NHL Power Rankings: Season opener edition
The regular season starts Friday after what’s felt like a long few months, with the Nashville Predators and San Jose Sharks facing off in Prague, and that means it’s time for the start of what will be weekly power rankings here at Daily Faceoff. These will normally come out on Mondays, but due to the weird scheduling to start the season, the first edition comes today before the two games in Prague, and the next edition will come Oct. 16, or the Monday after the rest of the teams start playing games.
Since we have nothing to go off for this season, these rankings will take how the teams have looked over the past few seasons, while factoring in what they gained or lost in the offseason and what long term injuries they have to deal with to start the year.
We have 32 teams to cover, so without further ado, let’s begin.
1. Florida Panthers
The reigning Presidents’ Trophy winners remain on top as we head into the season, as two straight seasons of high-end success make them look good, as well as an offseason shakeup that still comes out favoring them. Of course, a lot hinges on whether the defense will hold up without MacKenzie Weegar and if the goaltending can repeat what it did last season, but the addition of Matthew Tkachuk has them looking strong early on.
2. Tampa Bay Lightning
The reigning Eastern Conference champions definitely shouldn’t be counted out to start the season, although they did lose a few big parts of their lineup, like Ondrej Palat, Ryan McDonagh, and Jan Rutta, and they’ll be without Anthony Cirelli for a few months. But, they’ve been in worse shape during these past few years, so I wouldn’t worry about them until they falter for good.
3. Carolina Hurricanes
While Paul Stastny, Brent Burns, and Max Pacioretty certainly soften the blow, losing Vincent Trocheck, Tony DeAngelo, and Nino Niederreiter will hurt the powerhouse Canes a bit, especially with Pacioretty on the shelf for a good chunk of the season. This is still one of the best teams in the league over the past four seasons, but we’ll see if this is the version that can get over the playoff hump.
4. Colorado Avalanche
The defending Stanley Cup champs start the season all the way in fourth, which is still really good considering they lost a lot of great pieces to that Cup winning team this offseason. They’re still a great team, but losing Nazem Kadri and replacing Kuemper with Alexandar Georgiev hurts them a bit.
5. Toronto Maple Leafs
Much like every other season in the Kyle Dubas era, the Leafs head into the season looking worse than last year because they got rid of pieces coming off career years, and swapped them with players that don’t look quite as good on paper. I’m sure once they start playing some games, those “underwhelming” pieces will look great (and that includes their goaltending), but for now, they sit in fifth.
6. Washington Capitals
While the Capitals’ playoff performances haven’t been great since their Stanley Cup win in 2018, there’s no doubt about their regular season success year after year. They look to finally have stable goaltending for the first time since Braden Holtby left with Darcy Kuemper joining the team, although losing Nicklas Backstrom and Tom Wilson to injury to start the season will certainly make things interesting.
7. Pittsburgh Penguins
As long as that core of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang are around, this team will always look good on paper, and the fact that they managed to bring a lot of their secondary pieces back as well without any major casualties is a big win. They still have to go the distance for the first time since 2017, but you can never count out Sid and his crew.
8. Calgary Flames
It says a lot that the Flames lost Johnny Gaudreau and Tkachuk in one offseason and still added more to the team this season. That’s what happens when you mitigate those losses with Jonathan Huberdeau and Kadri, while also adding an elite defenseman in Weegar. It’s an older core now, so the clock is ticking, but it could have been much worse for the Flames.
9. St. Louis Blues
Losing David Perron and Ville Husso certainly hurts the Blues, especially for a team that overperformed a lot of their underlying numbers, but not enough to truly hurt the team at this moment. They’re still poised to be the high-offense team they were last season, so we’ll see how that looks as the season begins.
10. Edmonton Oilers
The Oilers are looking to build on a run to the Western Conference Final led by the two-headed monster of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, and they’re looking promising bringing back most of that group. Jack Campbell is a risky addition to the crease considering how inconsistent he was last season with the Leafs, but if he can find that form he had in 2020-21, it’ll make wins easier for an already loaded offense.
11. Minnesota Wild
The Wild were never going to come out of this offseason intact with the buyout penalties of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter taking full effect, but all things considered, they’re looking pretty good. It’s hard to mess up when you have Kirill Kaprizov, but the Wild will look to take this team a step further this season.
12. Boston Bruins
This season has been labelled “the last dance” by the team, and that could very well be the case, with Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci in their final years, and David Pastrnak in the last season of his contract without an extension at this point. They look poised to make a run with this group this season, with the biggest knock being that they’ll be without Brad Marchand and Charlie McAvoy for a few months to start the year.
13. Dallas Stars
The Stars made a couple of savvy moves in the offseason bringing in Mason Marchment and Colin Miller, and with Jason Robertson finally signed, they look like they could make some serious noise this year. They’ll be banking on Jake Oettinger building off the incredible series he had against the Calgary Flames, but even solid goaltending will give the Stars just what they need to compete.
14. New York Rangers
The Rangers were one of the biggest overperformers in 2021-22, and while they did improve as the season carried on, a lot of that was due to the improved depth they brought in at the trade deadline. A lot of that depth is gone as of this offseason, but it’s hard to truly count out this team with Igor Shesterkin between the pipes.
15. New York Islanders
Just behind the Rangers are their state rivals in the Islanders, but a lot of that rests on the hope that last season was an anomaly for the team. They didn’t do a lot in the offseason to make sure that wasn’t the case, and firing Barry Trotz was a questionable move, but if Lane Lambert can get the same kind of success out of this Islanders core, they’ll be a tough team to score on.
16. Nashville Predators
The Predators cap off the good side of the halfway point of our rankings, although there’s plenty of intrigue to see if they can repeat last season. They barely made the playoffs before losing quite handily to the Avalanche in the first round, and that was on the back of a lot of career-highs from their players, so there’s plenty of room for error for this Preds team.
17. Vegas Golden Knights
The Golden Knights missed the postseason for the first time in franchise history, and while a big part of that was due to injuries, they’ve proceeded to lose quite a few players this offseason. After offloading Max Pacioretty and Evgenii Dadonov for basically nothing, they’ll also be losing goaltender Robin Lehner for the season, making it tough for the team to find its way back in the playoffs again this year.
18. Vancouver Canucks
The Canucks added to their forward depth this offseason while also ensuring that both J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser stick around for a few more years, but their blueline still has plenty of question marks that stop them from truly looking strong. Thatcher Demko will hide some of those mistakes, but it’s still not a playoff caliber defense corps at this point.
19. Winnipeg Jets
It’s a make-or-break season for this Winnipeg Jets core, as their inconsistencies over the past several seasons make it hard to see a future with this group if it fails again this season. Losing Stastny won’t help, but unlike when he left in 2018, the Jets actually have solid center depth still with Mark Scheifele and Pierre-Luc Dubois, and it’s hard to bet against a goaltender like Connor Hellebuyck.
20. Los Angeles Kings
If there’s a team that I can certainly see proving me wrong with these rankings, it’s the Kings, as they have a solid forward core that only got better with Kevin Fiala. However, a lot of that hinges on their young players taking the next step, and we’ve seen how that isn’t always linear, so consider me a bit hesitant to consider them playoff repeats, especially with the question marks in goal at the moment.
21. New Jersey Devils
The Devils are coming off another offseason where they made plenty of great additions, this time bringing in Ondrej Palat, John Marino, and Vitek Vanecek. Will this year finally see those moves pay off with a playoff appearance? They’ll have to show us to make us believe it, but it certainly looks promising heading into the season.
22. Columbus Blue Jackets
Speaking of big offseason additions, the Blue Jackets made arguably the biggest one by signing Johnny Gaudreau in free agency, but offense wasn’t exactly the glaring issue with this team last year. They’ll be trotting out the same goalie tandem and a similar blueline with just Erik Gudbranson added to the fray, so unless that group can take a step forward this year, they’ll have to outscore their problems this season.
23. Ottawa Senators
The Senators may have been the loudest team in the offseason, bringing in Alex DeBrincat, Claude Giroux, and Cam Talbot to improve their offense and goaltending, and surround the young core in Ottawa. But a questionable blueline knocks them down a few spots, and with plenty of inconsistencies for this team in the past, it’s hard to feel confident in their progress until they show it.
24. Anaheim Ducks
A lot of the Ducks’ success this season will depend on two factors: the young core building on last season, and John Gibson returning to form in net. The former seems more certain, especially with more young pieces like Mason McTavish added to the fold, but Gibson is certainly the biggest factor. He’s one of the best in the league when he’s on his game, but that game hasn’t been seen consistently for several seasons now.
25. Philadelphia Flyers
After missing the playoffs for consecutive seasons for the first time since 1994, the Flyers made a few moves and brought in John Tortorella behind the bench. That certainly could see improvement with additions like Tony DeAngelo, but with Ryan Ellis and Sean Couturier back on the shelf to start the season, that certainly doesn’t help their cause this year.
26. Detroit Red Wings
The Red Wings started to see some progress last season thanks to the breakouts of Lucas Raymond and Calder Trophy winner Moritz Seider, and management rewarded that group with several big signings in the offseason. The biggest question this season will be if those moves came a bit premature, so that will be something to watch going forward. They’d still be higher on this list despite that suspicion, but Ben Chiarot in a top four role concerns me for this group, even if he plays with Seider.
27. Montreal Canadiens
A full season of Martin St. Louis behind the bench, a few smart additions that cost them almost nothing, and the fact that a lot of this team won’t be quite as bad as last season has the Canadiens a bit higher than last place, but I wouldn’t expect any serious noise. The thing to watch will be if Juraj Slafkovsky really was the right pick for this team at first overall, as it certainly raised eyebrows when the team passed on Shane Wright at the Draft.
28. Buffalo Sabres
The Sabres are another young team with question marks looking to build on what was a bright and hopeful season, especially after a dreadful year in 2020-21. It’s still a lot of unknowns at the moment, but Alex Tuch and Tage Thompson had strong campaigns, while they’re also hoping for a step forward from Rasmus Dahlin and a great rookie year from Owen Power to build towards ending the longest playoff drought in NHL history.
29. Chicago Blackhawks
After several seasons of middling play, the Blackhawks went all in on a rebuild and stripped the roster of a lot of it’s best pieces, either in trades or just letting them walk to free agency. That will only get worse with franchise pillars Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane in the final years of their contracts, so expect this team to drop even more as the season carries on.
30. San Jose Sharks
Things continue to look quite bleak for the Sharks, as the team is still finds themselves with a not-so-ideal mix of older players on overpriced contracts and not a lot of bright, young pieces to build around that. Those young pieces are coming, but they don’t have the same upside as we see in teams like Montreal, Buffalo, and Seattle.
31. Arizona Coyotes
While new management is starting to build the foundations of a future for the Coyotes, at this moment they continue to be a dumping ground for bad contracts. Not exactly a lot to get excited for, with the most interesting storyline right now being the team’s 5,000 seat arena.
32. Seattle Kraken
The 2017-18 Vegas Golden Knights set a high standard for the Kraken to follow as an expansion team, and they brought those expectations down to Earth with a 60-point season, which is still an improvement on a lot of franchises’ first seasons. They made some smart moves in the offseason and added to their forward depth, but with goaltending still a big question mark, and the unknown factors of Matty Beniers and Shane Wright down the middle not quite figured out yet, they sit in the basement for the time being.
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