Stanley Cup Windows 2025-26: Atlantic Division

Jul 14, 2025, 10:30 EDTUpdated: Jul 14, 2025, 12:36 EDT

Credit: Jan 18, 2025; Montreal, Quebec, CAN; Montreal Canadiens defenseman Lane Hutson (48) hooks Toronto Maple Leafs right wing William Nylander (88) as he skates with the puck during the third period at Bell Centre. Mandatory Credit: David Kirouac-Imagn Images

How every NHL team behaves in the offseason depends on its timeline. Some clubs are rebuilders, maneuvering conservatively, careful not to hand veterans long-term deals. Others have completed their rebuilds and have pivoted to aggressively pursuing upgrades, trying to catch up with the elite Stanley Cup contenders. And the teams atop the heap are simply trying to keep their winning groups together through whichever strokes of ingenuity they can muster.

The urgency of a team’s posture is determined by how close it believes it is to a Stanley Cup. Where is every franchise in its current championship contention timeline? Welcome back to Stanley Cup Windows, an annual series in which I plot each franchise’s progress. Who’s trending up, who’s trending down, and who’s holding on tight hoping for one last Stanley Cup push?

We begin the series with the Atlantic Division teams.

WINDOW WIDE OPEN

Florida Panthers

Wait. How can the Cats’ window be wide open when they’re paying Brad Marchand until he’s 43? Well, what do Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Bennett, Sam Reinhart, Carter Verhaeghe, Aaron Ekblad and Gustav Forsling have in common? They’re all on the right side of 30 and all signed through 2029-30 or later. Meanwhile, the Panthers have third-line pivot Anton Lundell signed for five more seasons at a $5 million AAV that is already a bargain and will look like one of the league’s biggest steals by its completion given the rising salary cap. Goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky is the only prominent Panther on an expiring deal, and he seems as likely as his fellow core members to stay on at a team-friendly cap hit when he re-signs. Get used to the Panthers dominating and savoring their victory laps. They have a real chance to three-peat and go down as the most dominant team of the cap era.

WIN-NOW WINDOW

Tampa Bay Lightning

The Bolts were the NHL’s fourth-oldest team this past season. They were still highly competitive, boasting the league’s leading scorer two years running in Nikita Kucherov and a resurgent year from goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy. But that improved version of the Lightning, the one that walked away from Steven Stamkos and brought in the younger Jake Guentzel last summer, still wasn’t good enough to change its fate at all, losing to the Panthers in five games in Round 1 for the second consecutive year. Vasilevskiy and Guentzel are 30, Kucherov is 32, and defensemen Victor Hedman and Ryan McDonagh are 34 and 36, respectively. Elite defensive forwards Brandon Hagel and Anthony Cirelli remain in their primes at 26 and 27, and first-line center Brayden Point is 29, so the Lightning remain a contender. But they continue to pay the cap piper and weren’t able to make any meaningful additions this summer. They aren’t getting any better. How will they get past the Panthers?

Toronto Maple Leafs

Maybe the Leafs trade for another top-six forward and, along with acquiring center Nicolas Roy and winger Matias Maccelli, do a decent job plugging the hole left by Mitch Marner. But When you lose a 28-year-old 102-point scorer and two-time first-team all-star, there’s no way to truly replace him. General manager Brad Treliving may yet find the right cocktail to push this team into the third round of the playoffs and beyond, and Marner’s playoff no-shows were holding the team back at crucial junctures, but make no mistake: Marner’s departure absolutely shortens Toronto’s window. The Leafs have three seasons left on Auston Matthews’ contract. William Nylander turns 30 next May. The urgency to win a Cup right now is at least a nine out of 10.

WINDOW OPENING

Montreal Canadiens

The Habs are nowhere near a finished product. They were quite an adventure defensively last season. But they improved enough to climb back into the postseason for the first time since reaching the 2020-21 Stanley Cup Final, buoyed by an all-time great rookie year from defenseman Lane Hutson. They were a 91-point team, and now they add a top-pair defenseman in Noah Dobson, acquired from the New York Islanders. They also get a full season of the incredibly talented Ivan Demidov, who has the most upside of any rookie forward in their system since Guy Lafleur. Their two best young players, Demidov and Hutson, are 19 and 21, while hulking power forward Juraj Slafkovsky is also just 21. Top center Nick Suzuki and sniper Cole Caufield have entered their primes. The Habs also still have additional help coming down the pipe from the likes of center Michael Hage and defenseman David Reinbacher. They also just traded for an excellent young two-way winger in Zach Bolduc. Montreal became the youngest team ever to make the playoffs last season and remains the league’s youngest by average age for 2025-26. The other Atlantic Division teams need to get their winning done soon, as it’s only a matter of time before Montreal ascends to the top.

Ottawa Senators

The Sens also ended a playoff drought this past season – a longer one in eight years – but since they’ve been rebuilding longer than Montreal, they have a bit more urgency to improve. Brady Tkachuk is already seven seasons into his career. Blueliner Thomas Chabot is quietly 28, while Drake Batherson, 27, has two years left on his deal. Still: Tkachuk is only 25, recent addition Dylan Cozens is 24, top center Tim Stutzle is 23, and same goes for elite defenseman Jake Sanderson. The Sens’ farm system has peaked and graduated most of its top talents, so what we see is mostly what we get with this group, which tempted me to place them in the win-now tier. But their absolute best players are all 25 or younger and signed long term, so the Sens still have plenty of runway for a championship push.

WINDOW CLOSED

Boston Bruins

The Bruins land on my shortlist for the 2025 offseason’s most disappointing teams. They had the cap space to reload and mold a new contender around existing stalwarts David Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy and Jeremy Swayman. Instead, they blew their UFA spending on a slew of bottom-six forwards, most notoriously Tanner Jeannot on an inexplicable five-year deal at a $3.4 million AAV. This team doesn’t look much different from the one that missed the playoffs in 2024-25, so we can’t call them a contender. That said, with James Hagens now in the pipeline and Pastrnak, McAvoy and Swayman still young enough to have many good years left, we could see the Bruins correct their trajectory in relatively short order, especially if they secure another high pick in the 2026 Draft.

FOGGY WINDOW

Detroit Red Wings

Sigh. Can I get you anything, Red Wings fans? Cup of tea? Should we sit down and let you vent? I feel for you. It’s now nine years since Detroit competed in a playoff game. Because GM Steve Yzerman flinched too early in the rebuild and added a slew of Mid veterans a few years back, this team has spun its wheels on the playoff bubble for several seasons now. On one hand: we’re watching Lucas Raymond become a star, Moritz Seider is a horse on defense, we’re seeing lots of promise from forward Marco Kasper and defenseman Simon Edvinsson, and Detroit’s prospect pool remains packed. On the other hand: this team struggles to defend, it’s supposed to be contending now during Dylan Larkin and Alex DeBrincat’s primes, and…Yzerman’s only offseason addition on defense is Jacob Bernard-Docker. What is this team doing? A win-now operation that did very little to win now this off-season inspires little confidence in the short term.

WINDOW SMASHED

Buffalo Sabres

The drought sits at an NHL-record 14 seasons, and somehow the Sabres’ playoff odds continue to slide backward. Two years ago, they missed by a single point, and it felt like they were ready to kick down the door, led by rising superstars Tage Thompson and Rasmus Dahlin. Instead, the Sabres’ development has stalled, they were forced to trade first-line left winger JJ Peterka for a ho-hum return this offseason, and they’ll have to continue hoping they get enough internal improvement that they can finally break through. But the Atlantic looks more competitive than ever, top to bottom, and it feels like the Sabres are losing ground rather than gaining. They’re supposedly not a rebuilder anymore, but GM Kevyn Adams hasn’t made a splashy add to make his team better, and his young stars are getting restless with all the losing. This franchise is directionless. It’s sad.

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POST SPONSORED BY bet365

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