The 2023-24 NHL season has hit its rough midway point this weekend, with approximately half of the teams past the 41 games played mark and the other half not quite there. The league has had a ridiculously unbalanced schedule this season (how has Ottawa only played 37 games???) so you can’t really peg an exact halfway mark but this as close as it gets. It’s also the first time I’ve had free time to write about non-college football or NFL in awhile, so I’m calling it the halfway mark, exact details be damned!
Today I’m going to slice up the NHL into tiers based on the likelihood of winning the Stanley Cup, with narrative themes infused as part of my rankings calculus. I’ve come up with five tiers in particular:
Tier I: Foremost Contenders (teams that are well-rounded and don’t need major deadline upgrades)
Tier II: Contenders With Questions (teams who can legit win the Stanley Cup but probably need help at the deadline before I’d feel comfortable picking them in April)
Tier III: Okay (wildcard possibilities who could get hot and make a deep run but I don’t think are really Cup contenders)
Tier IV: Not Good (could get in as a wild card but are no threat to challenge for the Cup)
Tier V: Bad! (waiting for the draft lottery)
With that in mind, let’s start from the bottom and go from there. Beginning with the worst…
Tier V: Bad!
The bottom of the barrel teams don’t need to be discussed much because there isn’t much to talk about. The San Jose Sharks are the worst NHL team we’ve seen in a long, long time and possibly the single worst non-expansion team in history. I wonder if Tomáš Hertl regrets signing an extension there! The Chicago Blackhawks are once again decrepit after Connor Bedard broke his jaw and Nick Foligno injured himself sticking up for Bedard. Toss in the Corey Perry situation and Taylor Hall already out for the year and they are now icing a lineup arguably worse than the one they put out there for much of last season. The Anaheim Ducks have had a similar situation unfold with Pavel Mintyukov and Trevor Zegras both injured and Jamie Drysdale now traded. Their early season success has faded away and they are starting to look just as dystopian as last season as well.
The Columbus Blue Jackets are more interesting. No, the Jackets being very bad isn’t surprising at all. What’s interesting is how it is happening, amid a near-constant stream of PR nightmares and bizarre fiascos. First the whole Mike Babcock thing unfolded, which was followed by demoting Kent Johnson to the AHL, scratching Patrik Laine, telling David Jiriček he was a full-time NHLer before sending him to the AHL, and now a strange situation with goalie Elvis Merzlikins, who was demoted from #1 goalie to #3 out of the blue, without much statistical justification. Every single incident has been followed by a 32 Thoughts podcast episode examining it and a damning Athletic article featuring startlingly bad quotes begging the question, “what is going on with this team?” To borrow a line from the NCAA, it feels like a lack of institutional control and signs of deep, profound dysfunction across the organization. No one is on the same page over what the plan for the players or team is and it feels like everyone needs to be shown the door.
Our last two teams are Atlantic Division teams, ones that came in with opposite expectations. The Montreal Canadiens continue to chug along in a rebuild, experiencing a terrific season from Nick Suzuki and a disappointing one from Cole Caufield, while their young D have shown flashes. Not much to say, other than they will get their top 10 draft pick in the summer, which is the goal. The Buffalo Sabres on the other hand have as bad of vibes as any team in this category. After narrowly missing the playoffs last season, the Sabres have been a dumpster fire. Their 5v5 play is alright but poor special teams and wretched goaltending have sabotaged the team’s record. The young goalies were not ready for prime time, Tage Thompson, Dylan Cozens, and Rasmus Dahlin have all taken steps back, and the team is getting booed off the ice. It’s gonna be another year without playoffs in Buffalo and you have to think pressure will be on in the offseason to aggressively upgrade the roster.
Tier IV: Not Good
This is a grouping of teams vaguely (or firmly) in the playoff picture who have major reasons for concern and are thus not teams I can see making any sort of damage in the postseason even if they get in. The Ottawa Senators are almost certainly not making the playoffs and some may wonder why they’re not in the previous tier. The answer is, their underlying play isn’t bad. The Senators control play better than any of the teams in Tier V, which is why they’re here. The problem continues to be the goaltending and instability with the franchise, a coach and GM fired not helping but thinking Joonas Korpisalo was the answer to chronically poor goaltending has also done the opposite of “help”. Like Buffalo, the Sens are in a very precarious position in their franchise build but at least they’re not getting caved in regularly.
On the flip side, the New York Islanders are a team that has a pretty decent shot of making the playoffs but I am not being fooled. The Isles continue to survive thanks to 15 overtime/shootout games(!) affording them 10 loser points, but their underlying numbers are atrocious. Sportlogiq’s expected goals model has them fourth-worst in the league, while the public data is only marginally better. They are getting great seasons from Bo Horvat, Brock Nelson, Mat Barzal, and Noah Dobson, but very few other players on the roster appear to have a pulse. The Isles don’t play the low event style they did under Barry Trotz and the result is creating a good number of offensive chances but disastrous defensive results, bottom five in the league in all situations. New York has great goaltending and some good frontline players, yes, but this roster is not deep enough and you cannot win the Cup giving up 35 shots per night.
The Arizona Coyotes and Detroit Red Wings get caved in with too much regularity but have hung around the periphery due to opposite PDO factors- in Arizona’s case, a mix of good goaltending + high-level shooting and in Detroit’s case, outstanding shooting. Neither feel super real… neither team possesses too many elite finishers to keep up their S%. I do love Connor Ingram and the season he’s having for the Yotes, but both teams are 47-48% xG teams and are both incomplete rosters with glaring holes. The Red Wings’ situation in net is also concerning and both are franchises you would probably say are in some degree of a rebuild. Neither side is bad, but as the tier says, neither are good. Playoffs are probably a bit of a stretch at this point.
No team was as odd as the Washington Capitals were for awhile, a team with uniformly awful underlying numbers, a bad GD, poor individual performances, and yet, a good record??? The Caps have held a playoff spot down for much of the season but they have started to come down to earth in line with a team that is -26 in GD (only six better than the Blue Jackets!). A short summation is the Caps win a lot of close games and get blown out often when they lose. Explains the comical GD, but not a formula for winning hockey. Alex Ovechkin’s 8 goals is the biggest bummer but no one is playing particularly well, their PP is bad, and they are bottom quartile in expected goals. Playoffs are probably not happening here either.
A team with some decisions to make at the trade deadline are the Calgary Flames, who fired Darryl Sutter and have not reaped any benefits from the decision. If anything, they’ve suffered, as the team’s underlying metrics have dipped from the elite numbers they had under Sutter to very average under Ryan Huska. The Jonathan Huberdeau contract is a disaster that’s been well discussed across the internet, but it ultimately isn’t too important to the central decision that needs to be made: should the Flames blow it up? The answer is 100% yes, but whether an ownership group allergic to ever endorsing a rebuild will do so is another story.
At the very least they may trade Noah Hanifin, Chris Tanev, and Elias Lindholm because they’re pending UFAs, but the Flames should go further and see if they can unload Jacob Markstrom and Blake Coleman, both of whom would have a ton of value (especially if the Flames retain). To me the choice is easy, Option A being to recoup tons of assets and begin a proper rebuild or Option B, pressing to maybe get 95 points and a wild card spot (which is where they’re headed now) in a loaded Western Conference full of contenders. Option A should be the choice but I wouldn’t be so confident when 95 points and a wild card berth has been Calgary’s sole franchise goal for the last 30 years.
This tier wraps up with the Minnesota Wild, a team that is having its worst season in several. They fired Dean Evason back in November, saw a bit of a new coach bump with Jon Hynes, but are now cratering again, 2-7-1 in their last 10. The Wild do tread water in the underlying metrics, but watch the games. This team sucks. Neither their goaltending nor the finishing have been elite and they are now so far out of the playoff picture, it’s probably not happening. Some things have gone well for the Wild (Brock Faber and Marco Rossi’s rookie years stand out) but this roster hasn’t been able to find its groove and I don’t think it’s good enough to make up the gap. A bit of a reboot on the fly may be needed in Minnesota.
Tier III: Okay
You can call this grouping the wild card contenders, teams that are fine. Could be in the playoffs, may not be, but that proposition is more up in the air for this group than those in Tier IV. The Tampa Bay Lightning have fallen down to this group after years of being in the elite tiers, a consequence of age/injury/salary cap issues. The roster has been stripped down with each passing year and then the injury issues to Andrei Vasilevskiy have hamstrung Tampa. The roster doesn’t defend nearly as well anymore and the period of time Vasilevskiy was injured, plus the fact Vasilevskiy has been disappointing since returning, has meant a ton of goals are going in. The good news is the Lightning still score a ton of goals because Nikita Kucherov may be hitting his peak, but right now they’re only scoring enough to stay treading water. It may be enough to get them into the playoffs, but until either the defense picks up or Vasilevskiy starts looking like himself, it’s hard to view them as a contender with how many goals are going in.
The team moving up into this group are the Philadelphia Flyers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up in Tier IV when it’s all said and done. The Flyers have been a miracle story this season, rising from horrendous to be pretty solid. Philly started hot with elite underlying metrics, but have been sliding since then and are now middle of the pack. My guess is the slide continues, but for now I’ll put them here. They have a record putting them on the cusp of the playoffs and unlike Washington or the Isles, their underlying numbers are in line there. John Tortorella deserves a ton of credit for getting the Flyers here, but it’s worth remembering they still have a lot of good players when those players are healthy and playing to their potential. Sean Couturier, Travis Sanheim, Travis Konecny, Joel Farabee, Carter Hart, there’s a reason I was saying the Flyers should strip it down further if they wanted to really rebuild… because their coach and their roster is too good to properly tank when it’s healthy.
The Keystone State rival Pittsburgh Penguins land in this category as well, a very odd team that has great underlying numbers, a PDO north of 100, and a solid goal differential, but is only on pace for 92 points. Huh? To put it briefly, they are 5-1 in games decided by 4+ goals (goals are 29-9 in those games) and are 15-14-6 in all other games with a -7 goal differential. They are only scoring 2.8 GPG outside of those six blowouts and aren’t getting much offense of any kind from outside the Sidney Crosby and Jake Guentzel tandem, one that remains extraordinary. With questions lingering about what the Pens will choose to do with Guentzel at the deadline given his looming UFA status, I really don’t know what to make of Pittsburgh at this point. They look good on paper but it hasn’t really been borne out on the ice. For now, they’re pretty mediocre (except when they play the Sharks).
On the upswing are the Seattle Kraken, who have been real hot lately. At 19-14-9 the Kraken are back in the playoff picture, 11-0-2 in their last 13. The good news is that Joey Daccord is on fire in net, .923 SV% and 2.29 GAA, a godsend given the play of Philipp Grubauer. Daccord has carried the weight for Seattle while their S% has come crashing back to earth after last year’s sky-high clip, but underneath the surface is the reality that Seattle’s underlying metrics have been climbing upwards. It still feels to me like Seattle needs some more players to step up offensively to make the playoffs (Matty Beniers breaking his sophomore slump would really help) but the Kraken defend well at least and now that they’re controlling play better, they can get into the playoffs. The arrow is pointing up when I previously thought they were cooked and I’m starting to dream of a Vancouver/Seattle Pacific Northwest playoff series.
The final three teams in this group are both in the Central Division, the firmly mediocre Nashville Predators and St. Louis Blues. The Blues are the worst of the two, firing coach Craig Berube in a classic “was he really the problem?” move. No, he was not the problem. The problem is a bad roster of overpaid, aging defensemen and forwards lacking in elite difference makers. I kept the Blues out of Tier IV because their Sportlogiq numbers are above water in all situations and they are only a couple paces out of a playoff spot, but this team isn’t a threat to do anything. They should’ve blown it up in the summer rather than continue building by getting Kevin Hayes.
Nashville’s roster is strange but their top line players, the Roman Josi, Ryan O’Reilly, and Filip Forsberg group, those wily vets can still play. And I think Andrew Brunette has done a phenomenal job… he might just be an elite coach, as the Predators control play surprisingly well. Juuse Saros has only been league average and they’re on the cusp of the playoffs. If he comes on-line, I think they are the easy favorite to lock up the last wild card spot in the West. But I don’t think the rest of the team is deep enough to facilitate any move to contender status.
Tier II: Contenders with questions
This is the grouping of teams that are having good seasons but I still have some unanswered questions before I believe they are ready to win the Cup. We can start with the team I cover periodically, the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Leafs have stabilized since disappearing John Klingberg (as well as Ryan Reaves) from the lineup, 15-6-6 in their last 27 and the underlying metrics are pretty good. They’re a middling team at 5v5, which is a bit concerning, but top eight in all situations in expected goals. That’ll do. Auston Matthews could score 65+ goals this year, William Nylander has been unbelievable as well, and Morgan Rielly has been quietly great. The Leafs will make the playoffs and as always, will threaten if they can get out of their own way because they have elite players.
But even compared to past years, there are some reasons to have reservations about the Leafs. Their two goalies right now are an oft-injured youngster (Joe Woll), who, while good, has little NHL experience, and a veteran who has been consistently terrible prior to this Linsanity run (Martin Jones). The defensive depth chart is also a bit jumbled and the bottom six feels like they have two fourth lines and no third lines. The team remains good because the top-end talent is so, so good, but the roster doesn’t make a ton of sense on paper and any number of those questions could sink them in the playoffs if the trade deadline doesn’t sort out the issues.
Two teams that are a goalie away from being a juggernaut are Metro Division pals the New Jersey Devils and the Carolina Hurricanes. NJ has also battled serious injuries to their skaters, which has placed them on the playoff bubble, while Carolina has been healthier outside of the crease and seem firmly in the playoff picture. Both teams, when healthy, control play at an elite level and have every reason to be considered contenders. Unfortunately, both teams are getting bottom three goaltending in the league, with SV% clips mired in the mid-.880s. This was easily foreseeable, as both teams entered the season with goalies who either A) have very little experience, B) are old, or C) have often been bad over their career. It’s not a great goalie market at the trade deadline but both teams feel like they have to do something or else they’ll waste a really good roster of skaters.
You wouldn’t expect the Boston Bruins to be in this category based on their record, 25-8-9, 59 points in 42 games (#3 in the NHL). The storyline going into this season is how Boston would stomach the loss of David Krejci and Patrice Bergeron and the answer was… so long as you continue to get .920 goaltending, just fine! The Bruins’ defensive metrics have taken a decline and their overall metrics, be it 5v5 or all situations, are extremely mediocre, exactly what you’d expect for a team that lost its top two centers. But the goaltending that was so important for last season hasn’t dipped at all. Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman are one of the league’s top three goalie tandems this season and when you get elite play from the sport’s most important position, you win a lot of your games no matter what your roster is.
Which leads to the big question, can Boston seriously challenge for a Cup with this roster of skaters? I tend to say no, which is why I am curious to see whether the B’s go hard at the deadline for upgrades. David Pastrnak is an unbelievable player and Brad Marchand is still good, but the rest of their forward group doesn’t knock your socks off. Moreover, defensively Hampus Lindholm has had a bit of a down year and the rest of their depth beyond him and Charlie McAvoy is good, but not quite last year. It feels like Boston doesn’t have enough ways they can beat you to win a Cup right now and I want to see them beef up the roster at the trade deadline before I buy in them as a foremost contender. But when you get .920 goaltending in the regular season, no question you can pile up a ton of points.
A team in this tier I’m starting to liken to the aforementioned Hurricanes are the Los Angeles Kings. They haven’t gotten poor goaltending this year, that’s not the similarity, but LA reminds me of Carolina in the way they dominate games without a ton of frontline stars and makes you wonder if they have the elite talent to win a Cup. The Kings tilt the ice at a tremendous level, deep, well-structured, well-coached, but the thing I can’t shake is how they have been felled by the Oilers’ superior finishing in consecutive playoff series. I look at their forward group and just feel like they need a little more juice when it comes to putting the puck in the net.
Do we trust Adrian Kempe, Kevin Fiala, and Trevor Moore to be the main goalscorers on a Cup run? And more importantly, do we trust Cam Talbot, no matter how well he’s played this year, to be the goalie for a Cup run? We’ve seen you can win without elite goaltending if you’ve got great finishers and control games, and to some degree, vice versa with regards to mediocre finishers. But can you win with mediocre finishers and mediocre goaltending? There’s not a ton of evidence of that (Carolina’s playoff history is a warning) and that’s what worries me about a really good Los Angeles team. They’ve been sliding recently and much more than earlier in the season, there are reasons to have big questions about LA.
Tier I: The Contenders
Let’s start with the name that probably elicits the most uproar… the Vancouver Canucks, who I am indeed placing in this tier. Are the Canucks perfect? No, but they have the 2nd best Pts% in the NHL and have maintained this level of play for three months now despite incessant “when will it cool off??” discussion. Look, the PDO thing is real; the Canucks do indeed have one of the highest PDO clips of all time at 104.95 midway through the season, but what’s been lost in the shuffle is this: the sky-high PDO is why the Canucks’ goal differential is massive, not why they’re a good team.
The Canucks’ PDO is a two step formula: 1) they are getting good goaltending and good shooting simultaneously, and 2) that good shooting isn’t just good, it’s astronomically great. But as for point #1, the Canucks are the kind of team you’d expect to get good goaltending and shooting simultaneously. If you look at the list of teams with a high S%, they are mostly teams with elite offensive talent, Dallas, Colorado, NJ, Tampa, Boston, Toronto, and the Rangers are 7 of the next 10 teams after Vancouver on the list. With guys like JT Miller, Elias Pettersson, and Brock Boeser on the team, you expect them to be a good shooting team. And likewise, both goalies are playing pretty close to their career averages (Casey DeSmith - career .912, this year .913; Thatcher Demko career .911, this year .919).
So based on the talent on the roster, this is a team you could expect in the median year to be able to run a 101-102 PDO without it being a big story. What’s driving the 105 number is the shooting percentage that’s 1.5% higher than anyone else. That is inflated and should come down. But even if it did, they would still have a good record and good results. Adjust it down to 11-11.5% from 13.8% and you lop off 30 goals. The Canucks would still be a +25 GD team, which is the GD that other teams in this very tier have. The Canucks have an elite player at all three positions, don’t have many bad players in the lineup (a previously longstanding weakness), are very well coached, and are able to own 51% of the expected goals at 5v5 and ~52.8% in all situations. If you can own 51-53%+ of the xG and have both elite finishers and a high-end goalie, you are an incredibly dangerous team. In other words, a contender.
The biggest reason I had to put the Canucks in this tier is that everyone agrees that the New York Rangers are in this tier and the Rangers are basically the exact team I just described the Canucks as. Like Vancouver, the Rangers are a team that doesn’t dominate the run of play but they do enough at 5v5 to then let their exceptional PP, goaltending, and finishers take over. As a matter of fact, the Canucks actually grade out better at controlling play in the underlying metrics than the Rangers, so if you were gonna put the Rangers here, the Canucks have to be as well.
If there’s one thing to look for in the second half for the Rangers it’s Igor Shesterkin bouncing back to form. They haven’t gotten as elite goaltending as they normally get, with Shesterkin right at league average (though a fun bounceback year for Jonathan Quick has kept their team SV% above the average) and it’s hard to see them winning a Cup without Shesterkin balling out in the playoffs. Whether he can get his groove back is something to monitor, but otherwise there’s not a ton of interesting things to say about New York. They’re pretty akin to the past, new coach Peter Laviolette cobbling together a similar team to last season. Artemi Panarin and Adam Fox both rock and I don’t think that’s going to change much the rest of the way!
The team of the hour as I write this piece are the red hot Winnipeg Jets, who would probably be the NHL’s most surprising team if the Flyers and Canucks didn’t exist. After years trapped in mediocrity, I think the Jets are contenders. They are running at 53.2% expected goals at 5v5 in the public data and were 7th best in all situations xG in the Sportlogiq data entering this week. With Rick Bowness installing low-event hockey, the Jets have become an elite defensive team and are doing that while still employing Connor Hellebuyck. The result has been staggering: 16-2-2 since the start of December, allowing 33 goals in 20 games(!!). Hellebuyck is probably now the favorite for the Vezina, but don’t forget how good Laurent Brossoit has been in relief.
The craziest thing about what the Jets are doing is they’re doing it without Kyle Connor, who has been injured since early December. Connor of course wouldn’t be contributing to the defensive juggernaut much, but he is an elite goalscorer and when they get him back, this team could be terrifying. I think the forward group could use one more offensive piece, but they have a deep roster of forwards with a quality third line. When you factor in a good top pair defenseman in Josh Morrissey, the Jets have all the pieces I look for. They’re a legitimate contender.
Another contender from the Central Division are the Colorado Avalanche. No real surprise there, they’re still a wagon. Nathan MacKinnon is having his best ever season and is probably the Hart favorite. Cale Makar piles up the points as an offshoot of MacKinnon and even if he hasn’t been quite as dominant as normal at 5v5, he’s very good. Val Nichushkin is on a career-best goalscoring pace, Mikko Rantanen is a stud, the team’s star power is as good as anyone. They control play, they score goals, they’re proven in the playoffs. Yes there are real questions in net with Alexandar Georgiev and depth scoring, but even with the team getting .896 goaltending and little from the bottom six they’re on pace for 113 points. Obvious contender even without any upgrades because they won a Cup with iffy goaltending in the playoffs two years ago.
The third Central team in this group are the Dallas Stars. I almost ranked them in Tier II because I do believe they need to fortify the defense, but at the end of the day they made a deep run last year with a similar roster, have a #1 D and a very deep group of forwards, and are on pace for 107 points while controlling play in the games they play. That’s the definition of a contender. The injury to Miro Heiskanen will magnify the Stars’ need to load up on the blue line, but Dallas’ collection of forwards is so good. The ability to have a terrific top line, a second line with Tyler Seguin and Matt Duchene, and a third line with Wyatt Johnston and Jamie Benn. That is really hard to deal with in this cap era. If Jake Oettinger gets back healthy and becomes a good goalie again, Dallas will be a foremost Cup contender even if they don’t shore up the 2nd pair. If they do, watch out.
Staying out west, I wrangled with how to rate the other three non-Vancouver Pacific teams. I don’t feel great about ranking the Edmonton Oilers in this tier but I ultimately went with it because their play-driving metrics are so overwhelming. The start to the season was ugly, but they were getting .860 goaltending, a number so comically bad it’s hard to believe. The Jack Campbell meltdown was entirely predictable, but the Stuart Skinner one wasn’t. No one thinks he’s some juggernaut but he posted a .913 in 63 games over 2021-22 and 2022-23, with strong play to back it up in the AHL. That’s not a massive sample but there was no reason to believe he was actually an .870 goalie other than it’s funny to dunk on the Oilers. That he’s been on a heater since then that has brought his SV% up to league average is not surprising.
And the thing about the Oilers is, if they get just league average goaltending they may well be the best team in the NHL. They control and dominate play unlike any other team in the league, underlying metrics head and shoulders above anyone else in both public and private data. After a slow-for-his-standards start, Connor McDavid is back to being Connor McDavid. They have elite forward talent and a dynamite top pair in Ekholm-Bouchard… I think they should try and shore up their bottom four on D and get another plausible goalie besides Skinner, but this team is very good as long as every other shot against isn’t going in. When you’re 18-3 in your last 21 with best in the league metrics, you’re a contender.
As for the other Pacific team, I decided to put the Vegas Golden Knights here because I didn’t want to bow to recency bias. Yeah the Knights have been struggling recently but they’re the reigning champs and have a lot of things to like. Their metrics are still in the top 12 of the league in terms of controlling play and have dealt with substantial injuries. Shea Theodore has only played 20 games, Alec Martinez 25, and Zach Whitecloud 27, not to mention Adin Hill dealing with injuries recently. This is an older team so injuries should be priced in some, but I’m projecting forward. Even if they teeter some in the regular season, if the Knights get healthy and show up in the playoffs with a full lineup, you don’t think they wouldn’t be an extremely difficult out? I don’t think they need to make any big trades, just get healthy and then we’ll see how much they have in the tank after a deep (and dominant) run last year.
Our last true contender is the Florida Panthers, a team that has looked tremendous in recent weeks. They were without Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour early on but they returned from injury reasonably quickly and that was the shot in the arm the team needed to elevate to elite status. Florida dominates the games they play in terms of the share of chances and have increasingly morphed from the rush-based team they were under Andrew Brunette into a low-event defensive machine under Paul Maurice. The Panthers suppress chances at a very high level and it’s helped them get strong goaltending to back it up. Aleksander Barkov is as good as it gets, while Sam Reinhart is having the contract year of all contract years. When you are as well-structured defensively as the Panthers are and can do that with a roster of high-end finishers like Florida has, it’s a dynamite combination. The result is a team that’s 15-6-1 in their last 22. Going to be a very tough team to beat these playoffs.