{"id":543597,"date":"2026-04-06T10:29:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T10:29:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/543597\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T10:29:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T10:29:24","slug":"nhl-weekend-rankings-another-coaching-shocker-rocks-the-easts-pillow-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/543597\/","title":{"rendered":"NHL weekend rankings: Another coaching shocker rocks the East\u2019s pillow fight"},"content":{"rendered":"

The big news, for the second week in a row, is a shock coaching change. This time it\u2019s the New York Islanders, with Patrick Roy being shown the door<\/a> and Pete DeBoer taking over.<\/p>\n

This kind of move needs its own section, so we\u2019ll 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:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Damn, Mathieu Darche is not messing around.<\/p>\n

\u2022 This was tough news to hear for a whole lot of teams that thought DeBoer would be on their radar in a few weeks.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Matthew Schaefer, COACH KILLER?<\/p>\n

\u2022 The latest \u201cnext coach fired odds\u201d 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\u2019t want their phone to ring right now.<\/p>\n

Way more on this to come down below. But first\u2026<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a quiet season around these parts when it comes to Canadian content. There hasn\u2019t 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\u2019re running out of ways to say \u201cyep, they\u2019re bad\u201d 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 \u201cnot ranked\u201d mentions but not much else.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s fair enough, because there\u2019s 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\u2019s dedicate our bonus five to our friends up north.<\/p>\n

Bonus five: Canadian teams worth watching down the stretch<\/p>\n

5. Winnipeg \u2013 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\u2019re still big-time long shots, with several teams to pass. But with less than two weeks left, they\u2019re still a going concern, which is more than anyone would have expected even a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n

Of course, there\u2019s some question as to whether that\u2019s 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\u2019s been all over that topic recently, with this excellent post<\/a> followed by another questioning the team\u2019s level of loyalty<\/a>.<\/p>\n

4. Toronto \u2013 No, they\u2019re not winning. But we said teams were headed in the right direction, and Toronto\u2019s 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<\/a>? Probably, but it hasn\u2019t 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<\/a>, but Pelley and the Leafs apparently aren\u2019t interested in anything with that cheap a price tag<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

3. Ottawa \u2013 It\u2019s been another weird week, with minor controversies over Linus Ullmark\u2019s schedule and Brady Tkachuk\u2019s podcast<\/a>. 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\u2019s win over the Carolina Hurricanes was a big one, leaving Ottawa in charge of their own destiny.<\/p>\n

2. Edmonton \u2013 Last weekend\u2019s 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<\/a> 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\u2019 path the conference final seems as wide open as it has all year.<\/p>\n

Also\u2026 this happened<\/a>.<\/p>\n

1. Montreal \u2013 No, I didn\u2019t have the guts to move the Canadiens into the top five this week, unlike the other guys<\/a>, but I thought hard about it. It\u2019s very rare for a team to make a top-five debut this late in the season, but we\u2019re close to having no choice as the Habs roll through the league. The question in Montreal was always about whether the young core\u2019s ceiling was high enough for true contention. That question sure seems to have been answered<\/a> over the last month or so.<\/p>\n

On to the rankings\u2026<\/p>\n

Road to the Cup<\/p>\n

The five teams with the best chances of winning the Stanley Cup.<\/p>\n

Shout out to Canadian broadcasting legend Scott Oake, who announced his retirement over the weekend<\/a>. He\u2019ll make his final \u201cAfter Hours\u201d appearance on \u201cHockey Night in Canada\u201d on Saturday.<\/p>\n

5. Buffalo Sabres (46-23-8, +30 true goals differential*) \u2013 No, I\u2019m not going to take them out of the top five on the same weekend they finally clinch a playoff spot<\/a> for the first time since 2011. Maybe next week, though. For now, let\u2019s all celebrate the long-awaited moment for our favorite team<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(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<\/a>, so let\u2019s see how this plays out.)<\/p>\n

4. Dallas Stars (45-20-12, +46) \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

3. Tampa Bay Lightning (48-22-6, +64) \u2013 They also clinched a spot on Saturday. By the way, I renew my objection to saying teams that clinch have \u201cpunched their ticket.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

2. Carolina Hurricanes (49-22-6, +45) \u2013 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\u2019s job. No such luck against the Sens last night, though.<\/p>\n

1. Colorado Avalanche (50-16-10, +95) \u2013 Ho hum, let\u2019s just go into the building of the league\u2019s second-best team and shut them out, this game means nothing to us but hockey is just too easy. Then we\u2019ll lose in regulation to the Blues, because this sport makes sense.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

*Goals differential without counting shootout decisions like the NHL does for some reason.<\/p>\n

Not ranked: Boston Bruins \u2013 I\u2019m going to be completely honest here. Initially, I\u2019d planned to use this space to talk about the Red Wings. But I\u2019m 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\u2019re bumming everyone else out. We\u2019ll talk about the Wings in the newsletter<\/a> tomorrow, but today? I just can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Where were we? Right, the Bruins. They haven\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

With everything else going on around the league, it\u2019s easy enough to shrug off the Bruins\u2019 success. After all, this is a team that won a Presidents\u2019 Trophy just a few years ago, and ran off three straight seasons well north of 100 points from 2022 to 2024. They\u2019re good, right?<\/p>\n

Well, sure. Except they sure weren\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Except\u2026 well, here we are. So what happened?<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. Not bad work by a guy that most Boston fans seemed to have given up on just a year ago.<\/p>\n

Sweeney also seems to have hit a home run with the hiring of Marco Sturm. In fact, I\u2019m surprised Sturm isn\u2019t getting more Jack Adams love, even in a ridiculously crowded field<\/a>. The award often goes to the rookie coach who leads a surprise playoff team, and Sturm checks both boxes. He\u2019d be on my ballot if I had one.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019m not sure I would.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not quite there yet, and there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The bottom five<\/p>\n

The five teams headed towards dead last and a shot at Gavin McKenna or Ivar Stenberg.<\/p>\n

Oh interesting, \u201cThe Athletic Hockey Show\u201d starts putting our podcasts on YouTube<\/a> and suddenly my patented \u201cgreying beard and hoodie\u201d look is getting blatantly ripped off<\/a>.<\/p>\n

5. Seattle Kraken (32-32-11, -22) \u2013 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\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

4. New York Rangers (33-36-9, -11) \u2013 Careful boys, the Panthers and Leafs are getting dangerously close to bumping you out of the bottom-five spot you\u2019ve more than earned.<\/p>\n

3. Calgary Flames (32-36-8, -45) \u2013 I\u2019ll admit, I did not know that Ethan Wyttenbach had more points than Gavin McKenna and everyone else in the NCAA this season. That\u2019s a nice dollop of hope for the Flames, among lots to be found in this piece on every team\u2019s most encouraging season from a prospect<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2. Chicago Blackhawks (28-35-14, -51) \u2013 We love it when a rookie\u2019s first career goal is also a game-winner<\/a>, don\u2019t we folks?<\/p>\n

1. Vancouver Canucks (22-46-8, -97) \u2013 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not ranked: New York Islanders \u2013 Wow.<\/p>\n

It was shocking enough when the Golden Knights dropped a late-season coaching change on us a week ago<\/a>. It\u2019s Vegas, where a cloud of what can only be described as anti-loyalty hangs over everything.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s a stunner.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no question that the Islanders seem to be running out of gas with the finish line in sight. Saturday\u2019s loss in Carolina was their fourth straight, dropping their playoff odds<\/a> 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\u2019t hire the coach is making the call, and a big name is available, that apparently shifts the equation.<\/p>\n

So what now? First, the good news: There\u2019s 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\u2019s still a path for the Islanders, especially with the Blue Jackets wobbling.<\/p>\n

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\u2019re there, is still the goal. But it would be the cherry on top of a season\u2019s worth of sundae, as a team that nobody seemed to think much of in October proved us all wrong.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s hard to avoid. From a long-term perspective, Schaefer\u2019s development was the single most important aspect of the Islanders\u2019 season, and it hasn\u2019t just been an A+ \u2014 it might have broken the grade scale entirely.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

There aren\u2019t too many other teams in the race that you could say that for. Maybe the Sharks out west, and that\u2019s 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\u2019s an all-caps W, or we get to bold it and underline it with a playoff spot. We\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n

We just won\u2019t have Patrick Roy along for the ride. That might change the dynamic significantly, especially if the Islanders still end up as a miss. They\u2019ve got four games to make it a moot point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The big news, for the second week in a row, is a shock coaching change. This time it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5099],"tags":[154,95,5132,530,229,26,29,96,144,147,146,5,38,21,159,35,4,25,234,92,31,27,18],"class_list":{"0":"post-543597","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-bruins","8":"tag-boston","9":"tag-boston-bruins","10":"tag-bostonbruins","11":"tag-bruins","12":"tag-buffalo-sabres","13":"tag-calgary-flames","14":"tag-carolina-hurricanes","15":"tag-chicago-blackhawks","16":"tag-colorado-avalanche","17":"tag-dallas-stars","18":"tag-edmonton-oilers","19":"tag-hockey","20":"tag-minnesota-wild","21":"tag-montreal-canadiens","22":"tag-new-york-islanders","23":"tag-new-york-rangers","24":"tag-nhl","25":"tag-ottawa-senators","26":"tag-seattle-kraken","27":"tag-tampa-bay-lightning","28":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs","29":"tag-vancouver-canucks","30":"tag-winnipeg-jets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116357297895231589","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}