The big news, for the second week in a row, is a shock coaching change. This time it’s the New York Islanders, with Patrick Roy being shown the door and Pete DeBoer taking over.

This kind of move needs its own section, so we’ll cover the Islanders in more depth down below. But first, three quick thoughts, which might be the same three thoughts you had when you first heard the news:

• Damn, Mathieu Darche is not messing around.

• This was tough news to hear for a whole lot of teams that thought DeBoer would be on their radar in a few weeks.

• Matthew Schaefer, COACH KILLER?

• The latest “next coach fired odds” list sent to the media came out on Wednesday, and it had 13 names ahead of Roy. In other words, lots of coaches probably don’t want their phone to ring right now.

Way more on this to come down below. But first…

It’s been a quiet season around these parts when it comes to Canadian content. There hasn’t been a Canadian team in the top five since the season was a month old, back when the Winnipeg Jets and Edmonton Oilers made brief appearances in the haze of optimism carried over from the year before. The Calgary Flames and Vancouver Canucks have taken up residence in the bottom five, where we’re running out of ways to say “yep, they’re bad” every week. And the Ottawa Senators, Toronto Leafs and Montreal Canadiens are three of the eight teams that have yet to appear in either section, getting occasional “not ranked” mentions but not much else.

And that’s fair enough, because there’s only room for so many teams each week. But with the season almost over, five of those seven Canadian teams are suddenly making strong pushes in the right direction. So let’s dedicate our bonus five to our friends up north.

Bonus five: Canadian teams worth watching down the stretch

5. Winnipeg – The Jets might not be making the most unlikely late-season playoff push, but it has to be the most interesting. After flirting with becoming the first team in modern NHL history to go first-to-worst in one year, the Jets are lurking in the background of the Western pillow fight. They’re still big-time long shots, with several teams to pass. But with less than two weeks left, they’re still a going concern, which is more than anyone would have expected even a few weeks ago.

Of course, there’s some question as to whether that’s actually a good thing. More specifically, will a near-miss not only torpedo their draft pick but risk teaching the organization the wrong lessons? Murat’s been all over that topic recently, with this excellent post followed by another questioning the team’s level of loyalty.

4. Toronto – No, they’re not winning. But we said teams were headed in the right direction, and Toronto’s belated push for a bottom-five spot at least fits that description. More importantly, by firing Brad Treliving last week, Keith Pelley managed to clear the lowest possible bar for fixing this mess. Will he find a way to screw up the upcoming leadership search? Probably, but it hasn’t happened yet, so Leafs fans might look back on this month as the good old days. (As far as the search goes, I tried to offer my two cents, but Pelley and the Leafs apparently aren’t interested in anything with that cheap a price tag.)

3. Ottawa – It’s been another weird week, with minor controversies over Linus Ullmark’s schedule and Brady Tkachuk’s podcast. In between came a crushing loss to the Florida Panthers that was immediately cancelled out by an inspiring win over the Buffalo Sabres. And through it all, the Eastern race continues to grind to a halt, leaving the door open for the Senators to stride in with a decent finish. Last night’s win over the Carolina Hurricanes was a big one, leaving Ottawa in charge of their own destiny.

2. Edmonton – Last weekend’s win over the Anaheim Ducks was supposed to keep the Oilers in the race, but it now looks like it flipped it entirely. With the Oilers winning four straight and briefly moving into top spot in the Pacific, it looks like we may not get that all-or-nothing Golden Knights matchup in the first round after all. We did get it on Saturday, and Vegas made a statement in a win, so we can pump the brakes a bit on the Oilers being all the way back. All three teams still have a chance to clinch home ice through the first two rounds, meaning the Oilers’ path the conference final seems as wide open as it has all year.

Also… this happened.

1. Montreal – No, I didn’t have the guts to move the Canadiens into the top five this week, unlike the other guys, but I thought hard about it. It’s very rare for a team to make a top-five debut this late in the season, but we’re close to having no choice as the Habs roll through the league. The question in Montreal was always about whether the young core’s ceiling was high enough for true contention. That question sure seems to have been answered over the last month or so.

On to the rankings…

Road to the Cup

The five teams with the best chances of winning the Stanley Cup.

Shout out to Canadian broadcasting legend Scott Oake, who announced his retirement over the weekend. He’ll make his final “After Hours” appearance on “Hockey Night in Canada” on Saturday.

5. Buffalo Sabres (46-23-8, +30 true goals differential*) – No, I’m not going to take them out of the top five on the same weekend they finally clinch a playoff spot for the first time since 2011. Maybe next week, though. For now, let’s all celebrate the long-awaited moment for our favorite team.

(But yeah, two straight losses means Montreal is absolutely eying this spot. Buffalo gets the Tampa Bay Lightning tonight in a rematch of the best game of the year, so let’s see how this plays out.)

4. Dallas Stars (45-20-12, +46) – The big one this week is Thursday night at home, as they host the Wild in a first-round preview. This could also be the game that determines home ice in that series, so the intensity should be playoff-caliber.

3. Tampa Bay Lightning (48-22-6, +64) – They also clinched a spot on Saturday. By the way, I renew my objection to saying teams that clinch have “punched their ticket.” Your ticket gets punched when you arrive at the event and go in, not when you get the ticket itself. I realize not everyone agrees, and my response is to declare myself right and refuse to discuss this any further.

2. Carolina Hurricanes (49-22-6, +45) – They apparently missed the memo about having nothing to play for the rest of the way, as they spent their week crushing playoff hopes around the Eastern Conference. Back-to-back wins over the Columbus Blue Jackets was bad enough, but their win over the Islanders may have been the breaking point for Roy’s job. No such luck against the Sens last night, though.

1. Colorado Avalanche (50-16-10, +95) – Ho hum, let’s just go into the building of the league’s second-best team and shut them out, this game means nothing to us but hockey is just too easy. Then we’ll lose in regulation to the Blues, because this sport makes sense.

Also, shout out to Brent Burns for playing his 1,000th straight game. Only 64 more to catch the all-time ironman in the world’s toughest sport, a pudgy dude who ate hot dogs and looked like he was going to throw up on the bench every time he had a shift that went past 20 seconds. Hockey rules.

*Goals differential without counting shootout decisions like the NHL does for some reason.

Not ranked: Boston Bruins – I’m going to be completely honest here. Initially, I’d planned to use this space to talk about the Red Wings. But I’m not sure I want to anymore, because good golly. Red Wings fans: Misery loves company, but sometimes acute and abject anguish needs to be alone because you’re bumming everyone else out. We’ll talk about the Wings in the newsletter tomorrow, but today? I just can’t.

Where were we? Right, the Bruins. They haven’t clinched anything, but it sure seems to be trending that way. Despite coughing up what should have been easy points against teams like the Panthers and Leafs in recent weeks, the Bruins have been doing more than enough winning to keep pace in the Eastern wild-card race. At this point, a miss would require a near-total collapse.

With everything else going on around the league, it’s easy enough to shrug off the Bruins’ success. After all, this is a team that won a Presidents’ Trophy just a few years ago, and ran off three straight seasons well north of 100 points from 2022 to 2024. They’re good, right?

Well, sure. Except they sure weren’t last year, collapsing to 76 points in a season that cost Jim Montogomery his job. That led to a deadline selloff that included captain Brad Marchand, and with Patrice Bergeron and Zdeno Chara already long gone, the window in Boston had slammed shut. The rebuild was on, and it was shaping up to be a long job.

Except… well, here we are. So what happened?

We can start at the top, where you do indeed have to hand it to Don Sweeney. It turns out that all that talk about five-year rebuilds falls apart when you have a GM who keeps ripping everybody off. Not bad work by a guy that most Boston fans seemed to have given up on just a year ago.

Sweeney also seems to have hit a home run with the hiring of Marco Sturm. In fact, I’m surprised Sturm isn’t getting more Jack Adams love, even in a ridiculously crowded field. The award often goes to the rookie coach who leads a surprise playoff team, and Sturm checks both boxes. He’d be on my ballot if I had one.

Mix in a bounce-back season from Jeremy Swayman, which is the one element of this that we all probably should have seen coming after last year’s contract debacle, and the Bruins make for an intriguing playoff team. Would you really rule them out against a first-round opponent like Buffalo or Montreal, or even Carolina? If Swayman is at his best, I’m not sure I would.

We’re not quite there yet, and there’s still work to be done. That includes a matchup with the Blue Jackets, games where a win might all but lock the Bruins into a wild-card spot. Until then, consider this a reminder not to sleep on one of the better comeback stories in a year filled with them.

The bottom five

The five teams headed towards dead last and a shot at Gavin McKenna or Ivar Stenberg.

Oh interesting, “The Athletic Hockey Show” starts putting our podcasts on YouTube and suddenly my patented “greying beard and hoodie” look is getting blatantly ripped off.

5. Seattle Kraken (32-32-11, -22) – Welcome back. They started the year holding down this very spot in the bottom five, then went on a season-long playoff chase that had them defying expectations. But they’ve collapsed over the last few weeks, ending any hopes of a Western wild-card spot and dropping all the way down to fake .500, so here we are.

4. New York Rangers (33-36-9, -11) – Careful boys, the Panthers and Leafs are getting dangerously close to bumping you out of the bottom-five spot you’ve more than earned.

3. Calgary Flames (32-36-8, -45) – I’ll admit, I did not know that Ethan Wyttenbach had more points than Gavin McKenna and everyone else in the NCAA this season. That’s a nice dollop of hope for the Flames, among lots to be found in this piece on every team’s most encouraging season from a prospect.

2. Chicago Blackhawks (28-35-14, -51) – We love it when a rookie’s first career goal is also a game-winner, don’t we folks?

1. Vancouver Canucks (22-46-8, -97) – They did it. They clinched dead last, top lottery odds and a worst-case scenario of a top-three pick. Also, Drance wants you to hate Quinn Hughes now.

Not ranked: New York Islanders – Wow.

It was shocking enough when the Golden Knights dropped a late-season coaching change on us a week ago. It’s Vegas, where a cloud of what can only be described as anti-loyalty hangs over everything.

But the Islanders? Less than a year removed from picking first overall, and on the verge of a playoff spot with just four games to play? That’s a stunner.

There’s no question that the Islanders seem to be running out of gas with the finish line in sight. Saturday’s loss in Carolina was their fourth straight, dropping their playoff odds from nearly 70 percent at the end of March down to under 30 percent today. Does that warrant a coaching change? Normally, no. But when a new GM who didn’t hire the coach is making the call, and a big name is available, that apparently shifts the equation.

So what now? First, the good news: There’s still time, with four games left on the schedule. All four of those are at home, and they get a rare four-day break to adjust under DeBoer. And the stretch starts when they welcome old pal John Tavares and the Leafs on Thursday, which should be an easy win. Then come the Senators, in a control-your-own destiny battle for both teams. And while the Habs and Hurricanes to end the season looks rough, either or both teams could be looking ahead to the playoffs by then. There’s still a path for the Islanders, especially with the Blue Jackets wobbling.

The better news: While nobody in New York wants to hear it quite yet, the season has already been a success. Making the playoffs, and maybe doing some damage once they’re there, is still the goal. But it would be the cherry on top of a season’s worth of sundae, as a team that nobody seemed to think much of in October proved us all wrong.

And yes, most of that is due to Matthew Schaefer, who may be about to become the first unanimous Calder winner in modern NHL history. By now, he hardly needs even more tire-pumping, but it’s hard to avoid. From a long-term perspective, Schaefer’s development was the single most important aspect of the Islanders’ season, and it hasn’t just been an A+ — it might have broken the grade scale entirely.

Mix in a Vezina-worthy season from Ilya Sorokin and returns to form from Mathew Barzal and Bo Horvat, and the season is going to feel like a major step forward no matter how it ends.

There aren’t too many other teams in the race that you could say that for. Maybe the Sharks out west, and that’s about it. In that sense, the Islanders are one of the only teams that already have an overall W in the bank. The only question is whether it’s an all-caps W, or we get to bold it and underline it with a playoff spot. We’ll find out over the next few days, as the rested-up Islanders get set to play the final week with house money already spilling out of their pockets.

We just won’t have Patrick Roy along for the ride. That might change the dynamic significantly, especially if the Islanders still end up as a miss. They’ve got four games to make it a moot point.