NHL Power Rankings: August 2023 Edition

With the 2023-24 NHL season being two months away, and August being the final month without ice hockey, I’d feel like it would be time to take a look at every NHL team and to rank them based on the situation and whether they are in a position to compete for the Stanley Cup this coming season. Without further ado, here are my early power rankings heading into the season.

Note: Players with an asterisk (*) next to their name mean on the projected lineups that their jersey number is unconfirmed.

32nd: San Jose Sharks

If you want to know how long ago the last time the Sharks made a top-5 selection at the Draft, you have to go back to 1998 when they picked Brad Stuart 3rd overall, a year after Sharks legend Patrick Marleau was taken 2nd overall. That’s 25 years, which could give a perspective on how long they may have gone on getting a new generation of prospects to take over the current set of veterans headlined by Erik Karlsson, Logan Couture, and Tomáš Hertl. They did trade away Brent Burns and Timo Meier in a one-year span, but there are a lot of established veterans still on the roster that came from the successful Doug Wilson era. Karlsson was the biggest name of interest, especially after a 101-point, Norris Trophy-winning season on a Sharks team that was historically bad at home (just eight wins at SAP Center in 2022-23!). It was for certain that Mike Grier lands a hefty package for Karlsson, though they got a package of aging veterans. But now the Sharks will truly be bad enough to be in the basement. Then the rebuild can truly commence. The good news is that they are the closest to rock bottom they have been in decades, with their lowest points percentage since 1995-96 (.366).

31st: Philadelphia Flyers

The Flyers are saying that they truly want to rebuild now that they have Chuck Fletcher gone, but can we really call them that right now when they still have veterans from the last Flyers team that made the playoffs? While Danny Brière did trade away Ivan Provorov and Kevin Hayes and bought out Tony DeAngelo, this was just the first phase of a full-scale teardown. Travis Konecny, Travis Sanheim, Carter Hart, and Scott Laughton have all been brought up in trade discussions. Their top prospects are first round choices from 2022 and 2023, those being Cutter Gauthier and Matvei Michkov, respectively. Gauthier will return to Boston College for another year in the NCAA, while Michkov is signed in the KHL through the 2025-26 season. When you get everything from this, you have a basement-dwelling team where they have a new general manager that isn’t even finished repairing the damage Fletcher caused, and the top prospects aren’t in the NHL yet. For the Flyers to truly be a rebuilding team, they have to tear down the old core and bring in new blood. This team is clearly years away from being a contender again.

29th: Anaheim Ducks

The Ducks are under the belief that their playoff window is opening, which can explain why they signed Alex Killorn and Radko Gudas, who both bring a physical edge to the team, something that they have been looking for. It’s the second straight offseason that they signed proven veterans to the team after they hauled in both Ryan Strome and Frank Vatrano last summer. They still have Trevor Zegras and Mason McTavish on the team, and a defensive pipeline that is headlined by Jamie Drysdale and Olen Zellweger, to go with one of the top goalie prospects in the league in Lukas Dostal. However, this year may not be the year they break out. They were dead last in the league last season, and we’re not likely to see any of the young defensemen outside of Drysdale in the NHL just yet (Drysdale has already played 113 NHL games, though eight of them came last season because of season-ending shoulder surgery). While the prospect pool is still loaded, the team needs to have considerable improvement before being taken seriously.

28th: Arizona Coyotes

Bill Armstrong deserves credit for looking to get the Coyotes out of their bottom-feeder status after the trade deadline last season. He wants to have his team competitive this year, going after veterans Jason Zucker, Sean Durzi, and Alex Kerfoot, and bringing back Nick Bjugstad and Troy Stecher. This is a solid bit of business, especially with Clayton Keller, Nick Schmaltz, and Barrett Hayton all having breakout seasons last year. However, this team is still no tready to break out, even though they are shifting their focus to their young core. They should expect more from Dylan Guenther this coming season, though the debut of Logan Cooley into the NHL stage should be closely seen considering that he signed his entry-level contract on July 27th. While the ceiling for the team is not going any higher this coming season, they’re not a tanking team anymore.

27th: Montreal Canadiens

Not counting Alex Newhook, the Canadiens have had a quiet offseason all things considered. In the last two seasons, they were decimated by injuries, leading to the shakeup on the training staff this summer. Though seven Atlantic Division teams are in win-now mode or looking to break out, the Habs are not one of those seven teams. They’re rebuilding, and they are better off getting assets for their long-term success. Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield are both locked up on the long-term, so the two can continue their chemistry with one another on the top line. David Reinbacher is a future top-pairing defenseman on the team, and it helps that he is a right-shot defenseman because the team needs more right-shot defensemen on the team. Getting Newhook after acquiring Kirby Dach last season is another example of betting on former first round picks. Speaking of former first round picks, they didn’t necessarily need to rush Juraj Slafkovský to being a star in the NHL, as the team was looking at him more as a project pick when he was taken first overall. Again, the focus for the Canadiens is about adding assets. They have their own first round pick and four picks in the first three rounds of the 2024 NHL Entry Draft as of now. Maybe they can get more if they have a taker for any of their veterans in trade rumors, such as Josh Anderson.

26th: Vancouver Canucks

Good luck trying to figure out the Canucks as a franchise. Last season was the second straight year where they had early season struggles, then a midseason coaching change to get what eventually became a meaningless stretch of winning. Normally, a team that would have Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes, Thatcher Demko, J.T. Miller, and Brock Boeser, not to mention the additions of Andrei Kuzmenko, Conor Garland, Anthony Beauvillier, and Filip Hronek over the last two years, would be a competitive team. Yet the front office keeps getting in their own way with the same issues that have been bugging them during the Jim Benning era. The fact that they traded away Bo Horvat to adopt a stance of being sellers at the deadline only to follow it up with acquiring Hronek while giving away their first round pick is the definition of “this franchise is confusing.” They held onto Miller for long enough for his new contract to kick in at an $8 million cap hit, which caused them to go over the cap to begin the offseason, failing to get out of a contract that could age poorly. The end result is a team stuck in no man’s land. The majority of their prospects are also years away from breaking into the scene.

25th: St. Louis Blues

The Blues were very inconsistent throughout the 2022-23 season, with winning streaks followed up by losing streaks and vice versa. Doug Armstrong decided to trade away Ryan O’Reilly, Vladimir Tarasenko, and Ivan Barbashev in the days leading up to the trade deadline. Despite that, the Blues don’t see themselves as a rebuilding team. Robert Thomas and Jordan Kyrou are now on the first year of their respective eight-year contract extensions. Their top four defensemen—Justin Faulk, Torey Krug, Colton Parayko, and Nick Leddy—all have cap hits of at least $4 million, with Faulk, Krug, and Parayko each having cap hits of $6.5 million, and are under contract for at least the next three years. They’re not bad enough to get a high draft pick, which can explain in a sense why they acquired Kevin Hayes to fill in the hole at second line center. Just like in 2018, they’re hoping that the playoff miss was just a fluke, but this year’s team is weaker than last year’s.

24th: Calgary Flames

The turmoil from the 2022-23 season continues into the offseason for the Flames. While a lot of their players rescinded their trade requests after they hired Ryan Huska as their head coach to replace Darryl Sutter, there was hardly anything happening for the team after June 27th. Outside of the hiring of Huska, at or before that day was the transition of regimes from Brad Treliving to Craig Conroy as the team’s general manager, with Dave Nonis and Jarome Iginla as assistant general manager and special advisor, respectively. There was also Tyler Toffoli getting traded away as part of a possible mass exodus of 2024 unrestricted free agents saying that they do not want to stay in Calgary, and Noah Hanifin and Elias Lindholm could be next. The lineup is still relatively untouched, with a respectable group of veterans. Jonathan Huberdeau and Nazem Kadri are due for bounce-back seasons after noticeable drop-offs from the season before last year. The defense is still intact, with Rasmus Andersson and Chris Tanev headlining the core, and MacKenzie Weegar could see a nice bounce-back too. But given where this team is at, we might not know if there are more players leaving.

23rd: Winnipeg Jets

After their five-game flameout against the Vegas Golden Knights in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the message was clear: This team was going to go through a lot of changes because they were not going to win a Stanley Cup with their current core. It was time to start fresh. It wasn’t surprising that Pierre-Luc Dubois got traded and that Blake Wheeler got bought out. But it seems that Mark Scheifele and Connor Hellebuyck will play the final seasons of their contracts with Winnipeg. They made an overhaul of some of the locker room culture, but by keeping both Scheifele and Hellebuyck, not all of the previous leadership group is gone. They also got a nice return for Dubois, as Gabe Vilardi, Alex Iafallo, and Rasmus Kupari filling in key lineup holes at the forward core, but they are not expected to be All-Star players. It appears there will be tough days ahead for the Jets, though general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff doesn’t seem to be finished with the roster construction.

22nd: Columbus Blue Jackets

The Blue Jackets are the team that is due for the biggest improvement this coming season. Last year suggests they were one of the worst teams in the NHL despite signing Johnny Gaudreau last summer. But they were one of the unluckiest teams in the injury department, having lost over 550 man games to injury. It seemed as if Patrik Laine getting hurt in the team’s first game of the season was just a blip on the radar, but then the injuries started piling up. But losing Zach Werenski in Game 14 to a torn labrum and a separated shoulder was the killing blow. Essentially, they are adding Werenski, Ivan Provorov, and Damon Severson to the defensive core, and acquiring the latter two from in-division rivals may get the message that they have a lot of young talent on the team and can start getting up the standings. David Jiřiček could potentially push for a roster spot as the team’s best defensive prospect. They also added a potential franchise centreman in Adam Fantilli, who can make an immediate impact on the team. Kent Johnson could possibly break through in his second season, and Cole Sillinger is a nice bounce-back candidate. Mix that in with Gaudreau getting more comfortable in his second year in Buckeye Country along with a bounce-back from Laine, and they can certainly get out of their rebuilding phase in the near future.

21st: Washington Capitals

For the first time since the 2013-14 season, the Capitals saw themselves outside of the playoff picture. Thus, their days of being at the top of the Metropolitan Division are over. Their points percentage started slipping down slowly but steadily since the year after they won the Stanley Cup in 2018, which was the last time they won a playoff series. Seeing that they are not competing for a playoff spot, they became sellers at the deadline, trading away Dmitry Orlov, Garnet Hathaway, and Erik Gustafsson. While they struggled with injuries, especially with Nicklas Bäckström and Tom Wilson missing the first half of the season, their biggest concern is their age. They have an average age of 29.6, per Elite Prospects, which puts them as the second-oldest team in the NHL. Bäckström and T.J. Oshie are clearly showing their age, at 35 and 36 years old, respectively, Evgeny Kuznetsov took a big step back at 31 years old, and John Carlson, at 33, is coming off a season where he suffered a skull fracture. And then there is Alex Ovechkin. He is 73 goals away from breaking Wayne Gretzky’s record for most goals scored in NHL history, though he is 37 and Father Time is knocking on his doorstep. Though Dylan Strome looked solid in his first year with the Capitals and Max Pacioretty was added as an LTIR free agent, they don’t look like a team that will get back into the playoff race in the blink of an eye, especiallyteam that will get back into a playoff race in the blink of an eye, especially in a brutally competitive Eastern Conference. As of now, their most important priority is Ovechkin getting the all-time goals record.

20th: New York Islanders

Despite back-to-back Final Four appearances in 2020 and 2021, the Islanders always seem to be a team that competes for a wild card spot, and expect that to continue based on the abysmal offseason from general manager Lou Lamoriello. With how loaded the Eastern Conference is, it’s going to be either the outcome of a wild card spot or a few points out of the playoffs given Ilya Sorokin’s eight-year extension that kicks in next summer. While they are still a competitive team, this core might not win a Stanley Cup. Yet they continue fashioning themselves as a contender and continue to behave like they are one, locking up their core long-term. Sorokin is under contract through 2032, top line forwards Bo Horvat and Mat Barzal through 2031, and shutdown defensemen Adam Pelech and Ryan Pulock through 2029 and 2030. On paper, that should have them at a high floor, but there are seven players 30 or older who have multiple years left on their contracts. Anders Lee (33), Brock Nelson (31), Jean-Gabriel Pageau (30), Kyle Palmieri (32), and Casey Cizikas (32) combine for $25.5 million in cap space, and all have at least two years left on their contracts. Nelson was the team’s leading scorer last season and has been arguably their best forward offensively, so his $6 million cap hit is reasonable. Cizikas has been crucial to the team’s “Identity Line,” but the wear-and-tear is starting to catch up to him, Matt Martin (34), and Cal Clutterbuck (35). At least Martin and Clutterbuck are in the final years of their deals. Cizikas, on the other hand, has four years left. Not to mention Pierre Engvall and Scott Mayfield were given seven-year contracts, a hefty term for low-impact talent. Mayfield, despite his defensive metrics, is 30 and is turnover-prone. Semyon Varlamov got a four-year extension, and while he’s a good backup, he is 35, and it’s fair to wonder how much longer his game holds up. This is a team built on the 90-point range, fighting for a playoff spot.

19th: Detroit Red Wings

The rebuild under Steve Yzerman has transcended into the sense that they are accumulating a mass of young talent that they can build around, headlined by guys like Moritz Seider, Lucas Raymond, Simon Edvinsson, Sebastian Cossa, and Marco Kasper. Yzerman added Nate Danielson and Axel Sandin-Pelikka during the Draft to the “Yzerplan.” However, the current veteran core that Yzerman was meshing with looked disappointing last season outside of Dylan Larkin. In the last two summers, Yzerman has added a lot of veteran talent that could help contribute to a playoff berth. J.T. Compher, Andrew Copp, Shayne Gostisbehere, Christian Fischer, Klim Kostin, and Daniel Sprong stand out from that list. And then came the big fish: Alex DeBrincat. He got acquired via trade to go with a four-year extension. The Red Wings now have a legitimate top line scorer to take the pressure off the younger guys. As long as the veteran additions in the last two years aren’t too high on the lineup, they can help get the Winged Wheel rolling. They have improved their points percentage in three straight seasons. While they missed the playoffs by a dozen points in 2022-23, they could make a push for the playoffs. Then again, anything can happen in the NHL.

18th: Ottawa Senators

Losing Alex DeBrincat in the hopes that they will go for a playoff push isn’t ideal, especially since they got back a middle-six winger who can score but struggles with consistency, though Vladimir Tarasenko can make up for it in a capacity, given that he is due to a bounce-back after a down year last season. They’ll also get a fully healthy Josh Norris after he had his lengthy recovery from shoulder surgery, and that he is ready to score 25 or more goals. To add to it, they upgraded in net, though not to the extent that they were hoping for. If Joonas Korpisalo is as advertised, the Senators will be pushing for the playoffs. They’ll also get a full season of Jakob Chychrun on their top four defense, and he’ll likely slot in next to Thomas Chabot. They could also see Ridly Greig, one of their top prospects, getting a full-time role. All these guys help support the main core of Brady Tkachuk, Tim Stützle, Chabot, Jake Sanderson, Claude Giroux, and Drake Batherson. They have other young guys too, and every one of their guys helped push the Sens to six points within a playoff spot last season. A lot of their youngsters are signed to long-term deals as well, so once they get over the hump, they and the Buffalo Sabres can re-ignite their rivalry and enjoy years of playoff contention. Though their first priority now is clearing up cap space to sign both Shane Pinto and Egor Sokolov. While Sokolov’s contract may be easier, Pinto’s is not so much. It still could be the Sens’ year to make the big dance, with Stützle on the verge of superstardom.

17th: Minnesota Wild

Until the Wild get a true no. 1 center, they are stuck between a rock and a hard place, and the buyout penalties of Ryan Suter and Zach Parise don’t help. They peak at $14.74 million both this season and next season, so Minnesota can’t afford to make many, if any, upgrades. Thus, they can’t truly get into Stanley Cup contention status. They don’t have a lot of cap space, though they did re-sign Filip Gustavsson following his breakout season. They’re still a somewhat competitive team, led by Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy, who are 26 and 22. Kaprizov is in the prime of his young NHL career, and Boldy is heating up as a top six forward on the team. Both Boldy and two-way centreman Joel Eriksson Ek are both signed to long-term deals. However, many of their other key contributors are showing their age. Jared Spurgeon, Jonas Brodin, Mats Zuccarello, Marcus Johansson, and Marcus Foligno are all in their 30s, with Zuccarello being the eldest of the five, at 35. Marc-André Fleury is 38, and last season may have shown that he may be better suited as a backup given the stage of the career he is at. They only have $1.64 million of cap space to use, and they still need to re-sign Calen Addison. Unless Marco Rossi shows that he belongs in the NHL, the Wild don’t look like a team that can progress much in the future.

16th: Nashville Predators

In his first offseason as the Predators’ general manager, Barry Trotz delivered one of the most confusing offseasons that people can remember. He traded Ryan Johansen to the Colorado Avalanche and bought out Matt Duchene, the latter being two years removed from an 86-point season. They traded away all of Mattias Ekholm, Nino Niederreiter, Tanner Jeannot, and Mikael Granlund at the trade deadline, and it appeared they would start their retool that spring. And then he signed veterans in their 30s on the first days of free agency with Ryan O’Reilly, Luke Schenn, and Gustav Nyquist, to multi-year deals. On one end, they missed a shot at doing a true retool to draft higher up the board for a few years, as they have some nice young and young-ish players in Cody Glass, Luke Evangelista, Philip Tomasino, and Tommy Novak. On the other, meshing them in with veterans who bring in valuable playoff experience can help expand their game and possibly get them at a playoff spot. They’re not going to win the division, but they will be somewhere between third and fifth in the division. They’re basically the Western Conference’s version of the New York Islanders, in which they don’t have the best offense, but they are going to hang in the playoff bubble and have one of the best goalies in the league.

15th: Buffalo Sabres

There is no team in the NHL whose future I am more excited for than the Buffalo Sabres. They have endured an NHL-record playoff drought of 12 years and they just missed the playoffs by a single point. It may be a tiny bit unsettling to think that they can enter next year with a young goaltending tandem of Devon Levi and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen; perhaps they are ready for the next level. Eric Comrie is also there, but his first year in Buffalo was a tough one, though the hope is that he bounces back. The talent up front is there, led by superstar Tage Thompson. To go with him are Dylan Cozens, Jack Quinn, Casey Mittelstadt, Peyton Krebs, and John-Jason Peterka on the young forward core, plus Jeff Skinner and Alex Tuch as reliable veterans. They have scored the third-most goals this past season. There are a lot of exciting prospects on the system, such as Zach Benson, Matthew Savoie, Jiří Kulich, Isak Rosén, Olivier Nadeau, and defenseman Ryan Johnson. Having Rasmus Dahlin and Owen Power anchoring the top two defensive pairs is a wonderful position to be, and general manager Kevyn Adams added both veterans Erik Johnson and Connor Clifton in the mix. The question is if Levi can live up to his potential in his much-hyped first full NHL season, the Sabres can get the extra point they were needing last season. No matter the situation, they should enjoy many years of playoff contention down the road.

14th: Pittsburgh Penguins

Kyle Dubas has done his wizardry to vastly improve the Penguins on paper this summer. Hauling in all of Reilly Smith, Ryan Graves, Noel Acciari, and Lars Eller are all major improvements to them, but trading for three-time Norris Trophy-winning defenseman Erik Karlsson is more than just the cherry on top. Dubas is doing everything possible for the Penguins to get back to the playoffs. It’s also to tempting to say that if Tristan Jarry, who got a five-year deal this offseason, stays healthy and plays up to how he did in 2021-22, the Pens are in good hands. However, there is a difference between a playoff team and a Stanley Cup contender. Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang all have a lot left on the tank, with the first two playing a full 82 game season together for the first time. However, they are 36, 37, and 36, and Letang will turn 37 by season’s end. They are not what they once were, and even though Dubas has extended the Pens’ competitive window for a bit longer, he is only delaying the inevitable as the window is still closing. Plus, they will not have top goal-scoring winger Jake Guentzel for the first month of the season after his ankle surgery.

13th: New York Rangers

I would put the Rangers higher in these power rankings if it weren’t for the fact that Alexis Lafrenière and Kaapo Kakko have not lived up to the hype that they carried heading into their respective Drafts. Thus, there is more pressure on the Rangers’ veterans to carry the load. There is still time left for Lafrenière and Kaako to elevate their game; for instance, Daniel Sedin didn’t break the 50-point barrier with the Vancouver Canucks until his fourth year in the NHL. Though one can imagine both will be on a short leash entering the season. Mika Zibanejad, Artemi Panarin, Chris Kreider, and Vincent Trocheck are still high-end forwards, but all of them are quietly now in their 30s. Blake Wheeler still has some game left in him, though he too is in his 30s and is not the 90-point forward he used to be. Defenseman Jacob Trouba will also turn 30 this season. Igor Shesterkin has an argument for being the best goalie in the NHL right now, though he has just two years left on his current contract. His backup, Jonathan Quick, at the current stage of his career, looks more of a third-string goaltender than a backup as he is 37 and his game is showing signs of steep decline. The Rangers still have good enough talent to be in the mix, as they are contenders right now, and there are teams that would love to have a defensive core built around Adam Fox and K’Andre Miller. But this team will need to make a deep run or two before their top forwards start declining.

12th: Florida Panthers

Trading for Matthew Tkachuk while sending Jonathan Huberdeau, the team’s franchise points leader at the time of the trade, and top pairing defenseman MacKenzie Weegar the other way was a very high-risk trade, but it has certainly paid off in the end. The Panthers have lengthened their window, and they are built to take a large swing for the Stanley Cup over the course of the primes of Tkachuk and Aleksander Barkov. Tkachuk is 25, and all of Barkov, Carter Verhaeghe, Sam Reinhart, and Sam Bennett are 27 among the forward core, and the defensive pairing of Gustav Forsling and Aaron Ekblad are 27 each, while breakout defenseman Brandon Montour is 29. Newly signed Evan Rodrigues is 30. A lot of the players are either young or on the right side of 30. Oliver Ekman-Larsson is a low-risk addition for the team that knows that they can use some defensive help on the back end, especially with Ekblad and Montour missing at least the first month of the season. The only one closest to 35 is Sergei Bobrovsky, who is 34. Though there is no defenseman on the Panthers that is signed beyond the next two seasons outside of Niko Mikkola. Verhaeghe and Bennett have two years left on their contracts, while Reinhart is on a contract year. There isn’t as big of an open window for the Panthers to get a sustained run of Stanley Cup success. This puts the onus on their young guys—Anton Lundell, Spencer Knight, and now Grigori Denisenko—to get things rolling if they want to get their damage done. Remember, they were out of a playoff spot with 11 days to go in last year’s regular season, and constantly fighting for a spot the way they did throughout last season is not sustainable.

11th: Los Angeles Kings

The strangest part of the Kings’ rebuild is that it’s not their prospects are getting them up the standings. Though Adrian Kempe, Mikey Anderson, Quinton Byfield, Arthur Kaliyev, and, this coming season, Brandt Clarke are getting regular time on the NHL lineup, others, like Gabe Vilardi, Rasmus Kupari, and Brock Faber were used in trade packages to bring in established veterans. All of Kevin Fiala, Pierre-Luc Dubois, Phillip Danault, Viktor Arvidsson, and Vladislav Gavrikov were acquired either by free agency or by trade. Fiala and Dubois are in their prime years, and that attests to how Rob Blake has nicely bridged the gap between these guy sand the last two 2012 and 2014 Stanley Cup champions remaining on the team, Anže Kopitar and Drew Doughty. This, along with the fact that they have developed some of their young players nicely, and Clarke is soon to get a full-time role in the NHL today. Though one can argue that they would be further up in the power rankings if it weren’t for having a trio of Pheonix Copley, Cam Talbot, and David Rittich in net. Them being one of the teams that were rumored to go after a high-impact goalie, namely either one of Connor Hellebuyck or Thatcher Demko, and end up with this trio is disappointing, especially after losing Joonas Korpisalo in free agency. While they are still a well-rounded team, it’s hard to imagine the Kings being a Cup contender this year.

10th: Seattle Kraken

It’s very rare for expansion teams to make the playoffs in their second year of existence. It’s even rarer for an expansion team to take down the defending Stanley Cup champion in their first ever playoff series. That goes to show that the Kraken have exceeded expectations in their sophomore season off a 40-point jump from their inaugural season. However, this is mostly because of a sneakily old core of players, even though Matty Beniers took home the Calder Trophy as the league’s top rookie last season. Among the core contributors, all of André Burakovsky, Jared McCann, Jordan Eberle, Jaden Schwartz, Yanni Gourde, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Brandon Tanev, Adam Larsson, Jamie Oleksiak, and Justin Schultz are between 28 and 33. And among the defensive core, Larsson, Oleksiak, Schultz, and free agent pickup Brian Dumoulin are all older than 30. They have the 7th oldest roster in the NHL, with an average age of 28.42, and that includes another free agent signing in Pierre-Édouard Bellemare, who is 38 and will be 39 by season’s end. They can widen their contention window with Beniers and other prospects, like Shane Wright, Tye Kartye, Ryker Evans, and Eduard Šalé as they go further down the road, but they are in a mini win-now window with a lot of their veterans approaching the inevitable decline in the near future.

9th: Boston Bruins

How can a team that just set the record for the most wins and points in the regular season not be further up in the power rankings? Because we don’t know what the Bruins are going to look like heading into the coming season. Yes, Milan Lucic coming back to them is a nice story, but sometimes it’s better to not bring back familiar faces in attempts to re-live the glory years, especially since he is far from what he was when they won the Stanley Cup in 2011. They lost key trade deadline rentals Tyler Bertuzzi and Dmitry Orlov to free agency, and the former went to a division rival of theirs. Patrice Bergeron announced his retirement this offseason, and David Krejčí might not be coming back to the team. Those two veterans’ combined performance bonus overages of $4.5 million will be eating into the team’s salary cap, which forced them to trade away Taylor Hall and Nick Foligno in a salary dump. Connor Clifton also left for another Atlantic Division team. Bringing in veterans like James van Riemsdyk, Kevin Shattenkirk, Lucic, and Morgan Geekie doesn’t make up for what the Bruins lost. While it’s hard to bet against a team that has David Pastrňák, Charlie McAvoy, Linus Ullmark, Brad Marchand, and Hampus Lindholm, it is going to be hard to know what the Bruins’ identity will be until we go deeper into the season. And whatever it is, it’s not going to be the team that steamrolled through the league last year.

8th: Tampa Bay Lightning

It’s déjà vu all over again. A multi-year champion over the past few years has seen their period of dominance reach an end. This was the same feeling that Kings fans felt in 2015, Blackhawks fans in 2016, and Penguins fans in 2018. It’s now the Lightning’s turn to experience this same feeling. But make no mistake, they have much of the same faces still around here, along with several high-end contributors in their 20s, like Andrei Vasilevskiy, Brayden Point, Anthony Cirelli, Mikhail Sergachev, Erik Černák, and Tanner Jeannot. Future Hall of Famers Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov, and Victor Hedman are in their 30s, though they are still producing as advertised. So is Vasilevskiy, who many still say is the best goaltender in the NHL, though he is quietly 29. Nonetheless, with them getting a full and proper offseason of rest for the first time in four years, it’s still not out of the question for them going on another deep run, and they’re doing everything they can to extend their window. The Jeannot trade is evidence of this, as they’re sacrificing their future to win in the present, and they know that keeping up at an elite level gets tougher each passing season.

7th: Dallas Stars

It looked like just a few years ago when it seemed the Stars were exiting their contention window after their defeat to the Tampa Bay Lightning with an aging core of veterans. They weren’t sure if they were going to get back into the playoffs again. But now they have Joe Pavelski, Jamie Benn, and Tyler Seguin as supporting options for the young core that’s coming up, with Jason Robertson, Roope Hintz, Miro Heiskanen, and Jake Oettinger. They are still early in their careers and are early in their primes too. To go with that, they also have more young talent from within, with Wyatt Johnston getting his first crack at the NHL last season, where he tied the rookie league lead for goals with the Seattle Kraken’s Matty Beniers. Logan Stankoven is soon to get his shot. Add Matt Duchene to the mix and that boosts the top nine forward core, and he can slot in nicely with Seguin and Mason Marchment. Though the defensive core is not as strong as they would like, Heiskanen is figuring to be the Norris-caliber defenseman for the next half decade. They also have some internal candidates to round out the defensive crew, including Esa Lindell, Jani Hakanpää, and Thomas Harley. The Stars have a nice mix of youth and veterans, and with many young players on the come up, expect many more years of contention for the Stars.

6th: Carolina Hurricanes

The Hurricanes have been one of the most consistently dominant teams in the NHL since Rod Brind’Amour was appointed as their head coach. They have never finished a season where they had a points percentage below .590, and they have won their division for the last three years. Unfortunately, with this current core, the furthest they have got is getting swept in the Conference Finals. Now they know that it’s time to go win the Stanley Cup. This season is the most crucial year for Carolina, as a lot of their players are on contract years. Sebastian Aho is in the final year of his current contract, and he just got an eight-year extension that will give him nearly a $1.3 million pay raise on his current $8.46 million per year contract. Top six forward Teuvo Teräväinen is also on a contract year, along with shutdown defender Brett Pesce. Martin Nečas and Seth Jarvis, both young and emerging top six forwards, will get big pay raises as RFAs. All of Jaccob Slavin, Brent Burns, and Jesper Fast will be free agents in the summer after next. There was a reason why they paid up for Dmitry Orlov, the best defenseman available in free agency, and top nine forward Michael Bunting, and brought back offensive defenseman Tony DeAngelo to the team. Carolina has enough talent to get more competitive seasons out of them in the next few years, but next offseason will be their most critical, and it’s only going to get harder to keep everyone around, even with the salary cap starting to increase significantly next summer. It’s basically Cup or bust by now.

5th: Colorado Avalanche

Just like every other previously Stanley Cup champion in the salary cap era, the Avalanche are in their years where they are top heavy and have to get creative with the cap. In consecutive summers, they lost their second line center with Nazem Kadri and J.T. Compher leaving for Calgary and Detroit, respectively. They won’t have Gabriel Landeskog for a second straight season, and fully knowing that, they offloaded his $7 million cap hit to the LTIR. They still have superstars Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, and Cale Makar, who are 27, 26, and 24. Valeri Nichushkin and Artturi Lehkonen are still reliable forwards who can provide secondary scoring, and both are 28. Devon Tows, though he is 29, is a highly reliable two-way defensive presence next to Makar on the blueline. Alexandar Georgiev had a nice bounce back season as Colorado’s starting goalie, and he is 27. Bowen Byram is also coming into his own, and despite the injury concerns being valid, he is still 22. Adding Ryan Johansen, Ross Colton, and Miles Wood gives a nice new look to the middle six, and Jonathan Drouin is a nice bounce back candidate. Most of the core is locked up on long-term deals, though the big concern is about Rantanen’s contract, as he is two years away from unrestricted free agency. There are still many years left for the Avs to push for the Stanley Cup with many of their players in their primes.

4th: New Jersey Devils

Last season was the first taste of playoff experience for this young core, save for Nico Hischier and Jesper Bratt, who have played a combined six playoff games before last year, all coming in a five-game series loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2018. Now the wide, wide window of Stanley Cup contention truly begins. All of Jack Hughes, Hischier, Bratt, and the re-signed Timo Meier are top-six forwards that are in their early-to-mid-20s and are signed to long-term contracts. Adding Tyler Toffoli to the group while sending Yegor Sharangovich and a third round pick the other way is a huge win for general manager Tom Fitzgerald and company. Top defenseman Dougie Hamilton, even though he is 30 years old, is coming off the best season of his career and has five years left on his current deal. Shutdown defenders John Marino and Jonas Siegenthealer, who are both 26, are signed on the long-term for less than $8 million combined in cap space. While Dawson Mercer is on a contract year, he has solidified himself as a top-six staple on the lineup. Also, they have two young and exciting defensive prospects in Luke Hughes and Šimon Nemec, who are both 19. Akira Schmid also looks to be the team’s goaltender of the future, and even if it’s a small sample size last season, it looks very, very promising. This team had the third best record last season, and they can rule the Metropolitan Division in the many years to come.

3rd: Toronto Maple Leafs

The Maple Leafs have finally won a playoff series in their seventh go with Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, and William Nylander. While it feels great to win a series for the first time in 19 years, it’s still not enough. They will have to play into at least the Conference Finals with their superstars still intact. Matthews and Nylander are on contract years, and they are eligible for extensions. Marner and John Tavares will be eligible for extensions next summer. Though it seemed like a complete 180 from Leafs Nation contrasting Day One of free agency and Day Two, even though John Klingberg was brought in on Day One, Day Two saw general manager Brad Treliving bring in Tyler Bertuzzi and Max Domi on one-year deals, and signing those two players, along with Klingberg, are big additions to a Leafs team that is looking for the extra push. However, it’s fair to question the blueline, but they are nearly $3 million over the cap even with Jake Muzzin and Matt Murray on the LTIR. This could possibly mean T.J. Brodie could be moved to free up a spot for Conor Timmins for offense, though if they’re doing so, they would lose a quietly solid defensive defenseman, as he carries a $5 million cap hit. With the goaltenders, Ilya Samsonov is a nice bridge goalie, though it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Joseph Woll could seize the opportunity for the starting job. Though this year overall has to be the year they have to push their chips.

2nd: Edmonton Oilers

There is a sense of urgency inside the Oilers, with many people saying that they have to win at the highest peaks of the careers of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. Though all that talk seems to be overblown considering most of the core is still around. McDavid has three years left in his current contract. Draisaitl has two years left. Both of them are 26 and 27, respectively, and McDavid is coming off the first 150-point season in the NHL since Mario Lemieux in 1996. Getting Connor Brown at just a $775k cap hit is a big steal and mastery at work for general manager Ken Holland. While Brown is coming off a season where he tore his ACL, Edmonton is hoping he bounces back to his Ottawa form. A full year of Mattias Ekholm should help out the defensive core. Though Evan Bouchard still needs a new contract, they have a tad above $3.5 million in cap space to give him a new deal, so they can certainly give him a feasible deal. Stuart Skinner can build off his success in his rookie year in the crease, and Jack Campbell should have a better Year 2 in Oil Country. However, several of their key players are nearing the end of their primes. Ekholm is 33, Zach Hyman and Evander Kane are 31, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is 30, and Darnell Nurse is 28. However, this is still a dangerous team whose main core is under contract for at least two seasons, including two future Hall of Fame talents who can extend the primes of their linemates. Even if the Oilers don’t win it all this year, they still have this year and next to accomplish the biggest task of all in the NHL.

1st: Vegas Golden Knights

The Stanley Cup Champion Vegas Golden Knights have kept the band together for the most part. Jack Eichel just had his coming out party during the playoffs last year. Mark Stone missed almost half of the season, and the Knights still won the Pacific Division. Even if they lost Reilly Smith on a cap dump, Vegas Knows where they are. They know why they have traded most of their prospects while fulfilling team owner Bill Foley’s vision of “playoffs in three, Cup in six.” This is a team that is a win-now franchise year in and year out. They’ve learned from their mistakes in the years past to stay humble and to bring in fresh, young or young-ish legs to the team. While going after big-name guys every year was not ideal, it has worked out with Eichel, Stone, and Alex Pietrangelo. This past season, they snuck in the shadows and made sneakily good depth moves for players who can contribute to the team, as was the case with Brett Howden, Ivan Barbashev, and Mike Amadio. They will most definitely be in the mix for the Stanley Cup, looking to defend their title. Eichel, despite looking like he’s been around since forever, is 26. Barbashev, Shea Theodore, and Adin Hill are all 27. While they are risking losing high-end prospects as they have traded away five of their first six first round picks with the exception of Brendan Brisson, this is still a very balanced and a well-coached team under Bruce Cassidy.

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