It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Unless it isn’t.
The first half of the season is filled with checkpoints for NHL teams. There’s the curse of Nov. 1, when you’d better be within four points of the playoffs. By U.S. Thanksgiving, you’d better be in there, somewhere, or else you’ve really got your work cut out for you.
But by the holiday freeze? At this point, for most teams, you are what you are. And when some teams open up their presents at this time of year, they find a lump of coal and a handwritten note from Santa reading “you guys stink.”
Yes, it’s holiday crisis time for teams around the league. Let’s see if we can narrow the list down to five.
Bonus five: Teams facing a holiday crisis
5. Los Angeles Kings – They beat the slumping Tampa Bay Lightning to snap a four-game losing streak, then celebrated by trading away Phillip Danault. Wait, are they sellers now? Not necessarily, since Danault reportedly wanted out and wasn’t exactly lighting it up so far this year. Still, the Kings feel like they’re flat-lining and desperately need a spark. The good news is they get the Columbus Blue Jackets and Seattle Kraken before the break, so maybe that’s four badly-needed points as they cling to a wild-card spot.
4. Chicago Blackhawks – It was fun while it lasted, right Hawks fans? See you down in the bottom-five section. You know the way.
3. Pittsburgh Penguins – Before last night’s shootout win against the Montreal Canadiens, they’d lost three in a row according to the NHL’s official standings and eight in a row according to everyone else. That might actually be good news since it should end any playoff talk and clear the deck for Kyle Dubas to get to work on some tough decisions.
2. Toronto Maple Leafs – They’re a mess, they sure seem like they’ve quit on their coach, their best players aren’t producing anything besides hilariously tone-deaf soundbites, and the 18-wheeler is well and truly headed off the cliff. The good news is they’re not even selling out any more, which we were always told was the reason the team never won anything. Yay?
1. Winnipeg Jets – As bad as the vibes are in Toronto, the sub-.500 Jets have a worse record, have been colder in recent weeks, and face an even deeper hole to dig out of in their own division. And they’re doing it by falling from a greater height as defending Presidents’ Trophy champions. It’s been so bad they’ve driven poor Murat mad, and the question now seems to be less about whether they should sell and more about when it should happen.
Honorable mention: The Edmonton Oilers, who are playing reasonably well but must be holding their breath after newly acquired goaltender Tristan Jarry was injured last week.
On to the rankings. Spoiler alert, none of the teams above made the top five this week…
Road to the Cup
The five teams with the best chances of winning the Stanley Cup.
We all knew it was coming, but seeing Sidney Crosby actually pass Mario Lemieux is still a super cool moment.
5. Vegas Golden Knights (16-8-10, +4 true goals differential*) – They’re the fakest of fake .500, not to mention the only NHL team to hit double digits in loser points. Or are they bonus points? It’s not just semantics, and your view on the question probably has a lot to do with whether you think the Knights are actually good. I think they’re good … enough, at least as far as the Pacific Division goes.
4. Carolina Hurricanes (22-10-3, +16) – They’re still comfortably holding down the top seed in the East, but it was not a great weekend. They just lost back-to-back games on their Florida mini-trip and they lost Seth Jarvis with what appears to be long-term injury. Oh, and Jack Hughes is back in New Jersey, further complicating the Metro.
3. Minnesota Wild (22-10-5, +17) – To be the best, you’ve got to beat the best. The Wild had their shot against the Avs last night and couldn’t get it done. Still, the seven straight wins that came before were a strong message that Minnesota is for real.
2. Dallas Stars (25-7-5, +35) – Does it make sense for a ranking that’s supposed to be about who’s going to win the Stanley Cup to have three teams from the same division in the top three spots? No, not really, thanks for asking. Eventually, we’re going to have to look ahead to playoff matchups and start penalizing the Central, given one of these three teams is guaranteed to be going out in round one. For now, let’s just enjoy how good all these teams are.
1. Colorado Avalanche (26-2-7, +65) – It’s easy to take them for granted these days, but seeing them walk into Minnesota and roll to a win was quite possibly their most impressive performance of the season.
*Goals differential without counting shootout decisions like the NHL does for some reason.
Not ranked: Florida Panthers – Well, well, look who’s back.
Not all the way back, mind you. But back enough, thanks to wins in seven of nine, even after Saturday’s loss to the Blues. Given that their other loss came against the Avalanche in Colorado, we can say the Panthers went into the weekend undefeated against teams that play in the NHL instead of whatever galactic champions league the Avs are currently in.
In the lethargic East, that stretch has been more than enough to put the Panthers back into the playoff mix, and even back into the conversation for first in the Atlantic. The projections have their playoff chances at 67 percent, up from a 50 percent coin flip at the start of the month. And honestly, 67 percent feels low. They’re back.
Who could have seen this coming? Well, everyone. I’m not sure I ran into a single fan, pundit or expert who was willing to write off the Panthers, even when they were stumbling along at fake .500 through two months. We all know the story in Florida — a Presidents’ Trophy in 2023 followed by an early exit, then barely making the playoffs in 2024 only to go all the way. Last season, they went into the playoffs as the 11-seed. They were one point ahead of the just-happy-to-be-there Senators. And then they rolled to another Cup, because the regular season doesn’t matter to these guys.
Given their injuries, most notably to Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk, it wasn’t hard to figure out the script to this season. Tread water until Tkachuk returned, then ease down on the gas to make the playoffs. Don’t worry about seeding, don’t worry about matchups, just get in and then welcome Barkov back at some point in the spring before rolling everyone on the way to a three-peat.
There were times when you wondered if they were falling a bit too far behind, but you never really worried. They’d figure it out. Probably right when Tkachuk was back.
If anything, they’re ahead of schedule, with Tkachuk’s return imminent but not quite here yet. But the Panthers are back, because they never left, because the regular season is nothing to them but a long runway before it’s time to actually fly.
Good luck to Detroit and Montreal and anyone else with their eyes on top spot in the Atlantic. You might get it, but only because the Panthers didn’t want it in the first place. They’ll see you down the road, in April and May, if you make it that far. For now, at least, we’re pretty sure we know they will.
The bottom five
The five teams headed towards dead last and the best lottery odds for the top pick in this year’s draft.
Let’s start with a team that isn’t in this week’s rankings: After serving as the East’s lone representative in the bottom five for the past five weeks, the Buffalo Sabres have found their stride. They’ve won six straight, with five of those coming after the firing of Kevyn Adams.
New GM Jarmo Kekäläinen has spent the week building out his new front office, which will include a familiar set of biceps face in former Habs boss Marc Bergevin.
Is it all coming too late to make a playoff push? Not in this year’s East it’s not.
5. Seattle Kraken (13-14-6, -24) – Saturday’s win in San Jose snapped a four-game losing streak, which came on the heels of a six-game losing streak, and now they’re selling. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted.
4. Vancouver Canucks (15-17-3, -19) – They’ve won four straight, including a three-game stretch where they only allowed two goals. The conclusion: Quinn Hughes was holding them back. Hey, the numbers don’t lie.
3. Chicago Blackhawks (13-16-6, -11) – And they’re back. And you could even make a case that they should be all the way back to the one-spot here. I’m not quite there yet, but they’re certainly headed towards another bottom-five finish. And as Scott points out with an assist from Corey, that might not be the worst thing in the world.
2. Calgary Flames (15-17-4, -11) – Ryan Lomberg had a fun night on Saturday.
1. Nashville Predators (15-16-4, -21) – By beating the Rangers last night, the one-spot team in my bottom five moved ahead of last year’s Presidents’ Trophy winners in the standings. The NHL makes a lot of sense.
Not ranked: Columbus Blue Jackets – Is this a good hockey team?
I don’t mean that rhetorically. And I don’t even mean it in that “Who really knows anything in this weird NHL?” sort of way. I mean it as a genuine question. Maybe even an existential one. And I’m not the only one asking it: captain Zach Werenski is too.
#CBJ D Zach Werenski cut to the core of the matter after the loss to Minnesota: “I feel like it’s the same thing we’ve been saying. We’re playing well enough to win, but it’s getting old that we keep losing. Enough is enough. It’s unacceptable, and I get the whole thing where you…
— Jeff Svoboda (@JacketsInsider) December 19, 2025
I’m a Leafs fan, so I’m a bit of an expert in player soundbites during losing streaks. And I have to say, “We’re a good hockey team, and we’re losing games. So maybe we’re not a good hockey team. I don’t know…” is an all-timer.
So let’s build the case for both sides. The argument for the Blue Jackets being a good team — not a great one, or a Cup contender, but a playoff team at least — starts with last year. That was back when we all counted them out before the season even began, only to watch them fight for a spot all year long, becoming everyone’s second-favorite team in the process. Werenski was the guy leading that charge with a Norris-worthy season, and he might be even better so far this year. The goaltending is better, thanks to rookie Jet Greaves. And they’ve earned wins against some good teams, including Tampa, Minnesota and Dallas, three Cup favorites the Jackets had beaten in regulation before the time the season was two weeks old.
And maybe most importantly, their front office clearly thinks they’re good. Or at least good enough to get some reinforcements, as the team pulled off a pre-freeze deal for Mason Marchment. Both the trade and the timing are interesting, and Portzline gets into the details here.
Some people are surprised CBJ being buyers but the Eastern Conference is so jammed (all 16 teams .500 or better in points percentage), Jackets feel they can still get into playoff race. If not, there’s always option of flipping Marchment at deadline. Top players on CBJ were…
— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) December 20, 2025
The argument for them not being good is … well, everything else.
A recent five-game losing streak dropped them to fake .500 on the season, and while they beat the Ducks last week to snap that skid, they entered the weekend in dead last in the East, trailing even a Sabres team in such bad shape that they cleaned house and hired the Blue Jackets’ assistant GM to join Kekäläinen in Buffalo.
Saturday saw them drop a close one in regulation to Anaheim despite a Marchment goal in his debut, marking their seventh loss in eight games. It could have been far worse, as Werenski left the game after blocking a shot. It looked bad, but early reports say the injury isn’t serious and Werenski is day-to-day.
If you are what your record says you are, then the Blue Jackets are indeed not good. And as bad as the last few weeks have been, it doesn’t feel like rock bottom. As Portzline writes in that link up above, “This could get away from them in a hurry if they aren’t careful. Maybe it already has.”
For now, I’m keeping them out of the bottom five, although I’m not completely sure if that’s based on merit or just a lingering feel-good status from last year’s run. Check back next week, when there’s a good chance I won’t have a choice.