As we draw closer to the NHL preseason, it comes time for us to look ahead and think about the rest of the Pro Hockey world’s chances at the Playoffs or, heaven forbid…the Stanley Cup.
To start off, we start at the other side of the country with the Atlantic Division. One full of the oldest teams in the sport, with history, stars, and firepower galore, one with some of the most impressive individuals to ever grace the ice…whose collective offseason seem to suggest a certain team in South Florida might’ve done some real psychological damage after a once in a lifetime Stanley Cup run.
We will be previewing these divisions by dividing the teams into one of five groups, based entirely on whether or not they’re going to make the NHL playoffs, in my professional opinion:
- Absolutely Making It – The locks for success. These teams are probably going to be competing to win their divisions, getting President’s Trophy nomination, and going for the Conference Final. This is not a guarantee, but they have what it takes to at least make the playoffs with minimal struggle.
- Probably Making It – This is for the teams that are probably good enough to get into the playoffs, but not enough to win the regular season title. Still, they’re in a comfortable spot.
- Might Make it – This is for teams who are going to have to make sure their flaws don’t completely overwhelm them. They’re talented, but are either just coming into being a competitive team and need to figure out their long-term plan for an aging power. This season might make them or break them.
- Maybe Next Year – The upcoming season isn’t for them, so maybe they should get their hopes up for next year; whether it’s because of roster turnover, or because of regime changes that are still yet to be implemented. This is a space I also leave open for rebuilding teams that have clear end goals in mind, so even teams who won’t be over .500 this year are still capable of selling hope.
- Why are you like this – This is a special camp I have for teams that are not just bad and aren’t going to make the playoffs, but probably completely directionless, poorly run, or actively trying to break their own chances of success in the process. There will probably only be about three or four of these kinds of teams in our preview series, as that’s usually the case in an NHL season. There’s plenty of mediocrity to go around…it takes guts to be this kind of bad.
Let’s get into it.
Absolutely Making it
1. Toronto Maple Leafs
The funniest part of giving the Leafs any kind of plaudits is that it won’t matter. Nothing will satisfy them. Anything less than the Stanley Cup for this team will be considered an utter failure, and could cause them to make some incredibly bad decisions in the aftermath.
The Leafs shock loss to the Panthers seems to have done some kind of permanent damage to the psyche of both the Leafs fanbase and the Leafs Front Office. They feel they got pushed around and bullied by the Panthers throughout their 2nd round series against Florida, and promptly re-did nearly their entire left wing; Matthew Knies will likely return as he marches his way up the lineup through experience, but in his way are going to be the things that the Leafs appear to care about more; being AGGRESSIVE. and MEAN. and DOING TRUCULENCE. Max Domi and Tyler Bertuzzi are fine players, but they also fit a specific mold of player that one might make the argument was not present on the roster for that 2nd round loss, and their fourth line from a distance definitely looks mean and nasty; Ryan Reaves, Dylan Gambrell being a target for 4th line center, an actually solid tandem in Samsonov and Woll in net and then topping it all off with the four headed monster of Matthews, Marner, Nylander and Tavares feels like the added spice to a team seemingly engineered to dominate a shaky Eastern Conference.
If there can be said to be negatives, it’s in the details of how they reacted to that Panthers loss, and why it happens. Part of the problem is that the Leafs as-constructed are designed to maximize the most of their “Core 4”.
Given that all four are extremely talented and they built a defensive corps that could back them up well, they could rapidly take over games and drop multiple goals in short order on the opponent…but at their worst, it meant the entire team basically revolved on them getting on the board in order for things to happen, and it got exposed badly against the Panthers; The Leafs probably shouldn’t have been near dead-on for Expected Goals against the Panthers, because they had more firepower on paper…but they let that firepower become isolated.
All of Brad Treliving’s moves this offseason…appear to have just made that problem worse.
At every position, team defense appears to have been purely a secondary concern, John Klingberg is all-offense, all the time. Max Domi is all-offense (and all-offensive), all the time. Tyler Bertuzzi is all-offense, all the time. Ryan Reaves and Dylan Gambrell honestly aren’t very good at backchecking either. They have solid goaltending in Woll and Samsonov, but they might be in for more than they bargained for if the intimidation factor doesn’t end up paying dividends on the back end.
Still, with a lot of the Eastern Conference in flux, they’re on-paper favorite for cup contention this year simply because of the unbelievable firepower they bring to the party.
Gonna have to make it count, Toronto.
Probably Making It
2. Tampa Bay Lightning
The Lightning made some smart and also some strange decisions this offseason; while they’ve doubled down on the whole Tanner Jeannot experiment, they’ve also correctly identified that Brandon Hagel could be a useful part of their offense for the time being, and are taking a flyer on former Penguin Connor Sheary, who seems like exactly the kind of player who could be a serious thorn in the sides of the Eastern Conference foes in a Jon Cooper system. As always, it starts with Andrei Vasilevskiy in net, and balloons out to their murderer’s row of talented forwards; Stamkos, Kucherov, Point, Cirelli, and I also expect that Michael Eyssimont with a full season could end up being sneaky good for the Lightning as well. Tampa always seems to have a base level of competency that they’re able to reach, even if it takes them a month or two to get it working.
Where my issues with the Lightning lay are that…well…I’m not quite sure they’re optimizing their depth as well as they could be. Their goaltending is, as per usual, dependent on Andrei Vasilevskiy, but the rest of their depth just kind of feels like it’s built to spin it’s wheels without actually doing anything. Does a Luke Glendening really get you out of such a talented division alive? Is Victor Hedman going to be good for another long season? Further, how much more can they get out of their veteran captain Steven Stamkos? Is the entire right side of their defense really that flat and ineffective? Is Nick Perbix really the best Tampa has right now?
If there’s anybody who’s earned the benefit of doubt it’s Jon Cooper, Julien BrisBois and the Tampa Bay Lightning as a whole, but I feel that the Lightning are still staring down the barrel of a time in which they need to make some big moves to remain a relevant player, and that time is very soon, if not now. Especially since they’re now once again strapped for cap.
Can’t really time a Nikita Kucherov injury to improve this squad mid-season, I fear. Still probably going to the playoffs, however.
3 or 4. Boston Bruins
The most insidious thing about the Boston Bruins is that getting embarrassed in the most excruciating way possible, losing your #1 and #2 center in the same week of the offseason, and having to drop a major force of your playmaking for money reasons, is that all of that, which would probably cripple most other teams and send them into a years-long rebuild…may only drop them down into a wildcard spot.
It’s like if the boogeyman came with an iced coffee and a funny accent.
Their weakness is pretty obvious; they just lost two of the best faceoff guys in the league of the past two decades and the guy who has more Selke awards than anybody else. They’re so far poised to replace them with Pavel Zacha; who is a fine center but has only ever played center in Boston under emergency circumstances, and Charlie Coyle; a depth center who has rapidly declined over the past few years. Topping all of that off, they had to trade Taylor Hall for salary cap room. They’re gonna need help up front, and have absolutely no money left to try and fix it. Getting Geekie helped, but he may end up doing more than he bargained for due to the rigors of what’s being asked of their aging center depth. Let it also be known that no help is coming from their prospect system either, which has sat at the bottom of the league for the past few years.
Where they have an unambiguous strength is in their defense, which just lost one of its more mercurial players in Connor Clifton, and will be running back an otherwise stellar defense corps with Lindholm, Grzelcyk, McAvoy, and Carlo as your top 4, but also a goaltending tandem that just won the Jennings and a “starter” (they platoon their netminders) who just won the Vezina. If they need to hold the fort long enough for David Pastrnak, James Van Reimsdyk, Jake DeBrusk and Brad Marchand to be the x-factor scorers? then so be it.
It’ll probably work too, and that’s gonna drive people crazy.
They also brought back Milan Lucic for those 2010-2011 vibes. That might as well be as an ambassador role due to his beloved run with the team back in the early 2010’s and he is super not that player anymore, but one can only imagine fans will still be chanting his name as loud as possible for every hit he throws. They’ll probably be back in it, but the postseason will probably be their kryptonite again. Patience, with all things, is how you finally compromise and bring them to a permanent end.
3 or 4. Florida Panthers
Hilariously, the team that’s caused all this consternation might struggle their way into a wildcard spot again this year. Having a cinderella playoff run is fun, and it seems to have energized the South Florida faithful in a way that hasn’t been seen in the area since before the turn of the millennium…but that’s over now, and the price is steep.
For bright sides, they still get to keep Matthew Tkachuk; a player rapidly making a name for himself as perhaps the best American forward in the game (So far), two-way phenom center Sasha Barkov, and noted Leaf-killer Sam Reinhart. They even improved on that by picking up one of Colorado’s unambiguous positives from last year in Evan Rodrigues! That forward corps when healthy honestly looks pretty awesome!
But they paid a price on defense that is both steep and gruesome, and not just on lost players like Radko Gudas; the physical health of Brandon Montour and Aaron Ekblad as well, two of their very best on the back-end. Both are out for the time being and could probably miss training camp, so what follows is a lot of…question marks. Oliver Ekman-Larsson joins Panther Red, as does Dmitry Kulikov. Both might’ve been solid choices once, but right now they’re a bit long in the tooth…and neither were exactly known for being ideal defenders lately. On the final pairing is castoffs from the Bruins and Blues; neither being especially missed. As of right now, assuming Ekblad and Montour need a week or two to get acclimated, their best defenders are Forsling and Mahura, and that’s gonna force Coach Paul Maurice to get creative with the pairings if they want to survive without their game-changers on the blueline for any length of time, especially if Ekblad’s injury history once again rears its ugly head during the season.
And then there’s the netminder. The cause of and solution to most of their problems.
The Panthers got the very best they could out of Sergei Bobrovsky and Alex Lyon, but Lyon has gone to greener(ish) pastures in Detroit, and backing up Bob these days is long-time backup Anthony Stolarz, who is…decidedly not Alex Lyon, who was able to pick up the slack and get them over the regular season finish line after Bobrovsky went through another long period of being…well…Inaugural Season Grubauer-esque. Does Stolarz have that kind of power in his game if he’s called on? Because if he doesn’t, that might be a major problem for the Cats. They can’t move on from Bob due to him being extremely moneyed for a goaltender, and he’s begun to have injury trouble of his own. For all the good things the Panthers do on offense, they’re gonna need Bob’s form to be passable on a night-in night-out basis.
Too much has been invested in all of this to make last year a fluke.
Or they could return to being the cocaine speedboat of the NHL, and win games 6-5 every night. That’s always an option!
Might Make It
3 to 5. Buffalo Sabres
The Buffalo Sabres are in the most interesting position in the entire division. Having finally found some form in the back half of last season, they have got pretty much everything to start a glorious revival of the Good Sabres From The 90s™, but now even faster, and with more scoring.
They could end up comfortably in a playoff spot…or right back where they started.
The Sabres are the youngest team in the NHL on average; with plenty of incredibly dynamic young talent entering their primes mostly all at the same time with a little mix of veteran talent who’s been through the tough times to keep them all honest. Rasmus Dahlin and Owen Power could be a force on the back end for years to come. Tage Thompson, Alex Tuch, Dylan Cozens, Casey Mittelstadt, and JJ Peterka all look like they’re going to take the division by storm. Topping it all off, there’s Devon Levi in net, a revelation that came far too late last season, and one the Sabres have to be ready to take full advantage of here. With a strong, hungry core like this and with a division where most of its good teams are in some form of transition, this is probably their best shot at getting valuable playoff experience.
But that defense outside of Power and Dahlin is…rough, to put it mildly. I didn’t have a lot of nice things to say about Clifton in the Boston preview, but he is unambiguously an upgrade over the rest of their d-corps, and that’s a problem. Levi isn’t just good, he has the real potential to be great…but he really shouldn’t need to be all night; that’s how you burn a goalie out. Further, is this finally, at long last, for-really-reals-I-swear-this-time-I-pinky-promise the year Jeff Skinner gets his act together? Because they’re still on the hook for him for quite a lot of money and he still looks kinda cooked as an offensive option.
If those things break right for the Sabres, they could be rocketing up the board and into the playoffs easily. If not? Well…there’s always next season, but the Buffalo faithful have had enough of waiting for “next season”.
If there’s any team that probably deserves a little good postseason news, it’s this one.
4 or 6. Ottawa Senators
This is another team whose place on this list is extremely fluid.
The Sens are in a weird place; they have ownership now, which is a good place to be after not having one of those, and they unquestionably know their strengths. After that, though? GM Pierre Dorion has been kinda…confusing lately on how he’s decided to improve that team. Still, their top six still looks extremely dangerous even with the change; with Tim Stutzle bringing Brady Tkachuk and probably Tarasenko or Drake Batherson along to put all of the pucks on net, Josh Norris’ rebound season getting a major shot in the arm by playing with Claude Giroux again, Dominik Kubalik looking to make a big impact, and the incredible talent of Thomas Chabot, Artem Zub, Erik Brannstrom, and Jake Sanderson on the back end look like a team that could be a nightmare to play against week-in and week-out, especially with how willing they are to mix it up after the whistle.
There’s just one little issue that’s gonna keep them down; their own end of the ice. Extremely few of their forwards are known for backchecking prowess, and that’s a precarious position to be in if you want to contend. Their defense corps is looking pretty formidable, but if it’s realistically only your defenders and a goaltender that’s able to put a stop to pucks for you, eventually the other team can grind you down. That’s gonna be putting a lot of undue pressure on your back end to perform.
Where they did make an unambiguous improvement is in picking up goaltender Joonas Korpisalo from the Kings. A career .904 SV% isn’t perfect, but given what the Sens have been dealing with in Matt Murray and Craig Anderson’s later years, it’s a rock you can build from, and is Korpi gonna have to be if they ever want to make noise. He and longer-time Sen Anton Forsberg have a history as a tandem, so maybe they can conjure some of those old feelings to bring greatness?
Last year, they were pegged as the team that would win and lose every game 6-5, but it never quite materialized in a way that they could ride into a playoff spot; especially with how competitive the Metro was, and how difficult it was for any team to assail the Bruins’ point total. The Sens have to start figuring out how to be that kind of Pesky for this season to be worth going for it. They could do it!
…They’re just gonna live and die by their goaltending. No pressure!
Maybe Next Year
7. Montreal Canadiens
The oldest team in the league has had to pay dearly for the indolence of previous regimes (even though they went to the finals during the COVID season lmao), but they’re finally in a position where they can start to say they’re improving. Improving slowly, but improving!
Cole Caufield is a portable human highlight reel, Kirby Dach’s found a comfortable niche, Juraj Slafkovsky might get a full year in the show, their goaltending seems stable enough, Arber Xhekaj looks ready to bust some heads and keep order, and Michael Matheson has comfortably found himself as the #1 defender on the Montreal Canadiens. Most importantly of all? They’re all healthy. That was a huge killer for them last year, and now they’ll have plenty of opportunity to really show their stuff.
They still need to work on some things before they try to reclaim any glory for Francophone Canada, but they’re in a great position to start making some noise in the near future!
Where their work begins full-time is in trying to figure out what the best version of their defense looks like; it seems like they have a good start in Matheson, David Savard, Jordan Harris, Kaiden Guhle, and Arber Xhekaj, but they need to figure out who in their now expansive prospect system who fills in; a veteran in Chris Wideman, or a developing rookie.
Further, and this is just a personal qualm I’ve had with their roster building…it seems like their Top 6 centers have plateau’d as NHLers. Suzuki’s on-ice impact is shrinking with time, and I don’t think Christian Dvorak is really the answer at 2nd line center. Newly acquired Alex Newhook is going to be an interesting part of figuring out their middle six; does he find a space in their roster as a winger? Or does he finally take his place as a center and live up to expectations he couldn’t reach in Colorado? It would definitely help, the underlying numbers really don’t like a lot of the Montreal winger corps at the moment, so finding a good center arrangement might set themselves up for better success.
Sooner or later, they’re gonna need to consider pruning some branches if they want to improve themselves out of the rebuild and into contention. But they’re on the right track, and that’s better for the game if they are.
Why Are You Like This?
8. Detroit Red Wings
I’m just gonna be real with you. I really don’t know what the Red Wings are trying to do here anymore.
The smart-ass answer of course is “compete”, which…are they? Because this was previously one of the worst teams in the league at having and shooting the puck last year, and outside of a very specific group of players…this roster kind of sucks.
Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond? Good! Getting Alex DeBrincat to add a little scoring punch to that line? Also good! Moritz Sieder? Good! Adding JT Compher to be a solid middle-six center and penalty killer? Good! Giving Ville Huuso some help by getting a better backup goaltender? Good! The entire bottom six largely ineffective and going to be even moreso with Klim Kostin and Christian Fischer? Bad! Overhauling nearly the entirety of your defense to a bunch of deeply flawed players like Justin Holl, Jeff Petry, and Ben Chiarot? Bad! Giving Joe Veleno money in spite of a crippling inability to turn the puck up ice? Bad! Signing Alex Lyon out of Florida after not learning your lesson from the Nedeljkovic debacle? Bad! Daniel Sprong probably facing some form of misdemeanor for assault of an IndyCar guy? Very bad!
The best chance they have right now is if some of their admittedly very strong prospect system finally graduates and gets some of these guys riding pine on Level 9 and hit the ground running. Not just one, but multiples of prospects need to prove themselves in the two-week period of preseason so that the good parts of this team can have some genuine help.
I would be nicer about this whole situation if this was year one of a rebuild; that’s fine, decisions based around gritting your teeth and clearing cap space are acceptable. We’re on year five of the Yzerplan however, and this team is still spinning its wheels in the muck. They draft well and that’s nice for them but…after a half-decade, you’d hope you’d see more for all the suffering at this point.
Eventually, they need to be able to have more for it than fewer points than the Canucks got last year. I don’t think, with the roster they have, they’re going to have that come next April.
And that’s the vaunted Atlantic Division! Unquestionably tight, but plenty of room for teams to move around with ease. A team that could surprise awaits your viewing if you have nothing to do at 4pm on a Wednesday!
See you on Thursday for the Metro preview, where we wonder if someone can stop those mad brutes from Raleigh!
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