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Lackluster Leafs, offcolor Oilers among NHL’s biggest storylines to watch in December

Anthony Trudeau
Anthony Trudeau(atrud00)
Dec 2, 2025, 12:58 ESTUpdated: Dec 2, 2025, 13:34 EST
Lackluster Leafs, offcolor Oilers among NHL’s biggest storylines to watch in December
Credit: Perry Nelson-Imagn Images

If U.S. Thanksgiving (that was Nov. 27 this year, for you Canucks) is when we can stop taking hockey’s early-season trends with a heavy dose of salt, then December must be the first month of the NHL season when we can finally believe what we’re seeing. 

That wasn’t quite true in October, when the ever-dangerous Tampa Bay Lightning got off to a brutal start and briefly occupied the bottom spot in the Eastern Conference. More deception awaited in early November, too: it wasn’t long ago that the still-rebuilding Chicago Blackhawks were puck lucking their way into playoff position.

As the calendar inches ever closer to 2026, such anomalies are becoming increasingly rare. As my colleague Matt Larkin recently reiterated, more than 76% of the playoff spots occupied on U.S. Thanksgiving have held up the rest of the way over the past decade. That statistic will do little to placate fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Edmonton Oilers, who both find themselves well off the pace as the quarter-season mark fades in the rearview.

Is it time for Canada’s sleeping giants to panic in their pursuit of another year of playoff hockey? What about the Vegas Golden Knights, who are firmly in the top three but have seen standards slip in recent seasons? Read on for more on the Maple Leafs, Oilers, Golden Knights, and the hottest NHL storylines to monitor in the final month of 2025.

It’s gutcheck time for the Toronto Maple Leafs

Brad Treliving’s front office strategy to fix the Maple Leafs has always been to add more toughness, or “snot,” as he disgustingly insists on calling it, on and off the ice. Legendary enforcer Craig Berube as coach, fearless warrior Chris Tanev on the blueline, muckers and grinders like Scott Laughton, Nic Roy, and Dakota Joshua throughout the bottom six, etc. All that “snot” can only get you so far in the postseason if you’re watching from the couch, though.

Treliving’s working theory that toughness can complete Toronto’s championship puzzle only works if on-ice excellence is already a given. For the Leafs of 2025, it’s not. Even as William Nylander (11 G, 32 P in 21 GP) electrifies and John Tavares (12 G, 28 P in 25 GP) ages in reverse, the Buds aren’t the same without Mitch Marner, and it’s not because of the missing offense — Matthew Knies (26 P) is outscoring Marner (25 P) on the year. Marner’s main function on a team that quickly became slow and stiff after Treliving took over was to carry play into the offensive zone, something that’s just not happening for Leafs not named Tavares, ironically, the slowest and stiffest of them all.

The Maple Leafs’ nine-season playoff streak, the longest active one in the NHL, is in critical condition. Now would certainly be a good time for guys like Laughton, Roy, and Joshua (12 P in 53 GP, combined) to drag them into the fight. To their credit, Joshua and Roy both found the board in a surprise 7-2 rout of the Pittsburgh Penguins to close out November. A similar result against the hated, if wounded, Florida Panthers tonight would at least provide some evidence of the moxy Treliving is paying so much for.

Something has to change for the Edmonton Oilers

The Oilers are notoriously slow starters. Their 3-9-1 opening to 2023-24 lost erstwhile coach Jay Woodcroft his job, and a 6-7-1 mark to begin the 2024-25 seemed indicative of a Stanley Cup Final hangover. That means the Oil’s uninspiring 11-10-5 record through two months hasn’t exactly dragged them into uncharted waters. Having veterans Zach Hyman (season debut on 11/15) and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (2 P in 11/29 return, 18 P in 17 GP) back in the lineup only bolsters their chances of a third straight turnaround.

Still, it’s disconcerting to see a team with so much big-game experience look so lost. The Oilers conceded an average of four goals per game during a busy second month, even as Matthias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard (12-7 game score in Nov.) bounced back from an ugly October on the top pair. They were tagged for 24 (!) total goals during a trio of heavyweight showdowns with the Colorado Avalanche, Washington Capitals, and Dallas Stars. Darnell Nurse (44.16% expected-goal share, -10) has especially struggled after a resurgent 2024-25 season; Nurse has been on the ice for more opposition 5-on-5 scoring chances than any other defender in the NHL.

Netminders Stuart Skinner and Cal Pickard haven’t exactly propped up Edmonton’s porous D. Skinner is sporting a .885 SV% even after pitching a shutout against Seattle on Saturday, and Pickard has been even worse (.847 SV%, second-worst in NHL). Einstein’s (totally fabricated) definition of insanity springs to mind. A manageable December slate should halt Edmonton’s slide, but if continued struggles force GM Stan Bowman to shake up the room, or at least the crease, would that be the worst thing? 

The shorthanded Lightning are only going to get better

In October, I wondered aloud if the Lightning’s early-season struggles were a blip or more evidence that even Julien BrisBois and Jon Cooper cannot beat Father Time (or the Panthers). Whoops. Since I wrote that piece, Tampa is 15-4, a mark that has set them up comfortably atop the Atlantic Division with games in hand. We already knew the Lightning were great, even if I whiffed on my alarm bells article. The interesting thing about Tampa’s nuclear heater is how banged up they’ve been throughout.

With Stanley Cup winners Victor Hedman, Ryan McDonagh, and Erik Cernak stuck on the IR, Tampa’s top-four has just one holdover from their “usual” group, Swiss backliner J.J. Moser. The leftover minutes have gone to Darren Raddysh, the hard-shooting righty who took healthy scratches earlier this season for his perceived defensive shortcomings, Emil Lilleberg, typically a bottom-pair battler, and Quebecois puckmover Charle-Edouard D’Astous, playing his first NHL campaign at 27. 

The ragtag group hasn’t been propped up by a free-scoring attack or elite goaltending, either, though the Lightning have both; they’ve been legitimately good. Raddysh (7 P in last 3) and Moser are crushing it in first pair usage (67.89% expected-goal share), while the team itself has conceded only 2.4 goals per game since Hedman and McDonagh went down on Nov. 8. With the brilliant Nikita Kucherov (32 P, T-9th) and white hot two-way forward Brandon Hagel (8 G, 12 P in L5) lighting it up at the other end of the ice, it almost doesn’t seem fair that the Lightning could reintegrate Hedman, McDonagh, and perhaps even top center Brayden Point over the next month.

Can the Jets survive their worst nightmare?

From 2023-25, the Winnipeg Jets were a good, not great, even-strength club that finished between 9th and 12th in major barometers of puck possession and chance control. You could see how such a team would make the playoffs with high-level operators like top blueliner Josh Morrissey and snipers Kyle Connor and Mark Scheifele on board. Still, nothing about Winnipeg’s metrics or eye test ever suggested it could rack up the most points in the league over two seasons. That’s exactly what the Jets did, though, thanks to one man: Connor Hellebuyck, the two-time reigning Vezina winner, reigning MVP, and best goalie on the planet. 

In 2025-26, the Jets are a plain bad even-strength outfit (44.93% scoring-chance share) who just lost Hellebuyck at the worst possible time. Winnipeg has won just one of competent backup Eric Comrie’s five starts since ‘Helly,’ who could miss another month, went under the knife to fix a knee issue. That Comrie, who owns a glistening .909 SV% across three stints with the Jets, had a losing record last season for the Presidents’ Trophy winners underscores how badly the club has come to rely both on Helleybuyck’s form and his durability. 

After the Buffalo Sabres chased Comrie from a 5-1 beatdown last night, it’s that much clearer that the other five guys on the ice need to realize they can no longer rely on Hall-of-Fame caliber goaltending to solve all their issues. If the Jets are as flat as they were in Buffalo against a midseason murderers’ row including the Stars, Capitals, and Avalanche, there might not be a season to save by the time Hellebuyck is back in action.

Could another big shakeup be looming in Las Vegas?

If Mitch Marner had planned on gloating over the struggling Maple Leafs, he’ll need to wait until his new team in Vegas sorts itself out first. Only loser points separate the Golden Knights from the Maple Leafs in the overall standings after an uninspired November (5-4-5). Prognosticators had warned for months that the new-look Leafs could struggle without Marner. Why are the Knights, who had hoped Marner’s addition would propel them to a second Stanley Cup, right there with them in the middle of the pack?

Though Marner is “only” scoring a point per game, the top six isn’t the problem in Vegas; Jack Eichel (11 G, 32 P in 25 GP) and oft-injured captain Mark Stone (4 G, 16 P in 9 GP) have been especially dangerous. Neither is the smothering defense that both Marner and the Knights pride themselves on (192 high-danger chances conceded at 5-on-5, fewest in NHL). Instead, the Golden Knights have been let down in a big way by their goaltending and bottom six. In the crease, rookie Carl Lindbom (.870 SV%) has just one win in seven starts since Stanley Cup winner Adin Hill picked up a long-term injury. Veteran hands Reilly Smith, Colton Sissons, and Brandon Saad, meanwhile, have combined for all of 13 points in 73 games. 

Getting William Karlsson back on the third line in the coming weeks could help fix one of those issues, but with Hill potentially out well into the new year, relying on a returning Carter Hart (0 GP since Jan. 2024) in goal feels like a Hail Mary. Notoriously aggressive GM Kelly McCrimmon has painted himself into a corner this time, and is too tight against (see: over) the cap to seek significant outside help. Could championship coach Bruce Cassidy become a scapegoat for Vegas’s bottom-eight PDO if December is another dud?

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