Grading Every NHL Team's Stanley Cup Chances After 2025 Offseason

NHL training camps are starting up, and the start of the 2025-26 season is rapidly approaching.

Most rosters are set for the start of the season, and we should have at least some idea as to which teams can contend for the Stanley Cup and which teams will not.

So let's take a quick lap around the league and grade every team's Stanley Cup chances for this season.

Here's how it is going to work on a grading scale:

Now let us see where every team stands.

Long-term, there is a lot to like about where the Ducks are headed, as they have a truly outstanding talent base and it is only getting better. They also spent some big money this offseason to add veteran forwards Chris Kreider and Mikael Granlund to the roster.

The expectations for Kreider are a lot higher than those for Granlund, but it's clear that this is a team looking to make a big jump this season. The playoffs should be a realistic goal, but I'm not sure if they have enough at this point to achieve it.

The most important thing for the Ducks to achieve isn't necessarily what the new veterans do; it's how much internal improvement they can get from young players like Leo Carlsson and Mason McTavish. They need some big breakouts.

If you wanted to be optimistic, you could look at this Bruins team and say that a healthy Charlie McAvoy and Hampus Lindholm will be significant upgrades for the defense, and that there is no way Jeremy Swayman plays as poorly as he did a year ago. Both developments would significantly change the team's outlook.

But for as much as the defense injuries hurt, and for as disappointing as Swayman was in his first season as the undisputed No. 1 goalie, those weren't the only issues for Boston. There are still some serious issues here regarding their forwards and offensive depth.

David Pastrnak is great. But the rest of the forward depth chart is lacking in impact players, and they still lack a true No. 1 center that can drive an offense and a team. Until they address those issues, this team will remain a fringe playoff contender.

What a sad state of affairs this is.

The playoff drought is at 14 years. They finished 2024-25 with the third-worst record in the Eastern Conference and still don't seem to be anywhere close to a playoff spot.

So what did they do this offseason? Something meaningful, no doubt. Something that could potentially turn this thing around and give their fans some reason for optimism.

Wrong.

They traded JJ Peterka for Michael Kesserling and Josh Doan, and added Conor Timmins in a draft-day trade with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

And as of now, that's pretty much it.

They are again set to enter the season -- just as they did a year ago -- with more than $5 million in unused salary cap space.

Terry Pegula cares more about investing in Penn State hockey than he does this team. The fans of Buffalo deserve better. The city deserves better. It's just terrible.

If the Flames had had even an average offense in 2024-25, they might have done enough to steal a surprising playoff berth. Instead, they narrowly missed out by the slimmest of margins (literally missing on a tiebreaker) and walked away with the "we did better than anybody expected" award.

Given how well they performed defensively and how much of a step forward new starting goalie Dustin Wolf took, it's a little disappointing that they didn't make a bigger effort to improve their offense, especially with so much unused salary cap space (still more than $11 million).

They also might still trade away one of their top defenseman, Rasmus Andersson, as he enters a contract year.

As long as Wolf's rookie season was not a fluke, this team has a chance to at least stay competitive for a potential playoff spot.

I know people probably get tired of talking about them as a Stanley Cup contender only to watch them and their offense fizzle out in the Eastern Conference Final, but there is still a lot to be said for consistently getting that far. It does not happen by accident or by a fluke. It's an outstanding team, and it improved this offseason with the additions of forward Nikolaj Ehlers and defenseman K'Andre Miller.

The big question is what their next big move will be because there is certainly one on the way at some point, either before the season or during it.

The Hurricanes are better positioned than any other contender to take another big swing, still possessing more than $10 million in salary cap space and having a full cupboard of trade assets to pull from. They could be in the market for pretty much anybody, including Minnesota Wild superstar Kirill Kaprizov.

They are a contender right now as currently constructed. If they can swing another major move they will be even better.

The Blackhawks are a great lesson in the dangers of tanking a season to land a prized draft prospect and how long it takes to rebuild yourself from that.

Connor Bedard is on the right track, and they have a lot of young players ready to get inserted into the lineup, but there is nothing to be excited about here for this season.

The Blackhawks are hoping that their prospects can develop and make a significant impact, but not all of them will pan out as expected. There is also a real danger in throwing a bunch of rookies into a losing environment, on a bad team, and having them get stuck in that perpetual cycle of losing, especially when the veterans on the team are not particularly good.

They have basically wasted all of Bedard's entry-level contract years and are still several years from serious contention. Heck, they might be a few years away from simply making the playoffs.

The Avalanche didn't have an overwhelmingly busy offseason, but it's still a good team coming back. As long as Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar are healthy, they are going to have a chance, while a full season of Gabriel Landeskog could be a huge game-changer.

There are still some depth and goaltending questions here, and that might limit their overall ceiling. I'm not sure if they are the elite Stanley Cup contender they were a couple of years ago, but the playoffs should be an expectation. After that, it just depends on how much Landeskog can give them and whether or not the goaltending holds up.

The Blue Jackets were another surprise team in 2024-25, given their competitiveness, and the stage seemed to be set for them to have a huge offseason. They had salary cap space, multiple first-round draft picks they were ready and willing to trade, and one of the NHL's deepest farm systems.

Instead of cashing in some of those chips and taking advantage of their situation, they simply re-signed Ivan Provorov to a long-term contract extension that is almost certain to age poorly, and then traded for Charlie Coyle and Miles Wood. Kind of underwhelming.

The good news is that the young talent in this organization is staggering, and that alone might be enough to get them into playoff contention. Especially if a player like Adam Fantilli really blossoms this season.

Good future. Disappointing offseason that could have made the future come a little sooner.

The Stars have appeared in three consecutive Western Conference Finals and have lost all three. They have one of the NHL's best rosters on paper and have been one of the NHL's best teams on the ice.

What's going to be interesting to watch here is how Mikko Rantanen performs over a full season, where he is expected to be the driving force behind a lot of the offense. His post-trade from Colorado performance was a bit of a mixed bag with both Carolina and Dallas, but he had moments where he showed he can be the guy and take over games on his own.

There's not many weaknesses on this team, and the roster has high-level players at forward, defense and goalie.

The Stanley Cup window is still wide open; they have been a serious contender, and they should continue to be a serious contender.

So far, it's been another underwhelming offseason for Steve Yzerman and the Yzerplan, continuing a rather underwhelming tenure.

The Red Wings have remained in the NHL's no-man's land, where they are not quite good enough to make the playoffs, not quite bad enough to be a top lottery team, and not quite interesting enough to capture people's attention.

There is still a promising collection of young talent here and a nice prospect pool, but they need to start getting some return on it. They also have more than $11 million in salary-cap space, which is baffling to look at when you realize how long this team has been outside of the playoffs and how many holes it still has.

The playoffs can be within reach, and should be, but they need some more help before they can get there.

Are Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Evan Bouchard still here? Yes. They are.

Then this is still a top-tier Stanley Cup contender.

You know those three players are going to produce and make an impact almost every night, and the depth is better than it has been throughout much of McDavid and Draisaitl's careers.

They still have big questions in goal that need to be answered, but after back-to-back Stanley Cup Final appearances, the expectation for a championship should still be high.

The back-to-back Stanley Cup champions (and back-to-back-to-back Eastern Conference champions) managed to keep every core player that was up for a new contract this offseason and are mostly bringing back what's been the best team in hockey over the past four seasons.

The only thing that might stop them is the physical toll that three consecutive deep playoff runs can take on a team. At some point, they have to get at least a little tired ... right?

I was torn between giving the Kings a B or a C in this exercise.

On the one hand, they have established themselves as a fairly consistent playoff team that excels in many areas, especially defensively.

On the other hand, they significantly weakened one of their biggest strengths (the defense) this offseason with the departures of Vladislav Gavrikov and Jordan Spence, replacing them with Brian Dumoulin and Cody Ceci. They also did relatively little to add more offense to a team that needs it, especially if it is going to finally break through that first-round Edmonton Oilers wall that has eliminated them four years in a row.

If those rosters could not advance, why is this one going to be the one that does it? Because this roster is worse on paper than last year's roster. But the playoffs should still be a pretty secure lock.

A lot of this grade hinges on two things: 1) Whether or not Kirill Kaprizov is still on the team, and 2) their ability to stay healthy.

The 2024-25 season was a tale of two distinct Wild teams, which produced vastly different results.

The fully healthy roster in the first half of the season was one of the best in the NHL, with a potential MVP candidate in Kaprizov.

The second half roster, the one that spent significant time playing without Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek, and several top defenders, nearly faded to the point where just making the playoffs became an unexpected challenge.

As long as the Wild do not trade Kaprizov and he stays healthy, and they keep their other top players healthy and get some big contributions from one of the league's best prospect pools, this team should not only be a guaranteed playoff team, it might even play its way into being a sleeper Stanley Cup contender.

If the Canadiens had simply brought back the same roster as last season and expected it to either replicate its performance or improve, it probably wouldn't have worked out well.

But that's not what they did.

They added a bona fide top-pairing defenseman in Noah Dobson, a very good middle-six winger in Zac Bolduc, will have a full season of Ivan Demidov, and an already good core that features Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky, and Lane Hutson.

The playoffs were a surprise a year ago.

They have to be an expectation this season.

Now here is a team stuck in no-man's land.

They were, by a mile, the most disappointing team in the NHL during the 2024-25 season and didn't make many meaningful changes to address this issue this offseason.

It's clearly not a rebuilding team; it's also not really a team that is close to contending. It's a mediocre team with many older players and numerous big contracts. That is a bad combination.

They have to figure out a way to keep Jack Hughes on the ice. That's priority No. 1.

When he is healthy, he is one of the most dynamic offensive players in the league and a huge game-changer. But injuries have now ruined several seasons for him -- and the Devils -- and the 2024-25 season was another of them.

The offseason additions of Connor Brown and Evgenii Dadonov were solid, low-cost depth options that should help balance out an offense that was a bit too top-heavy a year ago.

This is a playoff team, and perhaps even a good one if they can keep their key players healthy.

The Islanders are unlikely to be a particularly strong team in 2025-26, especially after trading Noah Dobson to the Canadiens and not making significant improvements to their lackluster offense (though the addition of Jonathan Drouin was a positive move).

Even so, you can at least see some sort of vision for the future. Parting ways with general manager Lou Lamoriello and replacing him with Mathieu Darche certainly helped improve that vision.

The Islanders' farm system has dramatically improved over the past 12 months with the additions of Cal Ritchie and three first-round picks in 2025, including No. 1 overall pick Matthew Schaefer and top-15 picks Viktor Eklund and Kashawn Aitcheson.

Some patience will be needed here, but the long-term outlook is already brighter than it was a few months ago.

The Rangers probably believe missing the playoffs in 2024-25 was a fluke, and that a full season of J.T. Miller, the addition of Vladislav Gavrikov and hiring Mike Sullivan as head coach can fix all of their problems.

That might be a misguided plan.

Miller is still a pretty huge wild-card, and while Gavrikov should improve the top-pairing alongside Adam Fox, the second and third pairings leave a LOT to be desired. This is also a team that has had serious 5-on-5 issues and defensive issues, and they really didn't do much to meaningfully address those. They also lost a good top-nine forward in Chris Kreider and did not really replace him.

The best hope for a turnaround here is if starting goalie Igor Shesterkin plays like an MVP. And that is certainly possible. But that's asking a lot of a goalie who's already had to put this franchise on his back and carry it for most of his career.

I could definitely see them making the playoffs.

I could also easily see them missing the playoffs again.

There is a lot to love about the top half of the Senators' lineup, especially with core players Tim Stutzle and Brady Tkachuk leading the way.

Starting goalie Linus Ullmark was also a huge addition last year, not only for solving their own goalie issue, but also because trading for him made a division rival (Boston) significantly weaker. Then the Senators ended up replacing that Boston team in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

But for all of those positives, there are still some depth questions, and the Eastern Conference has enough bubble playoff teams that just automatically expecting the Senators to be back in is a tough proposition.

Adding Jordan Spence from Los Angeles will be a big help to the third-defense pairing, but this still feels like a team that is missing something.

Even with the lack of playmakers and star power at forward, the Flyers' defensive play and structure under former head coach John Tortorella were good enough that they probably still could have seriously competed for a playoff spot if their goaltending had not been an absolute disaster.

Instead of addressing the issue meaningfully, they may have made it worse by signing Dan Vladar to a long-term deal.

They made a popular head-coaching hire by bringing in Rick Tocchet from Vancouver, but his track record as an NHL head coach does not match his reputation, and he is not exactly the type of coach who can improve what has been a disappointing offense.

The good news is that Matvei Michkov still has enormous upside and had a strong rookie season offensively. But the combination of his play away from the puck, combined with the sketchy defensive play of newly acquired center Trevor Zegras, might be enough to make Tocchet lose his mind before the season ends.

The rebuild is underway for the Pittsburgh Penguins, and now it is just a matter of how long it will take.

Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell and Erik Karlsson are still on the roster, and they still have enough good veteran and young forwards that can probably keep them from being one of the worst teams in the league.

The defense and goaltending, however, will keep them out of the playoffs and firmly in the lottery.

The farm system has improved significantly under Kyle Dubas over the past two years, and they still have a number of draft picks over the next couple of years. However, they are still lacking a young franchise-level player in their prospect pool. This could be the year they get it, whether it is Gavin McKenna or another of the top prospects in the loaded 2025 class.

Macklin Celebrini might be the best young player in the NHL, and the Sharks have some other young talent that should be able to complement his game. However, this is still a team in the very early stages of its rebuild, with little short-term or immediate help on the way.

They have their guy in Celebrini, but they need more time to build up around him.

Another team and fan base will need to have a lot of patience for what is ahead this season.

It's been really hard to understand what the Kraken have been doing since they arrived in the NHL, but there have not been many good moves. What they really need is for Matty Beniers and Shane Wright to become All-Star-level players. That would certainly help address many issues, but even then, it would still likely not be enough.

It's still a very mediocre roster that lacks a clear identity or excels in any particular area.

The playoffs seem like an extreme long-shot.

The Blues were a great success story a year ago, especially in the second half of the season, which helped them rediscover their identity as a defensive juggernaut. The hiring of Jim Montgomery as head coach helped, and so did the additions of Philip Broberg and Cam Fowler to the defense.

The restricted free agent offer sheet additions of Broberg and Dylan Holloway added some serious young talent into the organization, while Fowler's addition from Anaheim was one of the best in-season trades in the NHL.

The Blues were also smart not to trade Jordan Kyrou this offseason despite the rumors and speculation.

As long as Jordan Binnington gives them another competent season in net, this can definitely be a playoff team again. Maybe not a top Stanley Cup contender, but seriously a playoff team that would be a difficult team to eliminate.

The Lightning do not have the depth they once had when they were competing in the Stanley Cup Final every year, and that is a significant reason they have hit a first-round ceiling and not advanced in three years.

But they still have the high-end talent in Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, Jake Guentzel and Victor Hedman to remain in the playoffs. And they will be there again this season.

The big question is whether the secondary players are good enough to help them push through to the second and beyond.

Andrei Vasilevskiy was once an absolute monster in the playoffs, but he has struggled in his past few postseason appearances. He might be in a position where he needs a better backup to limit his regular-season workload to help keep him fresh for the playoffs.

The Toronto Maple Leafs finally made a significant change to their core by sending forward Mitch Marner to the Vegas Golden Knights in a sign-and-trade deal. It was probably a necessary move because this core has repeatedly shown us what it is. And it's not good enough.

The problem is the Maple Leafs' depth players haven't been good enough either, and I'm not entirely sure they fixed that with Mattias Maccelli, Dakota Joshua and Nicolas Roy.

Overall, it's a fine team. They will win a decent number of regular-season games, make the playoffs, and then likely struggle to score goals again, losing many close, low-scoring games and bowing out far sooner than anybody in Toronto wants to see.

It's a good playoff team.

It's not a great championship team.

Nothing done this offseason changed that to get them closer to being the latter.

Adding JJ Peterka from Buffalo brings a potential 30-35 goal scorer into the mix and really strengthens a Utah forward group that already has some serious talent.

They made a big investment in their defense a year ago by getting Mikhail Sergachev and John Marino, and this year, they made the necessary investment in another forward.

As good as Peterka could be, the real potential game-changer here would be a breakout season from either Logan Cooley or Dylan Guenther.

If that happens, it could rapidly put Utah into playoff contention and a playoff spot in the Western Conference. Not ready to be a Stanley Cup contender by any means, but the playoffs are most certainly attainable this season with some improvements in the right areas.

Here is what Vancouver needs to get back into the playoffs this season.

Those two things happen, and the playoffs can be a realistic option.

If they don't .... it is better luck next year.

The biggest storyline this season, aside from Pettersson, is going to be the future of defenseman Quinn Hughes. He can not sign a contract extension until next year, but there is already speculation he could be on his way out of Vancouver at some point over the next two years. That could be an annoying distraction really quickly. The Canucks do not need any more of those given the way the 2024-25 season went with the Pettersson and J.T. Miller drama.

The Mitch Marner-Vegas Golden Knights connection might actually be perfect.

Vegas needed a top-line winger to help complete its Stanley Cup puzzle. Marner needed a fresh start and an environment where he wouldn't always be a target for criticism every time something went wrong. Both sides got exactly what they wanted.

Marner, for all of his postseason struggles in Toronto, is still an elite playmaker and point producer in the regular season, and is not going to have to be the player everybody looks to in Vegas. Jack Eichel, Mark Stone, and William Karlsson are the players who have been here and are the cornerstone pieces, and they will be the ones receiving the focus.

This could be a scenario similar to the one Phil Kessel had when he went from Toronto to Pittsburgh. It is an opportunity to be a secondary figure rather than the top star, while also joining a winning organization that has achieved more consistent postseason success.

It helped Kessel get two Stanley Cup rings. It might have a similar payoff here for Marner because the Golden Knights should be one of the top championship contenders in the NHL this season.

The Capitals' aggressive 2024 offseason helped them go from a fringe playoff team to one of the best teams in the NHL overnight. Most of that roster is returning this season, and it remains a strong one.

Bold trades and good drafting and player development have helped keep the Capitals' window for contention wide open for the end of Alex Ovechkin's playing career, and they should still have at least one more opportunity to make a run for him this season.

The only thing that might hold them back is that they don't really have a lot of star-level players outside of Ovechkin. There are a lot of really good players here, but not many players that are going to put fear into an opposing head coach in a best-of-seven series. That is their big weakness and the one that might keep their ceiling a little bit lower than some of the NHL's other top Stanley Cup contenders.

Connor Hellebuyck is one of the most impactful players in the NHL and the type of goalie that can mask flaws and elevate any team into a contender.

He is a three-time Vezina Trophy winner, the reigning NHL MVP, and is one of the few goalies that you can count on for a consistent performance year after year. He is as good as it gets at the position.

Having said all of that, the only thing fans in Winnipeg are going to care about is how he performs in the playoffs. His past few playoff appearances have been about as bad as you can get, and a complete 180 from his dominant regular-season performances.

Like Andrei Vasilevskiy in Tampa Bay, it might be an issue of him taking on too big a workload during the regular season and being burnt out come playoff time. Hellebuyck plays more games and minutes than any other goalie in the NHL, and has done so for almost seven years now. At some point, that will begin to take its toll.

Perhaps he needs a better backup to give him some rest during the regular season, allowing him to approach the playoffs with a fresher perspective.

It would at least be worth trying to see if it can fix his postseason issues.

For better or worse, that is the narrative of his career to this point, and it is up to him to change it.

Winnipeg has high-end talent on its roster, but Nikolaj Ehlers might be a bigger loss than they realize. Even if it is, Hellebuyck will still be the player who determines how much they win.