Another year, another trade deadline, another epic arms race where the balance of power changes and shifts with each major acquisition. Now that the dust has settled, it’s time to take stock of the Stanley Cup race to see where each team landed.
This is something we do every year after the deadline, which is a natural point in the season to reflect on each team’s past, present and future. That means how they’ve played to date, who they’ve added to help with that, and where they stand relative to the field because of it.
We don’t know which moves will pan out or flame out. We don’t know how each player will fit on their new teams. But we can still make an educated guess based on how each team looks on paper.
Here’s how the Stanley Cup field looks, ranked by odds of winning it all, separated into five categories.
Data as of March 9
The favorites
The best chance to win it all: 10 percent or higher
Carolina Hurricanes: 16.7 percent
After landing Jake Guentzel, the biggest prize at the deadline, the Hurricanes enter the stretch drive as the favorite to win it all.
The Hurricanes’ puck possession style has always been missing some scoring oomph, a flaw that has plagued them the past few postseasons. Guentzel, a gifted scorer with serious smarts, is the antidote to that: An offensive weapon that will help bolster the power play and add some pop at even strength. The addition of Evgeny Kuznetsov on top of that has the potential to further the team’s offensive creativity — if he can recapture the player he once was.
Those two players give the Hurricanes a loaded roster that can score and defend well. They’ll control play better than anyone and have added the requisite talent to make the most of it. Led by Sebastian Aho, there are no weak links up front. They’ve got talented scorers in Andrei Svechnikov, Seth Jarvis and Martin Necas. And they’ve got an excellent bottom six of defensive stalwarts led by Jordan Staal’s continued shutdown excellence. It’s a deep and balanced group that ranks just outside the league’s top five.
The team’s biggest strength is a mobile blue line that defends extremely well led by Jaccob Slavin and Brent Burns. Carolina’s plus-28 Net Rating from its defense corps is the best in the league, born out of two-way dominance. It’s enough to insulate a now-healthy Frederik Andersen who doesn’t have to be anything more than cromulent behind such a stacked group.
All of that makes Carolina one of the league’s best teams, but not the very best. The Hurricanes actually rank fourth (marginally ahead of Florida due to greater defensive ability). The reason they’re here at the top has more to do with the Eastern Conference where there’s really only one other team in its class. The Western Conference being so deep at the top means a tougher path to the Final, something the Hurricanes will be far less worried about in the East.
Dallas Stars: 15.5 percent
No team is more complete than the Stars, who check in as the team to beat per the model. Their expected win percentage of 0.659 narrowly edges out Edmonton’s 0.656. The addition of Chris Tanev and emergence of Logan Stankoven has plugged any hole in the lineup Dallas may have had going into the playoffs.
The Stars still have their elite top line, but they now also have a middle six that’s the envy of the league. Matt Duchene has been an excellent addition on the second line while the continued growth of Wyatt Johnston has worked magic on the third line. Miro Heiskanen continues to prove he’s one of the league’s best defensemen, period, but now the Stars also have Thomas Harley who has emerged as No. 1-caliber defenseman in his own right. That gives the Stars two elite two-way defensemen, which is usually a winning recipe. With the always-solid Esa Lindell playing with Tanev, they also have a staunch shutdown pair that can go toe-to-toe with anyone. All that and they also have Jake Oettinger — a bonafide top-10 goalie with some serious clutch factor.
No holes. No notes.
Still, it’s not all rainbows and sunshine thanks to the Western Conference arms race that poses an extremely difficult path to the Stanley Cup Final. If the Stars don’t win their division, they’ll have to face a very strong Colorado Avalanche team in the first round. That would be a treat for us all, but it’s also an absolute shame that one of those teams would have to go home so early. Even if the Stars avoid that fate in the first round, they won’t avoid it forever with a second round that guarantees one of Colorado or a very good Winnipeg. A division win might even mean a first-round date with Vegas, another top-five-caliber team.
The West ain’t fair this season and that means the odds for the top teams are all depressed to an extent. In any other year, the Stars would be the favorite. For now, they’re 1.2 percentage points behind Carolina.
Florida Panthers: 15.3 percent
Everything said about Carolina’s path to the Cup applies here to Florida whose expected playoff win percentage (0.640) is only a shade below Carolina’s (0.643). The Panthers will have to face one of Boston or Toronto in Round 2, which makes their path a little more difficult than the Hurricanes’, as Carolina really only has the New York Rangers to fear. Either way, it’s a lot less than what the West has to deal with.
The Panthers are a bit more top-heavy than Carolina with a greater emphasis on offensive firepower. Matthew Tkachuk, Aleksander Barkov, Sam Reinhart and Carter Verhaeghe are an incredibly fearsome quartet of forwards, two of whom are among the very best in the world. Only the Oilers in the West can match that star power up front. A trifecta of Brandon Montour, Gustav Forsling and Aaron Ekblad add to that on the back end.
What makes the Panthers extra scary is they’ve taken everything they learned from last year’s playoffs and applied it to an entire season. That means a much tighter five-on-five game that sacrifices some offense for the greater good on defense. The team’s goal and expected goal percentages have gone up this season and that’s entirely a result of them cleaning things up with and without the puck.
Last season, the Panthers entered the playoffs as an all-offense team that seemingly changed its identity on the fly to equip it for playoff hockey better. This season they’ve had an entire year to hone their craft and it’s paid incredible dividends. The Panthers are a very stout defensive group, aided further by Sergei Bobrovsky looking closer to a $10 million man again.
The changed identity even allowed the team to add an offensive luxury in Vladimir Tarasenko, who can provide an offensive spark to a now well-structured team. He showed as much on Saturday with a three-point effort that suggests he might be back to being a legitimate difference-maker now that he’s on a team that can utilize him well.
The Panthers surprised many with a run to the Cup Final last year. They’re proving this year it was no fluke and that they’re hungry for the whole thing.
Edmonton Oilers: 13.9 percent
The preseason Stanley Cup favorite had a brief hiccup to start the season. But the Oilers have looked exactly as advertised since changing coaches: one of the teams to beat.
They have the best player in the world and have surrounded him with enough talent to do serious damage in the playoffs. The Oilers may be a flawed team, but they still have an exceptional trio of talents up front after Connor McDavid, decent middle-six depth beyond that, and arguably their best blue line in recent memory. With Stuart Skinner rounding back into form plus the addition of Adam Henrique, the Oilers look pretty damn scary from top to bottom.
Since Kris Knoblauch was hired, the Oilers have the best expected goals rate in the league (57.6 percent) and the second best goal rate (58.6 percent), and are top five on both the power play and penalty kill. It’s led to a league-best 36-12-2 record that has them looking like a steamroller entering the playoffs.
The Oilers may be right there with the Stars, but they’ll have to go through some combination of Dallas, Vegas (0.643), Colorado (0.627), Winnipeg (0.603) and Vancouver (0.589) to go all the way. Those will all be relatively tough series and while the Oilers would be favorites in all but one of them, the margin for error is thinner than usual.
Vegas beefing up so heavily is especially daunting as it very well may be Edmonton’s first-round matchup, one that wouldn’t be far from a coin toss. The Oilers are a great team, but the West is full of those, making their path forward challenging enough to drop their odds to fourth best.
The contenders
The biggest threats to the favorites: 6 to 10 percent
Colorado Avalanche: 6.7 percent
Having a team as revered as Colorado in fifth probably feels wrong. The top trifecta of Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar and Mikko Rantanen may be the scariest in the league and the Avalanche spent the deadline seriously bolstering their depth.
They swapped Bowen Byram for Casey Mittelstadt to finally address the team’s hole at 2C, and then they added Sean Walker to adequately replace what they lost in Byram. Then they added capable foot soldiers for the bottom six in Yakov Trenin and Brandon Duhaime, two guys who push replacement-level talent out of the lineup. The previous signing of Zach Parise was also a means to that end, giving Colorado a group that looks significantly deeper than the one that got bounced in the first round last season by Seattle.
This is an elite team, so I understand if there’s skepticism about their placement here. If anyone were to choose the Avalanche over any of the four teams above them, no one would bat an eye — they’re right there in that tier at the top.
The issue, as we’ve mentioned for every other team, is the path. Of the top three Central teams, the Avalanche have the lowest odds of winning the division at just 10 percent. That pretty much locks them into a first-round dog fight with one of Dallas or Winnipeg. The Stars would be an especially harrowing matchup and would make the Avalanche underdogs.
Either way, the Avalanche would have a date with an elite team right off the bat and the road will only become more grueling from there. It’s also worth noting the Avalanche haven’t exactly been a strong possession team this year at just 51.2 percent.
The Avalanche do have an ace up their sleeve: The potential return of Gabriel Landeskog. That’s not factored in by the model due to the uncertainty of his availability. If Landeskog comes back, he would be a major injection of talent to the team and the kind of emotional spark that could propel them past any team.
That might be enough to make Colorado the team to beat. The fact that the Avalanche even grade out this high without Landeskog is a testament to how strong the rest of the team is. And they just got a lot scarier at the deadline.
Vegas Golden Knights: 6.6 percent
Anthony Mantha. Then Noah Hanifin. Then Tomas Hertl. All without sacrificing a single roster player. Come on.
No team added more at the deadline (a combined plus-17 Net Rating while also displacing some negatives) and that’s turned a tempered projection of the team’s ability into one to fear. The model wasn’t too high on the Golden Knights before the deadline. Now? It views Vegas as the league’s fourth-best team, one that’s not far off the very top. The Golden Knights look like a complete team, a group led by bona fide stars that’s deep with difference-makers and has the size to bully teams in the playoffs. This team is better than last year’s championship-winning club.
So why are they in this tier and not any higher? It comes down to their path and who they’re most likely to face.
Before the deadline, a worrying 3-8-1 skid put Vegas into wild-card territory, which gives the team two likely paths. It’s either hurdle the Kings and draw the Oilers in the first round or stay in place and draw the Stars instead. Both would be on the road and both would be against one of the only teams rated higher than Vegas. On the Dallas side, it would also likely mean a date against Colorado in Round 2. Neither path looks very appealing and it’s what lessens Vegas’ Stanley Cup odds.
There’s a chance the Golden Knights draw the Canucks or Jets instead — the ideal scenario, not that there really are any in the West. But at some point, they’ll probably have to go through Edmonton or Dallas or both. That’ll be a grueling path and though they managed to get through an identical challenge last season with a lesser roster, both the Oilers and Stars look much more formidable this season.
The challengers
The teams that can do damage, but face a difficult path: 4 to 6 percent
New York Rangers: 5.0 percent
The Rangers aren’t a great five-on-five team, but they more than make up for it with elite special teams and goaltending. Between Artemi Panarin, Adam Fox and Igor Shesterkin the Rangers also have a trio of superstars who match up well to the league’s best.
That’s a winning combination, one that has propelled them to the top of the league in each of the last three seasons. It’s not perfect, but it works. This year, it makes them the fourth-best team in the East.
Why aren’t they in a higher tier? Same reason as usual: depth. Between the team’s bottom-six forward group and every defenseman not named Adam Fox, the team is well below what other contenders can muster. The average bottom six of the teams above New York is worth minus-18 goals, 13 goals better than the Rangers. Their bottom five defensemen are well above average at plus-7, while the Rangers sit at minus-6 with issues mostly stemming from the rest of their top four.
That 26-goal difference is what holds the Rangers back from a higher tier. We all knew about the team’s forward depth problems and at the very least they’ve been mitigated by the additions of Alex Wennberg and Jack Roslovic. Both are passable middle-six options. The issues on defense are much more surprising and alarming.
Ryan Lindgren hasn’t looked like himself while the team’s shutdown pair of Jacob Trouba and K’Andre Miller has struggled. The Rangers need a lot more out of all three if they want to go deep. While they each have the potential to show more, it’s hard for a model to have much faith given their recent form. How they play come playoff time will be the key to a deep run.
Boston Bruins: 4.5 percent
Many were skeptical about our still-rosy projection for the Bruins at the start of the season. Losing Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci should’ve done this team in given their remaining center depth. But there was simply too much strength elsewhere to truly doubt the Bruins and now here they are again, entering the playoffs with a strong chance of winning it all.
They can’t keep getting away with it.
Having David Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy and the league’s best goaltending tandem means they certainly can. That’s been the driving force behind Boston’s success this season. Boston has some strong pieces beyond that which give the Bruins an elite blue line (though Andrew Peeke playing regularly would put a damper on that) and an above-average forward group. It may not be pretty down the middle, but the team’s winger depth more than makes up for it.
Still — that center depth is a major concern here. A trio of Charlie Coyle, Pavel Zacha and Morgan Geekie may be passable during the regular season, but they may get exposed in a seven-game series. In a league where having an elite center is almost always a prerequisite to winning it all, none of Boston’s top three even pass as top-line caliber. That lack of high end ability down the middle likely contributes to the team’s relatively middling expected goals rate of 50.8 percent. That’s not contender quality.
The Bruins get more goals than expected thanks to their defensive system and goaltending. That’s their strength, which can get them far, especially in the East where they’re probably one of the four best teams. But their holes down the middle leave the team vulnerable against the league’s best.
Maybe the Bruins can buck the trend and win it all with an unconventional roster. They have the talent elsewhere to do so. A 5 percent chance isn’t nothing — it’s just not any higher due to the missing pieces at arguably the most important position.
Winnipeg Jets: 4.4 percent
No one should be surprised anymore by where the Jets are in the standings or how high they land here — Connor Hellebuyck has been that sensational this season. His plus-15 Net Rating is doing a lot of heavy lifting. He’s their edge.
To say the Jets are only a product of Hellebuyck would be a disservice to the rest of the group, though. This is a playoff-caliber roster, one that mostly hinges on its depth across the board. The Jets have very few weak links and have shored things up further with the additions of Sean Monahan, Tyler Toffoli and Colin Miller. That makes Mason Appleton Winnipeg’s lowest-rated skater with a minus-4 Net Rating, the “best worst player” of any playoff team. The Jets are four lines and three pairs deep, allowing them to exploit matchups come playoff time.
There’s one matchup they more than likely lose to almost any other playoff team, though: The most important one. Mark Scheifele and Kyle Connor are strong players, but they don’t measure up well to what other contenders can offer. They’re below point per game in an era where 90 or even 100 points is the new benchmark. At five-on-five, they get out-chanced badly, especially without Nikolaj Ehlers by their side. The duo has played 488 minutes this season without Ehlers and has earned 42 percent of the expected goals while being outscored 23-22. The Jets’ power play being a significant weakness also falls on its two offensive stars.
That lack of top-end talent has been a consistent issue for the Jets for years, though at least this year they have the requisite depth to minimize the problem.
Winnipeg has a strong team this year, even beyond Hellebuyck. It’s just not quite as strong as the other two teams in their division (or the top two in the Pacific). The West is stacked and the path ahead is treacherous. Winning the division would be a big help (as long as the Jets don’t draw Vegas in the process).
The dark horses
The teams that can make noise, if everything goes right: 2 to 4 percent
Vancouver Canucks: 3.8 percent
Anyone who’s been paying attention this season shouldn’t be shocked at all to find the Canucks this low despite owning one of the league’s best records. When a team’s success is driven heavily by percentages, it takes a much larger sample size to lower skepticism that a team’s ability to outscore expectations is legit.
That skepticism has lessened throughout the year as the Canucks have not only sustained some PDO magic but have also controlled play much more. If they can finish the season strong, their projected strength should grow further.
The problem isn’t really that the model doesn’t believe in the Canucks — especially with the way they’ve played the last week — it’s that it believes in the teams above them more. That’s especially true after the trade deadline where other teams in the West all made sizeable improvements.
Vancouver has an elite core that can rival most other teams. Elias Pettersson, J.T. Miller, Quinn Hughes and Thatcher Demko make for an incredible quartet that’s difficult to match up against. But the rest of the team does lag behind some of the West’s best who have fewer holes throughout the lineup.
Brock Boeser has had a nice bounce-back season and Elias Lindholm has potential to move the needle if he can find his game. But the rest of the team’s forwards aren’t that inspiring, especially on the wings if Lindholm is slotted in as the third center. On defense, Filip Hronek has been a perfect partner for Hughes, but the bottom four may be the weakest of any playoff team.
The Canucks can go deep on the strength of their stars, especially if their depth pieces continue to play above their pay grades. It’s just not as likely in a tough West where several other teams stack up better. The Canucks grade out as the league’s eighth- or ninth-best team — but that’s only good for sixth in the West.
Toronto Maple Leafs: 2.9 percent
The Maple Leafs are still a strong team led by their usual brand of star power. As long as they have Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander they have a real shot in any series. That’s their competitive edge, a trio of forwards that trails only Edmonton and Colorado in value.
The rest of the group looks more questionable than usual. Toronto’s depth is a lot less reliable, its team defense has been shakier with the fall of TJ Brodie, and its goaltending has been inconsistent. On paper, this is the worst version of the Leafs since John Tavares’ arrival.
Brad Treliving’s stamp on this team plays a role in that. Tyler Bertuzzi and Max Domi don’t look like improvements over who they replaced. Ryan Reaves is the worst regular forward this team has iced in a decade. Treliving doubled down on that with deadline additions Ilya Lyubushkin and Joel Edmundson — two defenders who don’t move the needle much at best and may be an active detriment at worst. It all comes at a cost to the team’s ability to control the puck, which has dropped from its usual 55 percent to just under 52 percent.
All of this was done to make the team tougher to play against in the playoffs. Sacrifice skill for some snot, snarl and size. It’s an understandable philosophy shift for this specific team and it’s possible models won’t capture that effect.
The emphasis on team toughness might’ve made more sense if the quality of the Leafs roster was closer to that of the league’s contenders, though. The league’s best all prioritized improving their bottom line with actual difference-makers, which has only widened the gap further.
Los Angeles Kings: 1.7 percent
The Kings are really strong defensively from top to bottom and have a deep group of skaters with very few holes. They can really control play and that’s their biggest strength. They have the ability to really frustrate their opponents.
Between Edmonton, Vegas and Vancouver, though, it’s difficult not to put the Kings at the bottom of the Pacific pecking order. What those three teams all have that the Kings don’t is star power, something that’s been put on display in each of the last two postseasons. The Kings have some really strong players, but in any series in the Pacific, the top two or even three skaters will be on the other side.
PL Dubois was supposed to help alleviate that and if the real version of him ever shows up this season, maybe things change. At the start of the season, his projected Net Rating was plus-8, the same as Anze Kopitar’s current rating. That’s dropped to zero, meaning his current projection is that of an average player.
The bigger issue might be in net. The Kings are a stout defensive team that can get away with a sketchier goalie, but Cam Talbot and David Rittich are still difficult to trust. When going up against a Pacific heavyweight that knows how to put the puck in the net, it may end up being the deciding factor.
The rest
The teams that face a very difficult road in the playoffs: 0 to 2 percent
New York Islanders: 1.0 percent
The Islanders look completely renewed under Patrick Roy with some of the strongest defensive numbers in the league since he took over. The model views them as the league’s fifth-best defensive team — aided a lot by one of the league’s best goalies, of course. Between Mathew Barzal, Bo Horvat, Brock Nelson and Noah Dobson, they also have some high-end offensive oomph on top of that. They face a difficult path, but with structure backing their stars, the Islanders aren’t a team to sleep on.
Tampa Bay Lightning: 0.9 percent
The Lightning have routinely found themselves in much higher tiers over the last decade, but this year they’re relegated to “the rest.” Nikita Kucherov is still one of the best players in the world and the Lightning still have stars, but their overall depth is seriously weak. That’s especially true on defense with Mikhail Sergachev out. It’s made life hard on Andrei Vasilevskiy this season, though even he hasn’t been himself. Tampa Bay just doesn’t look like a dangerous team anymore.
Nashville Predators: 0.7 percent
It’s hard to be bad when a team has a trio of star players — one at each position. It’s why Nashville is always in the playoff mix, even if the rest leaves a bit to be desired. Renaissance seasons from Ryan O’Reilly and Ryan McDonagh have helped as well and Andrew Brunette deserves a lot of credit for that. He’s squeezed a lot of juice out of a relatively middling roster. The Predators are a good team, but the gap between them and the best in the West may be too large to go far.
Philadelphia Flyers: 0.2 percent
Culture has gone a long way toward putting the Flyers in a position no one expected them to be in. The feisty Flyers have a strong system that allows them to control play plus an elite penalty kill. The emergence of Travis Konecny as a true star player has also been helpful. Still, the rest of the roster just doesn’t stack up in any way, shape or form to any team above them. Come playoff time, it’s hard not to imagine them as anything but a quick out.
Detroit Red Wings: 0.1 percent
The model hasn’t been high on the Red Wings all season and that didn’t change after a hot February — mostly because their underlying numbers during that time were really rough. We’re seeing why lately with five straight ugly losses. The Red Wings have the league’s fourth-worst expected goals rate all season and it’s hard to go the distance losing that battle on a nightly basis. Detroit does have the depth to outscore its problems, but the team’s top end remains a sore spot (and Dylan Larkin being out recently hasn’t helped).
Data via Evolving Hockey
(Photos of Vladimir Tarasenko and Chris Tanev: Peter Joneleit / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images and Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)
Daniel Miller is a sports fanatic who lives and breathes athletics. His coverage spans from major league championships to local sports events, delivering up-to-the-minute updates and in-depth analysis for sports enthusiasts.
