about this team’s lack of star power, and while that was the big question with the now-defending Stanley Cup champions in Raleigh the last few years, Washington isn’t an elite play-driving team like Carolina. The Capitals are set up to be pretty good once again this year, but you have to wonder what the ceiling is.

All stats are from Hockey Stats unless otherwise noted

Last year’s finish: 1st

Playoffs: Won Stanley Cup

Predicted finish: 1st

After years of contention and coming up short in the playoffs, it was nice to see the Hurricanes finally get over the hump and win the Stanley Cup last season. This year’s Hurricanes will look borderline identical to last year’s team, so they’re the clear No. 1 team in the Metropolitan Division.

Over the last four seasons, the Carolina Hurricanes have the best expected goals share at five-on-five in the league, and that shouldn’t change this year.

Jackson Blake and Logan Stankoven, both just 23 years old, were two of Carolina’s best players in its championship run in the spring and should be even better this season. Sebastian Aho continues to be an underappreciated top-line center, and it seems like Andrei Svechnikov rediscovered the mojo he had before his season-ending knee injury in 2023. Nikolaj Ehlers thrived in his first season in Raleigh, setting a career-high in points with 71. Taylor Hall’s MVP year is long behind him, but he’s been a perfect complementary piece to round out Carolina’s middle six. Conn Smythe winner Jordan Staal is still hanging around, too.

Carolina still has top prospect Bradly Nadeau, who lit up the AHL with 56 points in 52 games last year, waiting in the wings. Carolina’s seemingly endless depth is still here, and there’s an argument that Carolina’s young forwards could be even better this year.

Carolina’s blueline is as good as ever with the likes of Jaccob Slavin, Shayne Gostisbehere and a rejuvenated K’Andre Miller. Alexander Nikishin wasn’t quite as good as his 33 points suggested last year, but he has a tantalizing skill set, is coming up on his 25th birthday and now has a full season of playing on North American ice under his belt.

Carolina still doesn’t have a superstar, but the Hurricanes proved last year that that’s not a requirement to win a Stanley Cup. Plus, who needs a Mikko Rantanen when you can simply roll four lines at will? It took a true team effort to bring the Stanley Cup back to Raleigh, and that same team will be back for another run this year.

Usually, championship teams struggle to keep everyone because of players wanting to be paid more after winning said championship. Carolina solved this by already having most of its roster locked up and being proactive. Goaltender Brandon Bussi, a postseason hero for the Hurricanes, would cost the Hurricanes a lot more than $1.9 million for the next three seasons if they hadn’t extended him before the playoffs. Blake, who led the Hurricanes in points in the playoffs, and Stankoven are being paid just over $11 million until 2034 because the Hurricanes realized what they had on their hands.

It’s not quite all sunshine and rainbows for Carolina, however. The Hurricanes’ forward depth took a hit when Seth Jarvis needed offseason shoulder surgery that will keep him out for the start of the season. Carolina also has a question mark in goal after letting Frederik Andersen leave in free agency.

Bussi stood on his head in the Stanley Cup Final, but he only has 43 NHL games in his career, including last year’s playoffs. In the regular season, he saved 2.81 goals above expected last season. Between Bussi and Pyotr Kochetkov, the Hurricanes likely won’t have A Problem in goal, but that duo likely won’t steal very many games.

Over the last six seasons, the Carolina Hurricanes have been a constant. They’re going to dominate possession at five-on-five, be defined more by their depth than their star power, win hockey games and go on a deep playoff run. You don’t have to like how they play, but the Hurricanes’ style and approach to team building has inarguably worked. Only Colorado has had a better points percentage in the regular season since 2020-21, and Carolina is tied with the Panthers for the most playoff wins in that span.

None of that should change for the Carolina Hurricanes this year.

All stats are from Hockey Stats unless otherwise noted

Do not lose in Ireland

There has been a Week 0 game in Ireland every year since 2022, and all four losing teams have struggled after returning to the States.

2022: Nebraska, fresh off a 2021 campaign in which it lost a record nine games by single digits, blew a 28-17 lead to Northwestern in Ireland (thanks in part to a surprise onside kick gone wrong) and lost 31-28. Nebraska’s then-head coach Scott Frost would get canned two weeks later after a loss to Georgia Southern at home, and the Cornhuskers would finish the year 4-8.

2023: Navy head coach Brian Newberry had the misfortune of his Midshipmen debut come against a Notre Dame team that would finish the season in the top 15. Suffice to say, it didn’t go well for Navy. The Fighting Irish clobbered Navy 42-3 in Ireland, and the Midshipmen would finish the season 5-7.

2024: Florida State came into Ireland with a heavy chip on its shoulder after controversially getting left out of the College Football Playoff the previous season. Any hope of making the playoffs this time around dissipated immediately. The 10th-ranked Seminoles were stunned 24-21 by Georgia Tech on a walk-off field goal, and the program went into a death spiral that it still hasn’t gotten itself out of. Florida State would finish the year 2-10, its worst season in 50 years, and then went 5-7 last year.

2025: Both Kansas State and Iowa State entered the year as ranked teams as Farmageddon made its way to the Emerald Isle. No. 22 Iowa State held off the 17th-ranked Wildcats for a 24-21 win, which included Kansas State quarterback Avery Johnson’s family brawling. The Wildcats limped to a 2-4 start before winning four of their last six to finish the year 6-6. Head coach Chris Klieman retired, and Kansas State opted to not play in a bowl game due to the coaching transition and “several uncertainties regarding player availability.”

It’s a good thing then that this year’s Ireland game between North Carolina and TCU doesn’t feature a team with disaster potential. Ah, wait.

After a 4-8 season where the Tar Heels went winless against top 100 teams by Bill Connelly’s SP+ rankings, Bill Belichick is back for a second go in Chapel Hill.

Under Mack Brown, the Tar Heels could put together some really good offenses quarterbacked by the likes of Sam Howell and Drake Maye. The problem is, they never had the defense to be legitimate contenders in the ACC.

With Belichick last year, the opposite was the problem. UNC’s offense ranked 120th in points per game (19.3), while the defense was passable. Belichick brought in wild card Bobby Petrino at offensive coordinator this year to spice things up on offense, and last year’s leader in sacks, Melkart Abou Jaoude, returns on defense. Quarterback Billy Edwards Jr., who had an alright season at Maryland in 2024 before an injury-shortened season last year at Wisconsin, should bring some experience and stability.

But, man, UNC general manager Michael Lombardi being placed on administrative leave a month before the season sure feels like the first domino to tip on another disastrous year. It doesn’t help that UNC is opening the season against TCU again after the Horned Frogs demolished the Tar Heels 48-14 in Chapel Hill last year in Belichick’s nationally televised debut.

TCU will have its own challenges, like replacing starting quarterback Josh Hoover with Harvard transfer Jaden Craig. The Horned Frogs will also be looking to clean things up against the pass after getting torched through the air last year. The Horned Frogs will be the favorite, but seemingly nothing indicates a long year ahead like a loss before almost all of the FBS even plays a game.

Week 0 conference game, sure why not

Week 0 games up until recently usually involved Hawaii, a team that would play Hawaii later in the year or an international game. This year, we have a game that is a power conference game but also kind of that last category.

Virginia and NC State scheduled a home-and-home non-conference series against each other two years ago for 2025 and 2026, despite the fact that they play in the same conference. After NC State beat Virginia in Raleigh last year, this year’s game was supposed to be in Charlottesville.

Then, the matchup was moved to Brazil to be the first college football game ever played in South America. Those plans then got scrapped, with the game moving back to Charlottesville but still scheduled for Week 0. Now, with the ACC moving to a scheduling format where teams will play either eight or nine conference games and this game already on the schedule, it’s now a conference game. And that’s how you end up with a Power 4 conference game being played in Week 0 while still being in the U.S.

As for the game itself, it’s pretty standard ACC fare. Neither team is supposed to be an ACC title contender, but they should be pretty evenly matched. Virginia finished sixth in the ACC preseason poll, and NC State is right behind them in seventh. Virginia is coming off an 11-win season and a loss in the conference title game last year and will have Missouri transfer Beau Pribula take over at quarterback. Meanwhile, NC State is seemingly always good for eight wins under Dave Doeren.

Nothing says college football is back like some ACC shenanigans.

UNLV-Memphis worth staying up for

Unfortunately for those on the East Coast, the best game of the weekend is going to kick off at 10 p.m. But it’s rare that a Week 0 game has stakes like this.

UNLV hosts Memphis on Saturday in what could a de facto Group of 6 playoff game. After the top teams in the American Conference had their coaches poached in the coaching carousel last year, the Group of 6’s playoff spot is up for grabs. Boise State and Navy seem to be the favorites, but both UNLV and Memphis have a decent chance, too.

UNLV won 10 games last year and lost in the Mountain West title game to the Broncos in head coach Dan Mullen’s return to college football. If there’s a constant to Mullen’s career, it’s that his teams are going to put points on the board. Mullen’s Rebels did exactly that last year, finishing the season tied for 17th in points per game (34.1) and 32nd in adjusted EPA per play, per Game on Paper.

UNLV still has some pieces from last year, like leading rusher Jai’Den Thomas, but the Rebels will have a new quarterback in either Auburn transfer Jackson Arnold or former Alex Orji. Both are rebuilding projects after both struggled at Power 4 schools — Arnold was 15th in the SEC in QBR last year — but if there’s a coach that’s going to fix a quarterback and get the most out of him, it’s Mullen.

Memphis, meanwhile, is dealing with a lot of new things, and it’s hard to believe they’ll be ready to go right away. Head coach Ryan Silverfield left to take the Arkansas job, and Memphis replaced him with Southern Miss head coach Charles Huff. Huff went 7-5 last year in his only season at Southern Miss — the Eagles won only one game the year prior — after he turned over the roster, which included bringing a lot of players from his previous stop at Marshall.

Huff is doing the exact same thing at Memphis. Per On3, Memphis brought in 55 transfers, including a handful that followed Huff from Southern Miss and even Marshall. Last year, Huff had the benefit of being able to bring his old starting quarterback to his new job, but that’s not the case this year, with Memphis having a quarterback battle between transfers Air Noland and Marcus Stokes.

Memphis will probably need some time to gel. Last year, Huff’s Southern Miss team was clobbered 34-17 by Mississippi State in Hattiesburg in a game that wasn’t as close as the final score looks (and that yours truly was at). Granted, Memphis won’t be nearly as much of an underdog as Southern Miss was in that game, but it’s still worth noting.

Second chances are hard to come by when you’re a Group of 6 team looking to qualify for the CFP. There’s a real chance that a game in late August has real meaning come December.

Other stuff to keep an eye on

• North Dakota State will be making its FBS debut on Saturday when it hosts Jacksonville State. The Bison are finally making the jump after winning 10 FCS national titles since 2011.

• Sacramento State is also making the leap from the FCS this year and will face Eastern Michigan on the road. Despite being located in California, the Hornets are now members of the MAC, which consists of, you know, teams from the Midwest. Gotta love CFB geography. Oh, and this is also somehow a conference game.

• Week 0 wouldn’t be complete without Hawaii, and this year is no different. The Rainbow Warriors will face Stanford on the road in Cardinal head coach Tavita Pritchard’s debut. Hawaii knocked off Stanford 23-20 last year and are coming off a 9-4 season. This week won’t be a true Hawaii test, however, as this game is kicking off at a reasonable 7 p.m. Eastern.

Being selected with the first overall pick in the NHL Draft carries a lot of weight. You’re expected to be the franchise savior, and that makes sense when you look at the list of former No. 1 picks. The first overall pick is usually where you find either a franchise cornerstone (Macklin Celebrini, Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, Alex Ovechkin, Auston Matthews, Rasmus Dahlin) or at least a pretty good player (Nico Hischier, John Tavares). Outright busts, like Patrik Stefan and Nail Yakupov, are rare, but they have happened every 10 or 15 years or so.

And then there’s Erik Johnson, 2006’s top choice. In a vacuum, he had a pretty solid NHL career. Johnson played over 1,000 games, was a solid top-four defenseman for a while and even won a Stanley Cup. But Johnson’s biggest problem was that he was simply fine while players taken behind him were much more than that.

Heading into the 2006 NHL Draft, the Blues were in a really rough spot. The team was put up for sale in 2005 during the lockout — not exactly the best time to try to find a buyer. The Blues made the playoffs in 2004, but that team disappeared virtually overnight. Franchise star Chris Pronger was shipped out to Edmonton, starting goaltender Chris Osgood left in free agency for Detroit and Pavol Demitra, third on the team in points in 2003-04 and also a free agent, wound up in Los Angeles.

Even after the post-lockout NHL achieved the “cost certainty” it was willing to sacrifice the entire 2004-05 season for, the Blues were comfortably slashing payroll even with the new salary cap. Coincidentally, they were trying to find a buyer as the then-owners were citing “financial losses” as the reason why they were selling.

Unsurprisingly, the 2005-06 Blues were horrific, starting the year 5-17-4. Things wouldn’t get much better after that, and the Blues would end the year with the worst record in the league at 21-46-15. Scott Young finished the season as the Blues’ leading scorer with just 49 points and then immediately retired.

But St. Louis was fortunate enough to not only find a new owner, but also to kick off a new era with the first overall pick in the 2006 draft. After just jettisoning Pronger, the Blues hoped that they had found a replacement in Johnson.

However, it didn’t pan out that way for Johnson in St. Louis. Johnson played for the University of Minnesota after his draft year before making his NHL debut in the 2007-08 season. Johnson found some early success with partner Jay McKee, as the two had a 52.9 percent expected goals share and a plus-three goal differential at five-on-five that year. Johnson also had power-play quarterback duties.

But then, the golf cart.

Johnson shredded his knee in a freak golf cart incident right before training camp, wiping out his entire 2008-09 campaign. He returned for the 2009-10 season and had a pretty decent year, finishing the season with 39 points while driving play some at five-on-five. Johnson’s play was even enough to earn a spot on the United States’ Olympic team, albeit for an American team that was admittedly thin on defense. Still, winning a silver medal at 21 years of age is nothing to sneeze at.

But that’s as good as it would get for Johnson in St. Louis. Johnson’s play declined the following year, and the Blues opted to cut bait while they still could. St. Louis traded its former first overall pick midseason to Colorado along with Jay McClement and a first-round pick (turned into Duncan Siemens) for Kevin Shattenkirk, Chris Stewart and a second-round pick (turned into Ty Rattie).

In hindsight, the trade was a slight win for the Blues. Shattenkirk would turn into one of the best offensive defensemen of the 2010s, while Johnson was a good all-around second-pairing guy at his best. Stewart was an alright depth piece, while McClement was a fourth-liner at best. Siemens was a bust, while Rattie was a journeyman. Johnson’s career would have a little more longevity, but Shattenkirk had a much higher ceiling.

It wasn’t all bad, though. Johnson was a dependable defenseman who could eat some serious minutes for the Avalanche and provide some offense. The Avalanche weren’t exactly blessed with a wealth of quality defensemen for much of the 2010s, so Johnson was handed a lot of responsibility. Their best blueliner, Tyson Barrie, didn’t really play any defense, so Johnson took the tough assignments to free up Barrie.

As the years went on, Johnson stayed put in Colorado, and while the results were pretty much the same, the names changed — just substitute Barrie for a young Cale Makar. Johnson’s workload also lessened as the Avalanche improved their back end, with Makar, Devon Toews, Samuel Girard and Bowen Byram all coming onto the scene.

When the Avalanche went from “happy to be in the playoffs” in 2018 and 2019 to contenders in 2020, Johnson was still there. Colorado was bounced in the second round in 2020 and again in 2021. Johnson’s entire 2021 season was limited to just four games because of a concussion early in the season, but he bounced back by contributing to the Avalanche’s Stanley Cup run in 2022.

Johnson played with Byram during that run, and that pairing was nails throughout the playoffs. Johnson and Byram finished the playoffs owning 58.4 percent of the expected goals at five-on-five while outscoring their opponents 11-5 when played together.

When the Avalanche finished off the Lightning in Game 6 to win the Stanley Cup, captain Gabriel Landeskog took his lap with the trophy, as is customary. But it wasn’t superstar Nathan MacKinnon who was next in line, nor was it Conn Smythe Trophy winner Cale Makar. Sixteen years after being drafted first overall and 11 after getting traded to Colorado, it was Johnson’s turn to lift the Stanley Cup. That’s all you need to know about Johnson’s impact on the Avalanche.

Johnson stuck around for another year in Colorado before leaving for Buffalo in free agency, but it was clear by that point that his best days were behind him. Johnson had a brief stop in Philadelphia before returning to Colorado for one last run, and he retired in 2025.

It didn’t play out like he or the Blues had hoped after they selected him with the first overall pick in 2006, but Johnson had a decent career. But when you look at the 2006 NHL Draft, you see a lot of bigger names selected almost immediately after him. The Penguins selected Jordan Staal with the second pick, but the heavy hitters came right after him. Jonathan Toews, Nicklas Backstrom and Phil Kessel were the next three picks, and it’s hard not to think about how different things would be if the Blues had instead picked any of those three — Toews especially given both the Blackhawks dynasty and the Blues-Blackhawks rivalry.

All stats are from Hockey Stats

Carl Hagelin had pretty much the best possible career arc for a player who wasn’t a star: made the NHL despite being a sixth-round pick, was a beloved player in New York, became an integral part of arguably the most famous third line in recent memory as part of a Penguins team that won back-to-back Stanley Cups and hung around for a few more years until an eye injury forced him into retirement. With 296 points in 713 games, Hagelin didn’t have outstanding production, but he was a consistent play driver who was a perfect complementary piece to a contender.

Hagelin was selected by the New York Rangers with the 168th overall pick in the 2007 NHL Draft. Hagelin spent the next four seasons at the University of Michigan and helped lead the Wolverines to the championship game in his final season in 2011. Hagelin would sign with the Rangers and make his NHL debut in the 2011-12 season.

Again, Hagelin was never known for his outstanding offensive production, and he’d receive very little power play time throughout his career. But he was a decent scorer at five-on-five whose underlying numbers suggested he was a better player than his point total would suggest.

During his time with the Rangers, Hagelin was often a complementary player to much more renowned players, like Marian Gaborik, Brad Richards, Derek Stepan and Ryan Callahan. But those lines won their minutes, and Hagelin made them better. During the 2012-13 season, for example, the Rangers’ line of Hagelin, Stepan and Callahan posted a 68.8 percent expected goals share while outscoring opponents 8-2 in 170 minutes of work. That 68.8 percent expected goals share was the second-best in the league that year among lines with at least 100 minutes together.

But after a 35-point season in 2014-15, Hagelin was on the move. His contract was up, and the Rangers simply couldn’t afford to keep him. They shipped him off to Anaheim, and the Ducks paid him what the Rangers couldn’t: $4 million per year for four years.

Hagelin’s tenure in Orange County didn’t last long. With 12 points in 43 games, Hagelin just wasn’t a great fit. Thus, the Ducks and the Penguins swapped struggling players in January of 2016. The Penguins trading a first-round pick in the legendary 2015 NHL Draft for David Perron didn’t work out, so they sent him to Anaheim in exchange for Hagelin, who turned out to be a perfect fit in Pittsburgh.

Hagelin was more than just a little snakebitten in Anaheim, finishing his time there with a sub-five percent on-ice shooting percentage at five-on-five. However, Hagelin regressed to the mean pretty quickly in Pittsburgh, scoring 27 points in 37 games to close out the year. Hagelin’s speed was a perfect match for a Pittsburgh squad that wanted to play fast. Just like in New York, you could throw Hagelin in with Evgeni Malkin, and he’d keep up.

The Penguins had been competitive for years, but they just couldn’t put it together in the playoffs after winning a Stanley Cup in 2009. In addition to Marc-Andre Fleury’s meltdowns in the playoffs, Pittsburgh’s big problem was that its bottom six was abysmal. They had too many Joe Vitales, Tanner Glasses and Craig Adamses and not enough guys who could at least hold their own while 87 and 71 were off the ice. For example, during the 2013-14 season, the Penguins had a 43.6 percent expected goals share without Crosby and Malkin.

That changed in 2015-16, thanks in part to Hagelin. The Penguins came into the season with high expectations after trading for Phil Kessel in the summer, but they got off to a disappointing start before firing head coach Mike Johnston in mid-December. That was the beginning of a midseason retool, which included adding Hagelin. While Hagelin’s initial line with Malkin and Kessel dominated its minutes, the real game-changer came a little later.

Down the stretch and heading into the playoffs, Hagelin and Kessel formed a tight-knit line with Nick Bonino, forming what would be known as the HBK Line. The Penguins had the best expected goals share and the best actual goals share after New Year’s Day, so it’d be pretty hard to have bad underlying numbers on a team like that. But what set the HBK Line apart from everyone else was that it had someone of Kessel’s caliber on it and that it was the third line. With Crosby, Malkin and Kessel all on separate lines, the Penguins were a matchup nightmare.

In 144 minutes together in the regular season, the HBK Line had 61.1 percent of the expected goals with a plus-nine goal differential. That line continued to fire on all cylinders in the playoffs. The Penguins were steamrolling teams in terms of possession no matter who was on the ice, but there was a clear difference when the HBK Line was out there. That line outscored its opponents 15-9 in the playoffs, while the Penguins were breakeven in goals when the HBK Line was off the ice at five-on-five.

Whenever the Penguins needed a big goal, the HBK Line was usually the one that provided it. Hagelin scored the Penguins’ first goal in a Game 5 win to eliminate the Rangers in the first round, plus three more in the second round against the Capitals. One of those came in a series-clinching win in Game 6 where Hagelin had three points, including an assist on the series-winning goal.

The Penguins would go on to win the Stanley Cup and exorcise some demons along the way. While it was only seven years between championships, seven years is a long time when you have Sidney Crosby and are expected to contend every year.

The following year, Hagelin was limited to 61 games, and his 21 points were a career-low up to that point. The underlying numbers were still fine, but Hagelin wouldn’t be able to buy a goal from here on out. Between 2016-17 and his final NHL season in 2021-22, Hagelin would score 22.1 goals below expected, the ninth-worst mark in the league in that span.

But on a happier note, the Penguins were still really good. Hagelin wouldn’t play in the playoffs until the second round but continued to be an effective player despite meager production in the playoffs. The HBK Line was split up after a brutal run in the regular season (43.4 percent of the expected goals, minus-3 goal differential), and the Penguins suffered too many injuries to have any sort of continuity in lines throughout the 2017 postseason. But Pittsburgh found a way to win another Stanley Cup, and that run was capped off with a Hagelin empty-net goal in the final game.

Hagelin would stick around in Pittsburgh for another season before being dealt to Los Angeles during the 2018-19 season. His tenure with the Kings was short-lived, as he was traded to the Capitals three months later. Washington had an odd tendency to target former Penguins, with Justin Schultz, Daniel Sprong and Conor Sheary also all ending up in Capitals jerseys in the years following the Penguins’ back-to-back Stanley Cups.

Hagelin would spend three more years in Washington doing what he was best at: being an effective depth forward for a contender. He’d be sidelined by hip injuries, but he ultimately retired in 2023 due to a freak eye injury. It was an anti-climactic ending to an otherwise successful career, but Hagelin left a mark on the teams he played for.

All stats are from Hockey Stats.

This is one of them.

If you’ve ever watched a sports blooper compilation, you’ve seen this play before. But for today’s 10,000, here’s the story.

It’s January 4, 2007, and the player shown above is our hero, Patrik Stefan. Stefan was selected with the first overall pick in the 1999 NHL Draft by the Atlanta Thrashers, who were heading into their inaugural season at the time. Unlike the next two picks in that draft, Daniel and Henrik Sedin, Stefan wouldn’t be a franchise cornerstone.

Stefan is a famous draft bust. He hung around Atlanta for six seasons and never scored more than 40 points. Stefan would end up getting traded to Dallas in the summer of 2006 and played for the Stars for one season. After that, he played in three games in Switzerland before calling it a career due to injury. Stefan scored just 188 points in 455 games in his NHL career. The only first overall pick since 1967 with fewer points that was a forward and wasn’t drafted in the last few years is Nail Yakupov.

But on this night, Stefan’s Dallas Stars are having a decent season and are looking to close out a win on the road in Edmonton as they try to keep up with the Sharks and Ducks in the Pacific Division. Dallas leads 5-4 in the dying moments, thanks in part to a Stefan goal earlier in the game, as Edmonton tries to assemble one final attack.

When Edmonton defenseman Marc-Andre Bergeron fans on his pass near his own blue line, Stefan pokes it away and has a free path to the empty Edmonton net. Stefan glides toward the goal when, inside the crease, the puck takes a magical, nasty hop over his stick, and he can’t even control it again until the puck is wide of the net. Stefan tries to steer it to a teammate as he slips, but it’s too late.

The Oilers race up the ice and, with three Stars in the Edmonton end, somehow have an odd-man rush. Ales Hemsky finishes off the play by tucking the puck into the back of the net on his backhand to tie the game for Edmonton with just two seconds left in regulation.

There are so many aspects of this play that make it such a classic. The incredible bobble the puck takes over Stefan’s stick. Commentator Ray Ferraro (unfairly, in my opinion) raking Stefan over the coals for not just firing it in earlier in the play. Stefan slipping and falling. The nasty move Hemsky uses to score the goal. This one play summing up Stefan’s career.

Football has Mark Sanchez and the Butt Fumble. Hockey has Patrik Stefan and this incredible play.

But this game was not the only game that night, nor was it the only wild one. January 4, 2007 was the craziest night of NHL action that you’ve probably never heard of.

Setting the stage

After a lockout that wiped out the entire 2004-05 season, the NHL returned to play in the fall of 2005 and made some rule changes in an attempt to increase scoring. The 2003-04 season had the fewest goals per game (2.57) since the 1950s, and that was part of a continued downward trend.

After taking measures like eliminating the two-line pass rule, adding the trapezoid and cracking down on the clutching and grabbing that defined hockey in the 1990s, scoring exploded when the league returned to play. Scoring in the 2005-06 season jumped to 3.03 goals per game, due in no small part to power-play opportunities increasing from 4.24 per game in 2004 to 5.85 in 2006.

That bump in scoring was short-lived, as goals declined pretty heavily after that and wouldn’t eclipse that 3.03 mark in 2006 until 2021-22. But a lot of that post-lockout scoring surge still carried over into the 2006-07 season, and that set up the chaos of that night in January 2007.

It was a decently full night of NHL action with 10 games scheduled. Those 10 games combined for 72 goals, or 7.2 per game. It wasn’t all goals, though, as Curtis Joseph and Manny Legace both pitched shutouts for Arizona and St. Louis, respectively. There were a couple of ho-hum 3-2 games in this slate, but there were plenty of fireworks elsewhere.

A pair of goals from Dainius Zubrus and Alexander Semin pushed Washington past Montreal in a 5-1 win where a young Alex Ovechkin had three assists. Out in Calgary, Florida scored three straight goals in the third period to take a two-goal lead with just under four minutes left in the game. Calgary managed to tie the game, and then a young Mark Giordano buried the game-winning goal in overtime for a 6-5 Calgary win.

But what set this night apart from many, many others in a long NHL season were the Stefan incident and two games that you probably haven’t heard about.

The Leafs hang double digits on the Bruins

Maple Leafs-Bruins is one of the NHL’s best, most storied rivalries. Two Original Six teams that have never liked each other.

However, in 2007, neither of these teams were going anywhere. The Bruins were still trying to transition to the Patrice Bergeron era after trading Joe Thornton to San Jose for peanuts and ended up finishing in last in the Atlantic Division. The Maple Leafs, meanwhile, would end up narrowly missing the playoffs with a roster where leading Mats Sundin was the only forward with more than 50 points.

Both teams were pretty familiar with each other heading into this game because they had played each other just three days earlier in a 5-1 win for the Leafs in Toronto on New Year’s Day. That loss for Boston sent the Bruins reeling into the rematch, as they had given up another five goals in a shutout loss to Nashville in the previous game. Back on home ice, it wouldn’t get any better for Boston.

The Bruins actually got off to a decent start, as a Wayne Primeau power-play goal gave the B’s a 2-1 lead heading into the first intermission. But that’s when the wheels came off the spoked B.

Future Amazing Race winner Bates Battaglia tied the game for Toronto early in the second period, and then Alexander Steen would put the Leafs in the lead near the halfway point. Battaglia and Steen would both score again 18 seconds apart from each other, and the Leafs were off to the races after that. Toronto would take a 6-2 lead into the third period, and that’s when things got spicy.

Matt Stajan would score his first of two goals on the night, and Steen would finish off his first NHL hat trick 26 seconds later to make it 8-2. With the game out of hand on the scoreboard, the two rivals got out of hand on the ice as well. After a pretty penalty-free game through two periods, the two teams combined for 42 penalty minutes in the third period, including both a holding penalty and a 10-minute misconduct on the same play on Wade Belak and a fight between Toronto’s Brendan Bell and Boston’s Shean Donovan.

By the time horn mercifully blew, the Maple Leafs were up 10-2. It’s one of two times Toronto has scored double-digit goals on Boston since 1945, and the Leafs finished the game having scored nine unanswered goals. Similarly odd, that would be Steen’s only hat trick of his career. He’d go on to play through the 2019-20 season and was usually good for at least 15 goals a season, including a 33-goal campaign in in 2013-14. But he’d never have another hat trick. Tim Thomas would bear the brunt of the beatdown in goal for Boston, surrendering eight goals on 31 shots.

In the grand scheme of things, this game wouldn’t do much for either team. The Maple Leafs had made a big move in the offseason to trade for goaltender Andrew Raycroft from the rival Bruins, and all it cost them was some guy named Tuukka Rask. Raycroft struggled immensely, and the Leafs bled goals. Toronto, as mentioned earlier, didn’t have much starpower behind Sundin, but it did have nine players with at least 35 points. Still, it wasn’t enough to overcome the porous goaltending.

Boston, meanwhile, wound up with the eighth overall pick and drafted Zach Hamill, one pick before San Jose snagged Logan Couture. The Bruins would turn things around pretty quickly after this season, however. They’d make the playoffs the following season and continue to be competitive for years to come, including a Stanley Cup in 2011.

But it’s not often that your rival hangs double-digit goals on you in your own arena.

The Sharks destroy the Dominator

Out west late that night, two of the best teams in the Western Conference were going at it.

San Jose was hosting Detroit, and it wasn’t great timing for Detroit. The Red Wings were missing Pavel Datsyuk, and Chris Chelios was away from the team after two employees at his bar were fatally stabbed. But if any of that affected the Red Wings, they didn’t show it early on.

Jiri Hudler struck first for the visitors early in the first period, and Tomas Holmstrom doubled the Detroit lead near the midway mark. Jason Williams scored on a breakaway to make it 3-0 a couple minutes later, and the Sharks yanked goaltender Evgeni Nabokov after surrendering three goals on 12 shots. Josh Gorges put San Jose on the board with about five-and-a-half minutes to go in the first period, but the Sharks still had a long way to go get back in it.

It turned out that was all the Sharks needed to get going. Well, that and an unstoppable power play. The Sharks would finish the year with the league’s second-best power play, and they lived up to the billing against one of the league’s better penalty kills. After all, this Sharks team had Joe Thornton in his prime and a pair of 30-goal scorers in Patrick Marleau and Jonathan Cheechoo. Cheechoo never came close to replicating his 56-goal season in 2006 that saw him win a Rocket Richard Trophy, but he still led the Sharks in goals with 37 in 2007.

One of those 37 was a power-play goal roughly five minutes into the second period to put the Sharks within one. Ryan Clowe tied the game a couple minutes later, and Thornton and Marleau then assisted on a Christian Ehrhoff tally to give the Sharks the lead. Joe Pavelski, then a rookie, had an assist on the Cheechoo goal before scoring on a wraparound to make it 5-3 through two periods.

From there, the Red Wings couldn’t stay out of the box, and the Sharks couldn’t stop scoring. San Jose rattled off four power-play goals in the third period alone. A Marleau goal was sandwiched by a pair of goals from current Sharks general manager Mike Grier. Clowe picked up a second tally to cap off the onslaught of nine straight goals from the Sharks. Detroit found a way to score one before the buzzer sounded on a 9-4 Sharks win.

Dominik Hasek was in goal for Detroit that night, and he was finally relieved after the eighth goal, meaning this was the rare game where both starting goalies were yanked. Hasek finished the night with a .714 save percentage. Even with him in the twilight of his career, it’s shocking to see him surrender eight goals.

Marleau and Thornton both had four points. Thornton never got his four goals in an NHL game, but he did have four assists in this one. Only three non-goalies didn’t have a point for the Sharks. Vesa Toskala picked up the win for the Sharks, making 17 saves on 18 shots.

San Jose finished the game with six power play goals on nine opportunities, while Detroit was 1 for 7. It’s one of 18 times in NHL history where a team has scored at least six power-play goals, and it’s only happened once in the nearly 20 years since then. It was also the first time Hasek had given up more than five goals since 2000, which also came against San Jose.

Like the Maple Leafs, the Sharks scored nine unanswered goals. Since 2000, a team has scored at least nine unanswered goals in a game only 16 times. Somehow, two of them happened on the same night.

As embarrassing of a loss as it was for Detroit, the Red Wings would get the last laugh that year. The two teams would meet in the second round of the playoffs, and the Red Wings overcame a 2-1 series deficit by winning three consecutive games to send the Sharks home, including a shutout in San Jose in Game 6.

Back to the beginning

Let’s check back in with Patrik Stefan and the Dallas Stars.

See, while Stefan’s infamous blunder helped Edmonton score, that only forced overtime. The part of the story that people forget is how that game ended.

Neither team could find a game-winning goal in overtime, so it went to a shootout. Dallas’ Jussi Jokinen was a shootout wizard in the skill competition’s early days, and this was no different. Jokinen went with the ol’ Forsberg move, tucking the puck into the net with one hand around Dwayne Roloson. Edmonton couldn’t score, so the Oilers still found a way to lose despite having what can only be described as divine intervention from the hockey gods.

In an even stranger twist, the Oilers would’ve actually been better off if Stefan had buried the empty-net goal. Edmonton and Chicago finished the year with the same number of points, but the Blackhawks “won” the tiebreaker when it came to having better draft lottery odds. Without the Stefan play, the Oilers lose in regulation instead of in shootout and finish with one fewer point.

In that universe, the Oilers would have won the draft lottery, not the Blackhawks. Thus, Patrick Kane would have been an Oiler, completely rewriting the NHL’s history books. Granted, you could say that about a lot of games during an 82-game season, but the Stars were guaranteed to win that game if the puck doesn’t bobble over Stefan’s stick.

The Stefan incident will turn 20 this season, along with the rest of the insanity from January 4, 2007. But it’s worth noting that it wasn’t the only historic game of the night.

The San Jose Sharks on Wednesday locked down Macklin Celebrini to a five-year deal worth $18.8 million per year, eclipsing Carlsson’s $18 million deal earlier this summer. Granted, Celebrini’s deal won’t kick in until next year, unlike Carlsson’s, which starts this season. Nonetheless, the Sharks now have some clarity on what life with Celebrini will look like once he’s off his entry-level contract and what they can do to build around him.

Let’s be clear: $18.8 million is a lot of money, but any amount under the $20.8 million maximum would be a win for the Sharks. Celebrini’s deal being for five years instead of eight is a bit of a disappointment, but the days of superstars signing for maximum term seem to be over. Navigating around Celebrini’s deal will be somewhat challenging, especially with how many young players the Sharks still have to sign this in the next couple of years. But it’s not a prohibitive amount, and Celebrini should be worth his deal and more for years to come.

After posting a 115-point season as a 19-year-old, Celebrini is arguably the most valuable asset in the league. Celebrini was always going to sign for a sky-high number, and general manager Mike Grier told the media on Wednesday that the Sharks would’ve given Celebrini the maximum if he wanted it. After Carlsson’s offer sheet completely changed the market for young stars coming off their entry-level deals, $18.8 million for Celebrini feels like a slight discount.

It’s impossible to overstate how important Celebrini is to the Sharks. At five-on-five last season, the Sharks outscored their opponents by 17 goals with Celebrini on the ice. Without Celebrini, they’ve had a minus-44 goal differential. Without Celebrini, the Sharks have a measly 44.6 percent expected goal share compared to a 50.6 percent share with him on the ice. Essentially, the Sharks are a middle-of-the-road team with him on the ice and a lottery-bound team without him. If the Celebrini-less Sharks can get closer to (or even eclipse) breakeven, look out.

That impact is pretty obvious just from watching a Sharks game or looking at their Hockey Reference page. Celebrini had a franchise-record 115 points when nobody else on the Sharks broke the 60-point mark. According to Evolving-Hockey, Celebrini’s 3.95 points per 60 minutes at all strengths last season were the most by a U21 player since the start of the analytics era in 2007-08, narrowly surpassing 2018-19 Connor McDavid. Looking at Hockey Stats’ WAR metric, Celebrini’s 4.65 WAR last season was just over twice as much as the next Shark. Teenagers aren’t supposed to be able to do this.

Celebrini is a menace all over the ice, even if his defensive metrics haven’t quite caught up to his insane compete level. He carries a lot of the load for the Sharks when he’s on the ice, as he's the team’s main conductor in the attacking zone and does a lot of the transition work as well. Getting the puck to Celebrini is seemingly a free zone entry every time, and something as small as that makes all the difference. Looking at Corey Sznajder’s All Three Zones data, Celebrini is already a fairly complete player, and he should only get better from here.

But after this coming season, the Sharks will now have the challenge of trying to build a contender while having to finally start paying some of their young stars. The good news on that front is that the Sharks still have over $30.4 million in cap space for 2027-28 with 17 players signed and only Will Smith and Yaroslav Askarov as significant players who will need new deals.

However, things could get complicated in the somewhat near future. Michael Misa, Igor Chernyshov and Sam Dickinson will be eligible for extensions next summer. If the Sharks can develop all or even most of their seemingly endless supply of young talent into effective NHLers, they’ll be hard to beat. The only downside is that you do have to actually pay them at some point, but that’s still better than them not panning out at all.

The hope for the Sharks this year is to make the playoffs while Celebrini is on his entry-level contract. While it’s understandable if the Sharks end up never contending while Celebrini is making pennies compared to his earnings a year from now given how deep the hole they had to climb out of was, it might feel like a little bit of a missed opportunity. But instead of rushing out of the rebuild, the Sharks have had a slower, more patient approach to team building.

San Jose has owned multiple first-round picks in the last four drafts and hasn’t used any of them for immediate help at the NHL level. The Sharks have moved around the draft order a few times, like when they traded down this year to pick up Michael Kesselring, only to move up again to pick up Ryan Lin. In order to have multiple picks in the first round in the first place, the Sharks have done a good job of acquiring players with the idea of flipping them later for picks, like Mikael Granlund and Jake Walman.

A lot of teams would turn those picks into NHL players. Last summer, the Canadiens sent two first-round picks for defenseman Noah Dobson and forward Emil Heineman. Chicago this year traded its fourth overall pick as part of a deal for defenseman Bowen Byram. After San Jose traded William Eklund to Ottawa and entered this year’s draft with three first-round picks (including two in the top 10), it would have been really tempting to move one of those picks to either further address San Jose’s needs on defense or package picks together to move up from the ninth overall pick they picked up in the Eklund trade and try to snag one of the top defensemen in the draft.

Instead, they mostly stayed put, taking Ivar Stenberg with the second overall pick and then defenseman Keaton Verhoeff with the ninth pick. San Jose then made the move for Lin to wrap up an exciting first round. The Sharks have made nine picks in the first round in the last four years, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if all of them made an impact at the NHL level — 2023 first-round pick Quentin Musty is really the only one on Bust Watch if he doesn’t make the team this year. That’s not even accounting for later-round finds like Chernyshov, Luca Cagnoni and Leo Sahlin-Wallenius. Draft, develop and, if you have to, move on. Rinse and repeat.

Celebrini is only going to get better, and the Sharks are probably only going to get better. San Jose still has a lot of work to do before competing for Stanley Cups, and building around a player making nearly $19 million won’t be easy. But with their superstar locked up for the next six years and plenty of young talent around him, the Sharks are still in a really good spot now and in the future.

All stats are from Hockey Stats unless otherwise noted. You can find me on Twitter/BlueSky @Bfarrell727.

After raising everyone’s expectations following a year to remember, the Sabres, as it currently stands, are bringing back the same team as last year, just without a couple of pieces. But with enough internal improvement, the Sabres should be fine, and they did a decent job turning losses into wins.

Buffalo’s offseason has been defined by departures instead of additions, which is a little unusual for a team entering its competitive window. But Buffalo clearly didn’t see expiring free agent Alex Tuch, who is one of the league’s better five-on-five scorers but also just turned 30, as a $10.5 million player going forward, and the Sabres were already a bit limited in terms of cap space. Thus, they sent him to Washington for a third-round pick in a sign-and-trade.

Getting a third-round pick for a player who wasn’t going to stay is a win for the Sabres, but losing Tuch will sting. Tuch was third on the team in Hockey Stats’ WAR metric and led Buffalo’s regulars in points per 60 minutes at five-on-five. Not wanting to pay a 30-year-old that kind of money as your window opens makes sense. While he can drive play a bit, a lot of Tuch’s value is in his shot. If that falls off as he ages — a distinct possibility — that contract could quickly turn into an albatross. But just because it makes sense for Buffalo to move on doesn’t mean Tuch won’t be hard to replace.

Similarly, Buffalo shipped out a couple of defensemen. Michael Kesselring, who was supposed to be the centerpiece of the J.J. Peterka trade a year ago, never really fit in in Buffalo. The Sabres leveraged their surplus of defensemen by shipping Kesselring to San Jose and moving up seven spots in the first round of this year’s draft in the process. That’s a tidy piece of business for both sides, and the Sabres used that pick to select forward Ilia Morozov, who probably wouldn’t have fallen to Buffalo’s original pick at 27.

However, the Sabres’ biggest move came before the draft when they traded defenseman Bowen Byram for a haul that included the fourth overall pick. A Byram trade had been rumored since last summer, and it was clear Byram wanted to be somewhere he could be The Guy, something that simply couldn’t happen on a Buffalo team that had two defensemen who were No. 1 overall picks in Rasmus Dahlin and Owen Power.

To call this “tidy business” again would be an understatement. Calling this a coup would be an understatement. In no world is Byram worth the fourth overall pick, let alone that selection plus defenseman Louis Crevier and the 45th pick.

Byram is a hard player to evaluate. He’s a toolsy player — there’s a reason why he was the fourth overall pick in 2019. Looking at Corey Sznajder’s All Three Zones data, he can move the puck well, even if he isn’t exactly the most dangerous player in the offensive zone. Byram being able to play on either side is also a huge plus.

One problem: Byram’s underlying numbers aren’t great. Among all defensemen last year, Byram was 97th in Hockey Stats’ WAR metric last year. He’s never been a positive in Evolving-Hockey’s RelTM xG plus/minus metric, meaning his teams are worse with him on the ice than on in terms of expected goals. Byram does rank 22nd among defensemen in points per 60 minutes at five-on-five the last two seasons, though he’s also benefitted from a high-scoring environment in Buffalo, as the Sabres have the second-highest shooting percentage at five-on-five in that span. At a certain point, it’s Billy Beane from Moneyball going, “If this guy is so good, why doesn’t he play good?”

To recap, the Buffalo Sabres were a goal away from reaching the conference finals last year, dealt a player that doesn’t really drive play and ended up with the fourth overall pick. Buffalo used that pick to select defenseman Daxon Rudolph, which raised some eyebrows. But he certainly has the scoring profile of a star defenseman, and the Sabres added yet another high-potential young player.

Buffalo also took the second-round pick it received from Chicago in the trade and sent it to Anaheim for defenseman Olen Zellweger. At 5-foot-10, Zellweger is undersized, but he played really well for Anaheim last season in a somewhat sheltered role. He has his defensive warts, but he moves the puck well and brings some offensive punch.

After a rough start to his career, Zellweger’s underlying numbers greatly improved last year, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him take another step forward on a team that has more structure defensively. Buffalo replaced Byram with a younger defenseman that has more upside and can drive play. Plus, Zellweger only costs just over $3 million the next three years, while Chicago made Byram the highest-paid defenseman in the league at $12.5 million starting in 2027-28. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see Zellweger be just as effective for far less money.

Buffalo is essentially hitting the reset button while setting itself up for something better down the line. The Sabres didn’t exactly replace Tuch, but they’re hoping to make up for that loss with some internal improvement from their young core.

Zach Benson has turned into a legitimate top-six option, and, at just 21 years old, it feels like he has another level he can reach. Josh Doan enjoyed a nice breakout year last year, and he’s just 24. Konsta Helenius was a real difference maker in a small sample size of games in the regular season and the playoffs. Noah Ostlund established himself as a full-time NHLer last season and should have more opportunity this year. Buffalo should also have Jiri Kulich back in the fold after missing most of last season with a blood clot.

There are still some loose ends for the Sabres, like if they’re going to roll with Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen again between the pipes or what things will look like down the middle. But even after losing Tuch and Byram, Buffalo should still be in a good position to prove that last year’s run wasn’t a one-time thing.

All stats are from Hockey Stats unless otherwise noted.

With Bussi on his rear end after saving the first shot, Hertl was in perfect position in the slot to put home the rebound. But Hertl fired the puck right at Bussi, and the score stayed at 2-0 in favor of Carolina. The Hurricanes would add an empty-net goal and skate away with the Cup.

With that save and that win, one of hockey’s most peculiar phenomena stayed alive. Call it a curse. A Sharks curse, if you will.

The Sharks were the league’s best team between when the lockout ended in 2005 and 2019, the last time that they made the playoffs. In that span, San Jose went 638-352-124 for a league-leading 1,400 points. On the analytics side, while the analytics era didn’t start until the 2007-08 season, the Sharks posted the best expected goal share (53.8 percent) between then and 2018-19. They were the Carolina Hurricanes before the Carolina Hurricanes.

But unlike the Carolina Hurricanes recently, it never came together in the playoffs for the Sharks. Losing to the Penguins in six games in the 2016 Stanley Cup Final was as good as it would get for San Jose. Fifteen years of virtually constant contention without winning a championship is already enough to put them in the same conversation of the 1990s Bills in terms of talented teams that never seemed to get over the hump.

That alone is enough of a weird statistical anomaly, but throw in the fact that almost everyone from those teams eventually left to play for a contender and that still none of them have their name etched on the Stanley Cup, and it borders on absurdity.

Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau rank first and second in virtually every franchise record, and they followed similar paths.

Marleau, the franchise leader in points and games played, was the first member of San Jose’s core to leave when he signed with the burgeoning Toronto Maple Leafs in 2017. Marleau’s tenure last two seasons, which both ended with a loss to Boston in seven games in the first round. After getting traded to and bought out by the Hurricanes, Marleau would briefly re-join the Sharks before getting dealt at the deadline to the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Marleau would play in just eight games for the Penguins before the COVID-19 pandemic brought the regular season to a sudden end. With the NHL expanding its playoff format to 12 teams in each conference, Marleau’s fifth-seeded Penguins would face the 12th-seeded Canadiens in a best-of-five series in the play-in round, and what could possibly go wrong?

Carey Price, that’s what. Price saved roughly six goals above expected to steal the series from the Penguins. That was Marleau’s last shot at a Stanley Cup, though re-signing with the Sharks for the 2021 season to become NHL’s all-time leader in games played was a nice consolation prize. Marleau made 20 trips to the playoffs and never won it all.

Thornton was the team leader in points between when the Sharks acquired him in 2005 and 2019, scoring 1,024 points in 1,034 games. After the Sharks missed the playoff bubble entirely in 2020, he signed with perhaps the only other team more cursed than the Sharks: the Toronto Maple Leafs.

In his first and only playoff run with the Leafs, Toronto ran into — wouldn’t you know it — Price and the Montreal Canadiens. Toronto won three games in a row to take a 3-1 series lead, only for Price to backstop the Canadiens to three straight wins to send the Leafs home.

Thornton went for one last ride in 2021-22, this time with the Florida Panthers. The Panthers wound up winning the Presidents’ Trophy that year, and unfortunately for Thornton, the curse lived on. After beating the Capitals in the first round, the Panthers would get swept in the second round. Thornton would retire after the season, and the Panthers would go to three consecutive Stanley Cup Finals immediately afterward, winning two of them. Thornton went to the playoffs 19 times, seven of which weren’t in San Jose, and wound up empty-handed.

When the Sharks were eliminated in the 2019 Western Conference Finals, there was a sense that they had let their best chance at a Stanley Cup slip through their fingers. That was because the Sharks had a handful of key free agents, including captain Joe Pavelski, and they had nowhere near the cap space needed to keep all of them. Between extensions for the likes of Evander Kane, Brent Burns, Martin Jones, Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Logan Couture and the blockbuster trade for Erik Karlsson, there simply wasn’t room for Pavelski anymore. After 13 seasons, Pavelski left for literally greener pastures with the Dallas Stars.

Pavelski didn’t have the smoothest of starts in Dallas, recording just 31 points in 67 games before the pandemic pause. But he turned it on in the bubble, where the Stars knocked off the Avalanche and Vegas to make it to the Stanley Cup Final. Pavelski played his best hockey in that playoff run, scoring 19 points in 27 games. With him on the ice at five-on-five, the Stars outscored their opponents 20-11 with an expected goal share of 56.2 percent. Without him, the Stars had a minus-five goal differential and 46.7 percent of the expected goals.

Unfortunately for Pavelski, his second trip to the Stanley Cup Final was a lot like his first. The Stars were simply outmatched and outplayed by the Tampa Bay Lightning, who dispatched Dallas in six games.

It wouldn’t be the last playoff heartbreak for Pavelski in Dallas, either. After failing to make the playoffs in 2021 and a first-round loss in seven games in 2022, Dallas made back-to-back trips to the Western Conference Finals in 2023 and 2024, only to get bounced both times. A point-per-game Pavelski in 2023 wasn’t enough to get the Stars over the hump, and it was clear in 2024 that Father Time had finally caught up to him.

Pavelski made 16 trips to the playoffs in 18 seasons, with almost all of them being for contenders. He played in the conference finals six times and still wound up without a Stanley Cup. Pavelski has played in the most playoff games without winning a Stanley Cup in NHL history at 201, just ahead of… Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau. Regardless, he’ll still go down as one of the best American players in NHL history, as he ranks sixth in all-time points.

Burns stuck around in San Jose longer than a lot of the old guard, but by the summer of 2022, it was pretty clear that the Sharks’ time had come and gone. Burns was dealt to Carolina to chase after a Stanley Cup, and Carolina seemed like a great fit. The Hurricanes, like the Sharks before everything went south, were analytics darlings whose strength was in its depth and blueliners.

Burns stayed in Carolina for three years, where he did what he always did: move pucks, fire an endless barrage of shots from the right side and play minimal defense. Carolina was one of the best teams in the league all three years he was there, but it never came together for Burns. Carolina was effectively goalied by Sergei Bobrovsky against Florida in the conference finals in 2023 and then by Igor Shesterkin against the Rangers in 2024 before bowing out to Florida again in 2025.

With Carolina having a bevy of defensive options and Burns having an ironman streak to keep, he was on the move again.

Burns signed a one-year deal with Colorado last year, and the Avalanche went on to be one of the best regular-season teams in NHL history, finishing the year with 121 points. After sweeping the Kings and dispatching a very good Wild team in five games, the Avalanche looked inevitable.

But the Avalanche’s Stanley Cup hopes quickly unraveled. Injury concerns with both Cale Makar and Nathan MacKinnon completely derailed the Avalanche, and Vegas swept the previously unbeatable Avs to advance to the Stanley Cup Final. It was eerily similar to when the Sharks fell apart in the Western Conference Finals against St. Louis in 2019. The Avalanche having that much success in the regular season only for it to all to come apart in the span of a week goes to show you that being an elite team simply isn’t enough. You need everything to break your way, and it simply didn’t for Colorado.

Burns re-signed with the Avalanche this summer, so he’s still got a chance to end the curse. He’s made 13 trips to the playoffs — most of them came on a contender — but hasn’t found a way to win a Stanley Cup. Oh, and his old Carolina Hurricanes won one the season after he left.

Hertl was the last member of the Sharks’ 2010s core to leave, sticking it out until the 2024 trade deadline. With the Sharks mired in the middle of what would be one of the worst seasons in the salary cap era, Hertl (understandably) wanted out so that he could try to compete for the Stanley Cup. Hertl found a new home with the archrival Golden Knights, who were the defending Stanley Cup champions at the time.

But Hertl wouldn’t have the same luck. Vegas was bounced in the first round in his first season there and then again in the second round in 2025. As mentioned at the beginning, Hertl made it back to the Stanley Cup Final this year with the Golden Knights, only to lose to Carolina in six games.

In that span, Hertl has been arguably one of the unluckiest players in the league in the playoffs. Over the last three postseasons, Hertl has posted a 55.1 percent expected goal share but only a 37 percent actual goal share. That stretch included Hertl getting outscored 5-0 in Vegas’ first-round loss to Dallas in 2024.

After the Sharks were eliminated in the Western Conference Finals in 2019, Couture and longtime shutdown defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic wouldn’t get another shot at the Stanley Cup. Both signed lucrative eight-year extensions, Vlasic in 2017 and Couture in 2018, that weren’t exactly movable, even if someone was interested in a trade. Vlasic ended up getting bought out last summer, and no one picked him up. Couture called it quits last summer as well due to a severe groin injury.

The best players from one of the best teams in the league in the 2010s never found a way to win it all together. But if it’s the Sharks that were cursed, surely at least one of them would have won it all after leaving San Jose. One of the reasons why the Sharks never won a Cup with that group was that they never had the finishing. They scored well below expected all the time in the playoffs, outside of when they actually went to the Stanley Cup Final in 2016. Truly cursed stuff.

Then it has to be on the players then, right? San Jose simply didn’t have players that could win high-pressure games. Sure, as long as you ignore the fact that Canada took four Sharks to the Olympics in 2010 and won gold. And then won another gold medal in 2014 with Marleau and Vlasic. Plus, Thornton’s in the Hall of Fame now.

It’s not as if the Sharks’ biggest stars no-showed in the playoffs all the time, either. Thornton scored the series-winning goal in overtime in the first round in 2011 and was a big reason why the Sharks went to the Stanley Cup Final in 2016, Marleau had 26 points in 32 games in the Sharks’ runs to the conference finals in 2010 and 2011, Pavelski went from “Little Joe” to the “Big Pavelski” because he couldn’t stop scoring big goals in the 2010 playoffs, Burns had by far the most points by a defenseman in the 2016 playoffs, Hertl got hot in 2019 (including scoring one of the Sharks’ four unanswered power-play goals in Game 7 against Vegas) and the list goes on.

Even Couture and Vlasic, the players who didn’t leave, had their moments. Couture led the playoffs in points in 2016 and nearly did so again in 2019. Vlasic was one of the league’s best shutdown defensemen for a long time, including a dominant 2016 postseason. These players were good enough to win a championship in and outside of San Jose. It just hasn’t happened.

All stats are from Hockey Stats unless otherwise noted

They had just returned to the playoffs for the first time in eight years, knocked out the two-time defending Western Conference champions in the first round and gave eventual Western Conference champion Vegas a real run for its money in the second round. With a young core to build around, Ducks fans had a lot to look forward to.

Then last week happened.

In an effort to save money to re-sign said young core, the Ducks hemorrhaged talent and saw their surplus of cap space vanish in an instant when Leo Carlsson signed a cap sheet from Philadelphia worth $18 million per year for five seasons. Now, they’re in a bind, and even if they match the Flyers’ offer, the Ducks’ rebuild won’t be the same.

In a world where seemingly every talented young player is signed to a max-term deal worth pennies compared to their actual worth (see: the Montreal Canadiens and Carolina Hurricanes), it’s incredible that Carlsson, Cutter Gauthier and Pavel Mintyukov, all restricted free agents, made it to July without an extension. The Ducks had plenty of space, sure, but extensions for Carlsson and Gauthier alone could cost $30 million now.

The Ducks did well to get out of Mason McTavish’s deal and pick up a pair of first-round picks in the process. But the Ducks still have a big hole down the middle — can you really be a contender with 34-year-old Mikael Granlund as your second-line center? Anaheim’s already lackluster blue line suffered several losses as well. Jacob Trouba left for rival San Jose, and the Ducks dealt away the UFA rights to Radko Gudas and trade deadline rental John Carlson.

Trouba and Carlson played big minutes for the Ducks last season, and they haven’t really replaced them, either. As it stands, their defensive corps is Jackson LaCombe and five guys. Trouba and Gudas aren’t exactly huge losses — the Ducks were probably right to move on from both, more on Trouba here — but only bringing in Nick Jensen isn’t exactly going to stabilize things. The Ducks allowed the third-most expected goals per 60 minutes at five-on-five last year, and there’s a real chance that, unless Mintyukov or Ian Moore take the next step, they’ll be even worse.

But what’s compounding all of this is the $18 million elephant in the room. That is a whole lot of money, and likely the best outcome is Carlsson coming close to living up to it. However, the Ducks are in a no-win situation where they’ll be significantly handcuffed if they match the offer sheet, and they’ll be right back at square one without him. Top-line centers don’t exactly grow on trees, let alone 21-year-old ones.

With Carlsson on the ice at five-on-five, the Ducks owned 55.1 percent of the expected goals and had a plus-three goal differential. Without him, the Ducks dropped just below breakeven in expected goals and were a minus-22 in actual goals. Part of that difference in actual goals is because the Ducks’ depth really struggled to finish last year, but it’s hard to see them improve in that area by letting a 21-year-old who nearly scored 30 goals walk.

The disparity was even bigger in the playoffs. Carlsson dominated his minutes in the playoffs to the tune of a 56.7 percent expected goal share and a plus-two goal differential while being a nearly point-per-game player. Meanwhile, the Ducks were outscored by eight goals and had a 43.9 percent expected goal share without him. As it stands, this team isn’t equipped to be competitive without Carlsson.

Carlsson’s produced at a high rate, too. Carlsson’s 2.95 points per 60 minutes at all strengths ranked eighth among U23 forwards last year, per Evolving-Hockey. Carlsson has the potential to be one of the best centers in the league, and the Flyers are obviously betting on that by attempting to pay him that much money.

The Ducks simply have to match the offer sheet. It will be painful, possibly kneecap this rebuild’s ceiling before it can really get going and set up Gauthier and Beckett Sennecke (eligible for a new deal next summer) to ask for even more money than originally planned. But losing Carlsson would set this team back even more. Four presumably late first-round picks aren’t worth a 21-year-old franchise center, and the opportunity cost of finding another top-line center should be enough to sway the Ducks toward matching the offer.

A top-line center is the hardest thing to find in hockey. There’s a reason why the Ducks selected Carlsson with the second overall pick in the 2023 NHL Draft and why the Flyers, a playoff team last year with a gigantic hole at center on their top line, are willing to pay Carlsson $18 million. Carlsson is the type of player that you can pretty much only find at the top of the draft, and it’s incredibly difficult to acquire one via trade, even with four more first-round picks at your disposal.

After finally making the playoffs again, Anaheim cannot afford to take a step back. Carlsson’s new contract might make contending harder, but losing Carlsson means being stuck in no-man’s land. The Carlsson-less Ducks aren’t contenders, but they’re also not going to be bad enough to be in lottery contention. Neither option is great, but one is obviously better than the other.

Even before making their decision on Carlsson, the Ducks are already paying for their inaction. With the Ducks already in a salary cap bind and rumors of another offer sheet circling, Anaheim re-signed Mintyukov to a five-year deal worth $7.2 million per season. Mintyukov, the 10th overall pick in the 2022 NHL Draft, is now being paid like a true top-four defenseman, but he hasn’t played like it yet.

At 22, he still has time to put it all together, but Mintyukov has really struggled so far, especially defensively. Mintyukov was on the ice for the most expected goals against per 60 minutes at five-on-five among Anaheim defenseman last season. While he’s flashed some offensive and puck-moving talent, it hasn’t been enough to offset the defensive shortcomings. He’ll have plenty of opportunity on a thin Anaheim blue line this year, but he’s now getting Brandt Clarke money while not having the same kind of offensive production or play-driving ability that Clarke has shown.

The worst part of this deal? They traded the wrong defenseman.

If the Ducks were looking for a young defenseman to keep around for a while that wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg, they should’ve just kept Olen Zellweger. Zellweger isn’t a former top-10 pick, but he’s shown that he can drive play at a decent rate. Zellweger is undersized and also struggles a bit in his own end, but he brings more offensively and wins his minutes. Most importantly, after getting traded to Buffalo, he re-signed there for three years at $3.1 million per season, a much more reasonable contract.

That’s poor asset management, but that’s been par for the course for the Ducks over the past week. Even in a weak Pacific Division, there’s a decent chance that they’re a worse team than last year just because of how many players they’ve lost and haven’t replaced. As it stands, the Ducks have just over $9 million in cap space if they match Carlsson’s offer sheet and still have Gauthier to sign. They’ll have to trade away another veteran, like Chris Kreider, Alex Killorn or Frank Vatrano, just to stay under the cap. Further complicating matters is that all three players have partial no-trade clauses and that any team acquiring them knows that they’ll have Anaheim over a barrel.

It’s a deep hole for Anaheim to dig itself out of and it’s one that could have been avoided entirely. After several painful rebuilding years, general manager Pat Verbeek has to find a way to keep this team competitive. Otherwise, this rebuild will be doomed before it can even get off the ground.

All stats are from Hockey Stats unless otherwise noted

The Sharks have missed the playoffs seven straight times after narrowly coming up short this past season and currently show no interest in an eighth. San Jose came into July with an almost endless supply of cap space and proceeded to use a large chunk of it in three moves that are meant to make the Sharks deeper, bigger and tougher to play against. But will any of that make the Sharks better?

San Jose missed the playoffs last season by just four points. It’s a little deceiving to say that, though, considering how abysmal the field was for the second wild card spot in the Western Conference — the Kings ended up with it despite only having 22 wins in regulation. But for a team that had finished dead last in the league the last two seasons, it’s incredible progress.

For much of the year, the Sharks looked pretty similar to the 2024-25 team, just with a lot more magic from its teenage sensation Macklin Celebrini. However, the team hit its stride after the Olympics from analytical standpoint. After being one of the league’s worst teams when it came to driving play before the break, the Sharks were 18th in expected goal share at five-on-five. With a team full of young players acclimating to the league, that’s not nothing.

A weak Western Conference and the Sharks’ finishing running a little hot for much of the year probably made the Sharks look a little better than they actually were last year. Their 86 points usually wouldn’t be enough to really be in the playoff conversation.

But you can see the vision. Igor Chernyshov, Michael Misa and Sam Dickinson were all rookies last year. Celebrini and Will Smith are only entering their third season in the league. Goaltender Yaroslav Askarov played in more than 15 NHL games in a season for the first time. There’s a world where Misa grows into being San Jose’s second-line center, Dickinson holds it down on the second pair, Chernyshov continues his upward trajectory and the Sharks quickly become a force. In that case, you’re going to need to give them some help. That, and the Sharks needed to hit the salary cap floor.

Between signing forward Mason Marchment and defenseman Jacob Trouba and trading for Darnell Nurse, the Sharks spent over $24 million dollars for players who are going to be around for this young core’s prime. It’s a lot of money, but that’s the price of doing business on July 1.

Marchment was an odd signing at first because, with the bevy of forwards San Jose has, did the Sharks really need another forward? However, this is a team that finished 17th in goals scored last year and just traded William Eklund for the ninth overall pick. Celebrini finished the year with nearly twice as many points as the next Shark for a reason. Even with internal improvements from the youngsters, additional depth scoring wouldn’t hurt.

In addition to plenty of physicality, Marchment is an efficient scorer at five-on-five, and he won’t have to be a true top-line forward in San Jose. Over the last three seasons, Marchment is 50th in points per 60 minutes at five-on-five, which is in line with Smith, Mikko Rantanen and Nick Suzuki. Marchment has the skill to play further up in the lineup, but he also has the frame (6-foot-5, 215 pounds) and play style to grind games out. Marchment drives play at both ends of the ice, though he does have a tendency to take too many penalties. Between Marchment and Sherwood, Grier certainly has a type when it comes to his middle-six forwards.

After signing a five-year deal that will pay him $6.75 million, Marchment will be the Sharks’ highest-paid forward. Marchment is currently 31, and the term is a little scary, especially if his scoring falls off. But with the cap rising, a price tag like this is becoming the new norm for UFA middle-six forwards.

The Marchment deal also creates a bit of a logjam of forwards for San Jose. As it stands, the Sharks have 13 forwards signed, and re-signing restricted free agent Collin Graf will make it 14. It’s going to be hard for a Filip Bystedt or a Quentin Musty or a Cam Lund to win a job in training camp because there just isn’t a spot without trading or waiving someone.

On the other hand, this is a forward group that Sharks fans can be excited about. The best teams in the league roll four lines, and San Jose has the opportunity to do the same. Having Tyler Toffoli, Graf or Sherwood on your fourth line is a luxury, and it’s one the Sharks can afford to have.

Where San Jose’s spending spree went wrong was on defense. Signing Jacob Trouba to a four-year deal worth $8.25 million per year is borderline indefensible. He can’t drive play, and his reputation for big hits doesn’t lead to actual defense. Trouba doesn’t profile very well at all in Corey Sznajder’s All Three Zones data, and it’s only going to get worse as he ages.

Trouba managed to reform his image a bit in Anaheim after getting pushed out of New York. His 35 points last season were his highest since 2021-22, and he did that despite not playing much on the power play. At five-on-five, his 1.07 points per 60 minutes were again the most for him since 2021-22. Trouba also had double-digit goals last season. Considering that San Jose has only had two defensemen crack the 30-point mark the last three seasons, Trouba could inject some much-needed offense from the blue line. Just ignore the six percent shooting percentage last year as a career 4.4 percent shooter.

Aside from the point production, Trouba seemed to find new life in Anaheim playing with Jackson LaCombe. But as it stands, there isn’t a LaCombe in San Jose, and it sure seems like LaCombe did a lot of the heavy lifting because he fared a lot better without Trouba than with. When together, the two had a 50.3 percent expected goal share and a minus-seven goal differential. When LaCombe was without Trouba, his expected goal share shot up to 54.8 percent, and he was plus-3 in actual goals. Olen Zellweger was Trouba’s second-most common partner, and Zellweger similarly performed better without Trouba than with him.

The Sharks picking up the tab for the entirety of Nurse’s remaining contract, which runs for four more seasons at $9.25 million per year, drew more criticism online, but Nurse arguably has more to offer at this point. Nurse’s big problem isn’t that he’s that bad, it’s just that he’s very overpaid.

Last season, Nurse was essentially breakeven in terms of driving play and led the Oilers in icetime at five-on-five. He can provide some offense and move the puck a bit. Don’t forget that his shot is what got him paid $9.25 million in the first place. He also has experience playing on the power play, which could be an option for a team that doesn’t really have an obvious power play quarterback. With less pressure on him in San Jose than Edmonton, maybe it’s possible for Nurse to turn things around.

Is Nurse a $9.25 million player? No. But there’s a world where he’s a decent option on the second pair, and the Sharks didn’t have to give up a ton to pick him up. Losing Shakir Mukhamadullin to acquire Nurse and his entire contract sounds rough, but Mukhamadullin is 24 and hasn’t shown that he can be more than a bottom pairing defenseman. Turning him into Nurse is fine. Plus, when your two most NHL-ready prospects, Luca Cagnoni and Eric Pohlkamp, are both undersized, adding some size makes some sense.

The problem is that the Sharks are now spending $17.5 million per season for the next four seasons on two defensemen over the age of 30 who don’t really move the needle. Bringing in Trouba or Nurse is fine, but adding both at their price tags feels like overkill. Sure, you’re bringing in a couple of guys who have a history of eating heavy minutes, but just because they technically can play those minutes doesn’t mean that they should.

The numbers will change once Graf signs his extension this summer, but as it currently stands, San Jose still has over $52.5 million in cap space for 2027-28. Celebrini and Smith will need deals then, and the Sharks will need to save room for extensions for Misa, Dickinson and Chernyshov the following summer. Given the NHL’s penchant for big veteran defensemen, unloading Nurse and/or Trouba might not be that hard (especially with the cap going up) in the future, but it sure feels like San Jose gave up much of its flexibility to bring in these two players. Leo Carlsson signing a five-year offer sheet from Philadelphia worth $18 million annually might make the upcoming math for San Jose even more complicated.

However, it’s clear that San Jose is trying to win now and give itself a chance to make it back to the playoffs before it has to start worrying about paying its stars. San Jose had one of the worst defensive groups in the league, and it’s turning over the roster. Ten of San Jose’s top 11 players by Hockey Stats’ WAR model last year were forwards — it cannot possibly get much worse. By moving on from Mario Ferraro, Vincent Desharnais, John Klingberg, Nick Leddy and Mukahamdullin, the Sharks are mostly adding by subtracting.

Unfortunately for San Jose, Trouba, Nurse and Kesselring were all had a negative WAR last season, though Kesselring seems prime for a rebound season now that he’s healthy and a better fit in San Jose than in Buffalo.

After a July 1 spending spree, are the Sharks a better team? Probably. Marchment reinforces the Sharks’ forward depth after dealing Eklund while adding some much-needed grit further up the lineup. Nurse and Trouba should add some stability on the defensive side of things while the Sharks buy time for first-round picks Keaton Verhoeff and Ryan Lin to develop. The issue is that they spent a whole lot of money and compromised future financial flexibility to not really get that much better.

In a weak Pacific Division, you only need to finish in third, and with Los Angeles doubling down on age and mediocrity and Anaheim having to deal with the Carlsson situation while currently icing an abysmal defensive corps, the Sharks are heading into next season with the playoffs in mind for the first time in forever. But in an effort to prepare for “playoff hockey” and be “hard to play against,” the Sharks have made themselves older, more expensive and not a whole lot better, which might be an ominous sign for this front office’s next move to build toward contention.

Stats are from Hockey Stats unless otherwise noted

After finishing the 2024-25 season with 111 points, the Capitals came back down to earth in 2025-26 and missed the playoffs entirely. This summer, Washington has quickly made sure that won’t happen again. The Capitals have made a couple of big moves for wingers Jordan Kyrou and Alex Tuch in a bid to once again be contenders.

It’s challenging to figure out what exactly went wrong for the Capitals. They were obvious regression candidates after having what was, at the time, the highest five-on-five shooting percentage ever recorded (10.7 percent) since the start of the analytics era with the 2007-08 season. Regression did come for the Capitals in a way — they scored 25 fewer goals this past season than the year prior — but they still shot over 10 percent at five-on-five. Washington actually posted a higher PDO at five-on-five this year because while the Capitals’ shooting percentage declined slightly, Logan Thompson was a wall in goal.

The Capitals’ underlying numbers were pretty similar the last two seasons — decent but not great — and they overperformed them by a similar amount. One year, they’re one of the best teams in the league. The other, they’re out of the playoffs entirely.

The power play was the main culprit for last year’s disappointment, which is borderline sacrilege in Washington. Some of that was just bad luck, as the Capitals only scored 42 goals on 51 expected. But finishing well above expected is the expectation when you have Ovechkin.

But after a down year, the Capitals are doubling down on this core. Tuch was set to be the top free agent on the market in an otherwise dismal UFA class, but the Capitals nabbed him in a sign-and-trade with the Sabres. In return for Tuch, who will be getting paid $10.5 million per year through 2034, the Capitals only had to give up a third-round pick and David Kampf.

The term for Tuch is risky for the Capitals, but for now, Tuch is a nice add for Washington. Tuch is not only a solid play-driver, but he’s also a clinical finisher, especially at five-on-five. Over the last four seasons at five-on-five, Tuch’s 1.15 goals per 60 minutes rank 13th in the league, and his 22.9 goals scored above expected rank fifth. At all strengths, Tuch has shot above 15 percent in three of his last four seasons. Part of that is that Buffalo is seemingly just a high-scoring environment, but he was obviously contributing somewhat heavily to that.

Before last year, Kyrou was putting up similar numbers. Between the 2020-21 and 2024-25 seasons, Kyrou was sixth in the league in goals per 60 minutes at five-on-five and 15th in points per 60 minutes. Throw in some decent underlying numbers, and Kyrou was one of the more underappreciated players in the league.

And then last year happened.

Kyrou’s shooting slumped, and his goal total of 36 in 2024-25 was halved in 2025-26. Kyrou’s 10.4 percent shooting percentage at all strengths was his lowest since 2019-20. This all happened despite the fact that Kyrou’s underlying numbers were excellent.

Kyrou had the third-best expected goal share in the league, with the Blues owning 61.9 percent of the expected goals at five-on-five with Kyrou on the ice. Without him, that number plummeted all the way down to 46.9 percent. Even in a down year for him production-wise, he was still dominating his minutes. It’s easy to see him rebound in his new environment in Washington. At his best, he’s a legitimate top-line forward.

Washington didn’t have to give up an arm and a leg for him, either. Washington sent the 16th overall pick in this year’s draft, Connor McMichael and Milton Gastrin. McMichael came into the league with a lot of promise, but he hasn’t been able to put it all together from a play-driving perspective. Throw in a couple of futures, and it’s a good bet for a Capitals team that is clearly trying to win now while ultimately not giving up a ton.

Adding Tuch and Kyrou gives the Capitals more firepower up front, especially as they try to figure out how and when the Ovechkin era ends. The Capitals don’t necessarily have a star anymore, but they’ve stockpiled a bunch of solid players while complementing them with a bunch of promising young players.

The big thing for Washington is to be a better team at five-on-five and to be less reliant on either historic shooting percentages or league-leading goaltending to steal games. Tuch and Kyrou will help on that front with their play-driving abilities, and both can be clinical finishers as well. Over the last two seasons, Washington ranks 13th in expected goal share, and that’s the big difference between it and the likes of the Hurricanes, Golden Knights, Avalanche and the Panthers (when healthy).

It’s nice to see the Capitals try to compete as they eventually transition away from the Ovechkin era when everyone expected the bottom to fall out. But is this enough to become a Stanley Cup contender? Or is Washington doing all of this just to get eliminated in the second round for the umpteenth time?

If youngsters like Ilya Protas, Cole Hutson and Ryan Leonard all take a step next year, the Capitals could be a serious problem, and they’re clearly banking on that happening in the near future. Whether or not the Capitals can take their game to another level, it’s clear that they’re still trying to be as competitive as possible.

All stats are from Hockey Stats unless otherwise noted.

First, the Senators shocked the hockey world by doing what was, in hindsight, inevitable: trading Brady Tkachuk to Florida to play with his brother, Matthew. The return was a haul that included the ninth overall pick in this year’s draft. Ottawa then turned around and flipped the ninth overall pick to San Jose in return for forward William Eklund. Trades that involve picks toward the top of the draft are notoriously hard to make, but somehow the ninth overall pick has changed hands twice in as many days.

Losing Brady Tkachuk is a brutal blow for an Ottawa team that, despite sterling underlying numbers, already lacked higher-end firepower. If it wasn’t for porous goaltending in the regular season, the Senators could have been one of the best teams in the league. Tkachuk being held scoreless as his team was swept by Carolina in the first round of the playoffs has hurt his image a bit, but there’s no denying that he’s a top-line forward in his prime.

It didn’t always show up on the scoreboard, but Tkachuk was borderline irreplaceable for the Senators last season. Tkachuk was the team’s leader in points per 60 (both at all strengths and at five-on-five), and his 3.48 points per 60 at all strengths ranked 17th in the league. The goal differential with and without Tkachuk last year at five-on-five was basically the same, but the difference in underlying numbers is stark. Without Tkachuk, Ottawa had a 52.9 percent expected goal share, per Natural Stat Trick. With him, that number shot up to 60.5 percent, thanks to a serious uptick in offensive chance creation. It’s hard to find a player like that, even with the ninth overall pick.

Tkachuk not wanting to stay after his contract expires in a couple years obviously changes the math for Ottawa, and Ottawa sold him at the peak of his value. Tkachuk having a no-move clause also made it hard for the Senators to get the most out of it.

With Tkachuk’s trade, Ottawa had a gaping hole in its forward corps, while San Jose had the opposite problem. After the Sharks won the lottery for the second overall pick, Eklund immediately seemed like the odd man out. The Sharks have taken a forward with a top-four pick in the prior three drafts, and Swedish forward Ivar Stenberg is the likely second overall pick this year. With holes on defense and plenty of young, talented forwards between the likes of Macklin Celebrini, Will Smith, Michael Misa, Igor Chernyshov and more, it felt like the Sharks had to move one of them to address their needs.

Eklund isn’t Brady Tkachuk, but he doesn’t necessarily have to be. The Senators still have two first-round picks (the 25th overall pick this year and a conditional first-rounder from Florida in 2029) and a second-round pick from that trade. But those two first-round picks should be later in the draft, and the 2029 pick is top-10 protected anyway. The ninth overall pick this year was the centerpiece of that transaction, which has been turned into Eklund. In the Eklund trade, the Senators also received a pair of prospects in Kasper Halttunen and Brandon Svoboda, but their scoring profiles suggest that they’re longshots to even make it to the NHL.

Eklund is an interesting player. His underlying numbers are fine, but not great. He’s coming off a year where his production declined a little bit, thanks in part to some rather poor finishing luck. Eklund scored just 15 goals on roughly 23 expected at all strengths last year, making him one of the worst shooters in the league. A nasty wrist injury at last year’s world championships probably didn’t help matters.

But Eklund did a lot of the right things on a bad team, and that’s why it’s felt like he’s been due for a breakout the last couple years. He’s a little undersized at 5-foot-10, but he plays a lot bigger than that and isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty to win puck battles. He’s a good skater and excels as a playmaker. Corey Sznadjer’s All Three Zones data shows Eklund’s skill set perfectly. When Eklund has the puck on his stick, something is always about to happen.

The problem with Eklund is that he hasn’t been able to transfer that skill set into either elite production or top-line underlying numbers. Over the last two years, Eklund’s 1.73 points per 60 at five-on-five are 156th in the league among players with at least 50 games played, while he ranks 188th in HockeyStats’ WAR model. He’s handy on the power play and, unlike Tkachuk, stays out of the box. Micah McCurdy’s sG model has Eklund as a fringe top-line forward. I think that’s a little optimistic, but, again, there’s still a lot to like about Eklund. It’s just that, so far, he’s the kind of player whose eye test is a little better than what the data shows.

At his best, he’s a second-line forward who can be a complementary piece on the top line. Throw in some regression on the shooting front, and this could be a nice add for Ottawa, especially with Eklund on a $5.6 million deal for three more seasons.

The hope for Ottawa is that Eklund’s playmaking skills on a better team unlocks something that simply couldn’t happen in San Jose. Eklund turns 24 near the start of the season, so while he doesn’t have a ton of runway left, there’s still a little room to grow. Plus, reuniting with countryman and close friend Fabian Zetterlund is a nice touch. The key question is: Is all of that worth the ninth overall pick?

Meanwhile, for San Jose, trading Eklund for a top-10 pick instead of a defenseman who can help the Sharks now creates some interesting possibilities. The Sharks have already done some jockeying around in the draft, trading back from the 20th pick to the 27th and nabbing defenseman Michael Kesselring. With both the second and ninth picks, they’re now free to take Stenberg and then pick the best defenseman available in a draft that is more defense-heavy after the top-two picks. With the trade market for defensemen being so insane that apparently Bowen Byram is worth more than the fourth overall pick, maybe the best way for San Jose to acquire a defenseman is through the draft, even if it takes a couple years for that player to become a Shark.

But they’re also free to shake things up on draft day. Could both the ninth and 27th picks be used to trade up even further into the draft? Is the ninth pick the centerpiece in another blockbuster trade? After seven straight seasons without making the playoffs, there has to be some urgency in San Jose to finally end the drought, especially with Celebrini and Smith needing significant pay raises after this coming season.

Cap space hasn’t been a problem in San Jose for a while, but the Sharks now have over $46 million in cap space with the forwards and goaltending pretty much set outside of a Collin Graf extension. They’ll have to sort some things out on the defensive end — Sam Dickinson and Dmitry Orlov are the only full-time NHLers signed to a contract — but some of that should be sorted out by affordable contracts for Kesselring, Vincent Desharnais and Shakir Mukhamadullin, plus perhaps Luca Cagnoni making the roster. The Sharks will have to spend a bit to reach the cap floor, and a weak free agent class makes it unwise to depend on that.

The William Eklund trade was one of several major transactions on an insane day in the NHL. With slim pickings in free agency and most teams having a surplus of cap space, prepare for insanity. The Senators are heading into the trenches feeling like they’ve at least patched the hole that Tkachuk left when he wanted out, and it doesn’t feel like they’re done making moves. The Sharks are heading into the next couple weeks with plenty of valuable chips that they can cash in on at any second.

Prepare for chaos.

Data is from Hockey Stats unless otherwise noted. You can find me here on Substack, plus on Twitter/BlueSky @bfarrell727

Carolina silenced its doubters after years of underachieving in the playoffs by blanking the Golden Knights in Vegas in Game 6 and claimed its second Stanley Cup in franchise history. Every year, people come up with what other teams should take away from that year’s champion, and it’s pretty simple with the Hurricanes: Stick to the plan.

If you have a hockey team that consistently wins games and has excellent underlying numbers but struggles to put it together in the playoffs, just keep trying. I’ve written about this a couple of times, but what the Hurricanes did this year was not anything new. They posted an expected goals share in the regular season above 55 percent for the fourth straight year (and were at 54.9 percent the year before that) and accrued over 110 points for the fourth time in five years as well. They were still the team that lacked a superstar and had questionable goaltending and suspect finishing at times.

Sure, there were some differences in the personnel. Budding young stars Jackson Blake and Logan Stankoven were a year older this year, and offseason additions Nikolaj Ehlers and K’Andre Miller gave Carolina some more firepower and defensive depth, respectively. But on the whole, this team profiled exactly like the Hurricanes squads that came before them.

The big change for Carolina was that it simply got the bounces when it needed them the most. After years of brutal puck luck in the postseason, the Hurricanes were finally blessed by the hockey gods.

It’s an unsatisfying conclusion because there’s no way to earn good puck luck. Hockey isn’t always a meritocracy. Sometimes, if you’re the Avalanche, key players get hurt at the wrong time, and an all-time great regular season amounts to a loss in the conference finals. Sometimes, like so many Carolina teams in recent years, you just get “goalied.” It happens, and the variance of hockey is what makes it so unpredictable and chaotic.

But sometimes, it all comes together and everything just goes your way. Most of the time, if you leave Mark Stone and Jack Eichel all alone down low right in front of the goal on the power play, you’re going to get scored on. But on Sunday, Eichel hit the crossbar, and the Golden Knights never found the back of the net.

The way that puck luck is usually measured is through PDO, which is a combination of a team’s on-ice shooting and save percentages. The average is roughly 100. Stanley Cup winners tend to have a pretty high PDO at five-on-five in the playoffs because so much has to go your way to win one in the first place, like having a hot goalie or shooting percentage heater. When Vegas won it all in 2023, it was at an unbelievably high 106.5. The 2011 Bruins, with Tim Thomas doing his best brick wall impression, had a 104.8. The 2025 Panthers were at 104.3, and the list goes on.

For years, the Hurricanes never had anywhere near that kind of puck luck. Prior to this year, Carolina had a PDO below 100 in four of its last five trips to the playoffs. This year, Carolina finished the playoffs with a 101.6 PDO at five-on-five, thanks to a 10 percent shooting percentage. In its previous five playoff runs, Carolina had shot 7.3 percent or lower in all of them. The scary part: Carolina’s finishing this year was actually right in line with its expected goals.

In previous years, Carolina came up short against a pair of recent dynasties, falling to Tampa Bay in 2021 and Florida in 2023 and 2025 (both in the conference finals). This time, Carolina was the dominant force, finishing the playoffs with a 16-3 record.

Likewise, partially because of the Hurricanes actually scoring goals, they were never in danger of getting goalied like some of the Carolina teams of the past. There wasn’t an Igor Shesterkin to steal a series from Carolina like in 2022 and 2024 or Sergei Bobrovsky in 2023. When the Panthers swept Carolina in the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals, Carolina had more than 60 percent of the expected goals at five-on-five, but the Hurricanes scored just four goals on 11.5 expected.

The closest Carolina came to getting stymied by a white-hot goaltender once again came in the Eastern Conference Finals against Montreal. After coming out flat in Game 1 after having nearly two weeks off, Carolina tied the series up with an overtime win and thoroughly dominated the series the rest of the way that it didn’t matter how well Montreal goaltender Jakub Dobes played.

Game 3 somehow needed overtime despite Carolina owning 75.5 percent of the expected goals at five-on-five, but after Andrei Svechnikov buried the game-winning goal, it was all over for Montreal. The next two games were more of a formality than anything else. Carolina had an 84 percent expected goal share at five-on-five in a Game 4 win before unceremoniously sending Montreal packing in similar fashion in Game 5. Carolina’s 66.8 percent expected goals share in the series is the highest in a best-of-seven series since the analytics era started in 2007-08.

To win the Stanley Cup, you also need heroes, like Jordan Staal out of nowhere scoring a goal in five straight games to start his first Stanley Cup Final in 17 years. In true Hurricanes fashion, they had a bunch of them.

Frederik Andersen was really only as good as the defense in front of him in the regular season (0.71 Goals Saved Above Expected), but he turned it on in the playoffs. Through three rounds, Andersen had a GSAx of 12.5, which trailed only the superhuman efforts of Dobes. When Brandon Bussi, a waiver claim at the beginning of the season, took over in between the pipes for the final three games of the Stanley Cup Final, he was just as good. Between the three starts and relieving Andersen in Game 3, Bussi saved 4.5 goals above expected to help the Hurricanes right the ship and capture the Stanley Cup.

Carolina also had a lethal second line of Blake, Taylor Hall and Stankoven. Putting those three together was the perfect embodiment of this Carolina team, as it was both constantly dangerous and a reminder of how savvy the Hurricanes’ front office was when putting this team together. Blake was a former fourth-round pick, Hall was seemingly a throw-in when Carolina acquired him as part of the first Mikko Rantanen trade and Stankoven was the centerpiece of the return Carolina received when it flipped Rantanen to Dallas.

Blake led the Hurricanes in points with 20, with Hall right behind him at 19. Together, that line finished the playoffs with a 68.2 percent expected goal share while outscoring the opposition 18-7, per Natural Stat Trick.

For a team that has contended as long as Carolina has, the Hurricanes are set up to be this good for years to come. Sebastian Aho is Carolina’s highest-paid player at just $9.75 million, and he’s locked up through 2032. Ehlers, Seth Jarvis, Stankoven, Blake, Miller and Jaccob Slavin all have at least five years left on their current deals. The only important pending free agent this year is Alexander Nikishin, and he’s only a restricted free agent. The only thing scarier than a Stanley Cup champion is a defending Stanley Cup champion with over $12 million in cap space and almost an entire team under contract.

Carolina was due to finally break through after icing contending teams year after year. “The same old Hurricanes” saying is dead. A lot has to go your way to capture a Stanley Cup, and it all finally came together for Carolina.

All stats are from Hockey Stats unless otherwise noted

Erik Karlsson put together one of the best offensive seasons for a defenseman in NHL history when he recorded 101 points for the Sharks in 2022-23, the most since Brian Leetch in 1991-92. When Karlsson was acquired by the Sharks back in 2018, he created a high-octane 1-2 punch of offensive defensemen with the free-spirited Brent Burns.

That dynamic didn’t pan out like the Sharks hoped, as they only made the playoffs one time in four seasons together. That one year (2018-19), though, was incredible, even if Karlsson wasn’t healthy for all of it. Those two spearheaded a Sharks offense that finished the year tied for second in the league in goals. Burns led both the Sharks and all NHL defensemen in points with 83, and Karlsson was a weapon when healthy with 45 points in 53 games.

Between 2014-15, when Burns was moved back from forward to defense full-time, and 2021-22, after which Burns was traded to Carolina, Burns led all NHL defensemen in points, and Karlsson was fifth, though Karlsson had more points per game.

Before Burns and Karlsson, there was Dan Boyle. Boyle had a much more well-rounded game than Burns and Karlsson, but he still had plenty of offensive production. During his tenure in San Jose, only Duncan Keith and Shea Weber had more points than Boyle. Burns, Karlsson and Boyle have accounted for 13 of the 15 highest-scoring seasons by defensemen in franchise history.

But Boyle retired a decade ago, Burns was dealt in the summer of 2022 and Karlsson followed suit a year later. In the years since, the Sharks have struggled immensely to find offense from its blueline.

In the three seasons since Karlsson’s departure, the Sharks’ leader in points by a defenseman is Mario Ferraro, who has just 61 points in 238 games. Dmitry Orlov’s 37 points this past season are the most by a San Jose blueliner in that span. As the Sharks look to get out of their rebuild and finally return to the playoffs for the first time since 2019, improving the defense’s offensive capabilities should be near the top of the to-do list.

Four teams haven’t had a defenseman hit the 40-point mark in that span: San Jose, Chicago, St. Louis and, oddly enough, Florida. Yes, the Panthers managed to win back-to-back Stanley Cups without a defenseman scoring 40 points, though Aaron Ekblad had a real shot at doing it in 2024-25 before failing a drug test. The Panthers made up for it by having a bunch of well-rounded defensemen who could move the puck and a forward corps that could more than make up for any offensive shortcomings from the defensemen.

The Sharks aren’t quite in a class of their own when it comes to a lack of offense from their defensemen, but they’re not that far off. San Jose’s defensemen have combined for 385 points, trailing only Chicago (371). Those two teams are the only ones to not even break 400. This is counting Arizona and Utah as the same team — technically, they’re separate franchises, but nothing on the roster actually changed — but it’s worth noting that Utah’s production alone in two years (347) isn’t that far off from what San Jose has done in three.

When the Sharks dealt Karlsson to Pittsburgh in the summer of 2023, it certainly wasn’t because they were trying to be competitive. Still, years of trying to complement their two star offensive defensemen with more defensive-minded blueliners meant that, once Burns and Karlsson were gone, there wasn’t anyone that could pick up the slack. I watched this team play in Nashville in October of 2023 and have a vivid memory of watching Kyle Burroughs quarterback the power play.

Things were so dire that the Sharks traded for Calen Addison, who’s been in the AHL the last two seasons since leaving San Jose, just to have someone with a pulse offensively quarterback the power play. Addison was by far and away the team leader in power play minutes among defensemen, but he also finished the year with just 12 points in 60 games and wasn’t brought back after the season.

Arguably, the best season by a Sharks defenseman since Karlsson’s departure came from Jake Walman, whom the Sharks acquired from Detroit for free while bafflingly taking on a second-round pick (which the Sharks used to select Leo Sahlin Wallenius). In addition to being the only Sharks defenseman to score more than half a point per game in that span, Walman played like a top pairing defenseman and was essentially San Jose’s only defenseman who could move the puck.

Walman’s tenure in San Jose was short-lived, as he was dealt at the 2025 trade deadline for a first-round pick in this year’s draft. San Jose filled in the hole he left behind the following year with John Klingberg, another offensive-minded defenseman who wouldn’t really cost the Sharks anything to acquire. Klingberg didn’t fare as well as Walman, especially on the power play.

Once upon a time, Klingberg was one of the NHL’s best power-play quarterbacks. In addition to some incredible on-ice impacts with the man advantage, he also had the eighth-most power-play points among defensemen between the 2015-16 and 2021-22 seasons.

However, those days are long over. The Sharks actually fared better with Orlov than Klingberg when up a man. With Orlov, the Sharks scored 9.86 goals per 60 minutes on 8.18 expected, per Natural Stat Trick. With Klingberg, the goals went all the way down to 3.95 on eight expected, and the Sharks gave up significantly more shorthanded chances and shorthanded goals. The Sharks failing to finish when Klingberg was on the ice isn’t necessarily his fault, though perhaps it can be argued that the Sharks moved the puck better with Orlov running the unit in a way that would be difficult for public expected goals models to pick up on. The two defensemen’s numbers with Macklin Celebrini while up a man show a similar divide, so it’s not just a deployment problem.

Orlov is still under contract for another season, while Klingberg likely won’t be back with his contract up. San Jose does have a couple of options in the pipeline in Luca Cagnoni and Eric Pohlkamp. Cagnoni has been one of the AHL’s highest-scoring defensemen the last two seasons, while Pohlkamp had the most points by a defenseman in the NCAA last year.

But it feels a little unlikely that a third of the Sharks’ defense will be two players who are both under 23 and less than 6 feet tall. Plus, the Sharks probably shouldn’t bet on two rookies accounting for all of their offense from the blueline. Even if San Jose selects Chase Reid with the second overall pick, they’re still going to need more immediate help.

NHL-ready options are hard to find, but it wouldn’t be all that surprising if the Sharks find a way to acquire Morgan Rielly. San Jose has enough gritty, defensive-minded defensemen to make up for some of his many defensive shortcomings, his $7.5 million salary through 2030 isn’t too painful and the Sharks have plenty of cap space, as they’re currently well below the cap floor.

With Celebrini, Will Smith, Michael Misa, Igor Chernyshov, William Eklund and Collin Graf (and maybe Ivar Stenberg?), San Jose has a treasure trove of young, talented forwards who can put the puck in the back of the net. Now, the Sharks just need to find a way to give them more support from the blueline.

Between a 14-year playoff drought, a team that only caught fire after it fired its general manager and some of the best finishing in the league, the Buffalo Sabres are a lot to unpack. By finally returning to the playoffs and even winning a round, it was a dream season for Sabres fans. Now that they’ve exorcised their playoff demons, what’s next for the Sabres?

Heading into this year, the Sabres were already an interesting analytics case study because they managed to have one of the best finishing teams in the analytics era up to that point and still didn’t come anywhere close to making the playoffs, thanks in part to some underwhelming underlying numbers and goaltending. Last season, the Sabres shot 10.6 percent at five-on-five. This year, the Sabres, of course, regressed to the mean by shooting… 10.6 percent at five-on-five.

Scoring more goals than expected is something that this group has been able to do consistently over the last four years. Betting on a team to overperform again is usually pretty risky. But when being an outlier is the norm, maybe this is just who the Sabres are.

If the Sabres shot as well at five-on-five both seasons and were significantly better this year, then what changed?

One of the big changes for Buffalo this year was that it did a better job of driving play. The Sabres had an expected goal share this year of 50.8 percent compared to just 47.5 percent last year. Even when you’re shooting over 10 percent, it’s hard to consistently win games when your opponents are generating better chances. While Buffalo was more or less the same defensively this year, it created more offense and then continued to convert at an elite rate. Buffalo’s expected goals per 60 minutes at five-on-five jumped from 2.38 last year to 2.66 this year.

Buffalo trading J.J. Peterka to Utah last offseason sums up the differences between this year and last year. Peterka was coming off a year where, while he didn’t drive play, the Sabres shot 14.2 percent with him on the ice at five-on-five. In return, the Sabres received Josh Doan and Michael Kesselring. Kesselring only played 34 games for Buffalo and, even when healthy, got lost in the shuffle on a deep Buffalo blueline. But Doan was a revelation.

Doan finished the season with a 54.4 percent expected goal share and was eighth on the team in five-on-five points per 60 minutes at 1.93. The expected goals numbers didn’t always quite match up to reality for Doan this year, but it’s worth noting that Buffalo was just under 50 percent in expected goal share without him on the ice. Still, the Sabres found what they needed: a forward that could drive play and do more than just score. Meanwhile in Utah, Peterka’s production declined as his puck luck came back down to earth.

Of course, the other big change is that Buffalo had much better goaltending. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen did a complete 180, going from minus-12.9 goals saved above expected last season to plus-10.8 this season. Alex Lyon also came into Buffalo and performed similarly to Luukkonen. Buffalo still has a long way to go in terms of driving play — it finished the year 15th in expected goal share — but elite finishing and solid goaltending will certainly make up for those shortcomings.

While the Sabres enjoyed the most success they’ve had in nearly 20 years, it didn’t always look that promising. Buffalo was staring down a 15th-straight spring at home when it fired general manager Kevyn Adams on Dec. 15. Somehow, despite not really making any on-ice changes, the Sabres became one of the best teams in the league overnight. Buffalo went a blistering 36-9-5 the rest of the way, going from outside the playoffs to comfortably in the postseason and finally ending the playoff drought.

Even now, it really doesn’t make sense for the Sabres to respond to a general manager getting fired like a team might when a head coach gets fired. It was the same players with the same coach and, presumably, the same system. Under the hood, it’s not like the underlying numbers changed significantly, either.

Sure, the Sabres’ expected goal share improved a bit, and they started creating more offense. But they also started giving up slightly more chances. Despite this, it’s pretty simple: they started scoring a lot more goals and giving up a lot fewer goals. Riveting stuff, I know.

In fairness to the Sabres, they turned it up another notch in the playoffs, albeit against teams that weren’t exactly powerhouses at driving play in Boston and Montreal. Buffalo currently ranks third in the league in expected goal share at five-on-five (54.6 percent) in the playoffs and arguably would’ve won that series against Montreal if Jakub Dobes didn’t play out of his mind.

As for where the Sabres go from here, that’s a little harder to tell. They only have about $12 million in cap space, but they do have 22 players signed. Zach Benson is a restricted free agent, and they’ll have to make a decision about Peyton Krebs. Kesselring, another restricted free agent, feels like an odd man out. Alex Tuch has been a valuable top-six winger since arriving in Buffalo, but he’s now the league’s top unrestricted free agent forward and will surely sign for more than the Sabres can currently afford.

Is this recipe of a high PDO and passable underlying numbers repeatable? Is it enough to win a Stanley Cup? It feels like it’s hard to bet on this team doing this again, but, again, this group has routinely overperformed compared to what was “expected.” It feels dumb to say “they can’t keep doing this” while they do, in fact, keep doing this.

But it also feels dumb to count on the Sabres having that kind of success from mid-December on again. Maybe continued improvements from youngsters Zach Benson, Konsta Helenius, Noah Ostlund, Jiri Kulich is enough to offset any regression at either end of the ice. There’s a decent enough foundation here that this shouldn’t be a one-and-done for Buffalo, but there’s also plenty of work for Buffalo to do moving forward.

All stats are from Hockey Stats