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It’s April, meaning there are three types of teams. The good ones have already locked up their playoff spot, and are playing out the string with an eye on seeding and home ice, waiting to find out who they’ll face in the first round. Other teams are still fighting for their invitation, with every game down the stretch feeling like a make-or-break contest where every moment matters.
And then, there are the loser teams.
Sorry, maybe there’s a kinder way to put that, but you know who I mean. These teams have no shot at the playoffs, even with weeks left on the schedule. They’re out, and in most cases they’ve been out for a long time. It’s a miserable time to be a fan of one of those teams – the lottery is still a month away, the draft is even further, you’re not sure if you’re even supposed to want your team to win anymore, and everyone else seems to be having way more fun than you are.
It’s rough. And I’m here to help. So today, let’s try our annual-ish exercise of coming up with some positivity for the truly hopeless teams. Using the playoff odds from Dom’s model and Moneypuck, we can find 11 teams that both models agree have less than a one percent chance at the postseason right now. That’s about as low as we can go, and it means we get to pretend that teams like the Penguins, Blues and (just barely) the Wild are still alive. You have to be pretty bad to be completely out of it with weeks left to play. And these teams are indeed quite bad.
Just not so bad that we can’t pump their tires a little bit. Let’s get positive, as we work through all 11 teams in order, from my picks for the easiest to feel good about down to the most challenging.
11. New Jersey Devils
The negative: In a year where everyone was expecting another step forward and some were even picking them to win the Stanley Cup, the Devils had one of those seasons where everything went wrong. It cost Lindy Ruff his job, and Wednesday’s fight-filled loss to the Rangers officially moved them below our “no hope” cutoff.
Positive thought #1: The Devils are going to be easy. They’re stacked with good young players, from Jack Hughes up front to Luke Hughes and Simon Nemec on the blue line. There are plenty of playoff-bound teams that would love to swap talent with the Devils. They’ll be fine.
Positive thought #2: Injuries are part of hockey, but the Devils had them worse than most. Missing Dougie Hamilton for most of the season was devastating, and they were also without Jack Hughes, Nico Hischier and Timo Meier for long stretches. Give them league-average health and they’re at least in the race. As I said, the Devils are almost too easy for this exercise.
Positive thought #3: The big problem all year was the goaltending, and they addressed that at the deadline with… huh, OK, maybe this won’t be that easy. Still, even as they whiffed on Jacob Markstrom or Jusse Saros or Jacques Plante or whoever else the armchair GMs thought they should get, Jake Allen’s been OK, and they’ve beaten teams like Dallas, Toronto and Winnipeg with him in net. Imagine what they’ll look like when they have a legitimate stud back there after Tom Fitzgerald gets to work this summer.
OK, the Devils were a nice warmup. Let’s start ratcheting up the difficulty…
10. Chicago Blackhawks
The Blackhawks are bad. With Connor Bedard and another top pick coming, the future is bright. (Patrick McDermott / Getty Images)
The negative: Year one of the Connor Bedard era may see them end up even worse than they were last season, which is really something since they spent all last year actively trying to lose.
Positive thought #1: Come on. You have Connor Bedard. Nobody feels sorry for you, and no reasonable Blackhawks fan is sulking right now. Bedard is amazing, he’ll be ridiculous in a few more years, and you’ve already locked in the single toughest piece of a Cup winner to find. We all hate you guys a little bit. Fine, sorry, that was wrong. It’s not a little bit.
Positive thought #2: While it’s pretty clear that contending wasn’t the plan this year, it’s worth remembering this team did go out and get Taylor Hall and Corey Perry in the offseason, then lost both early in the year. Maybe all that cost them was a few draft picks at the deadline, but it’s worth factoring in. Add a healthy Hall to a veteran core that includes an improved Seth Jones and a surprising Petr Mrazek, and there could be something here to build on.
Positive thought #3: I’m not saying you’re going to win the lottery and get Macklin Celebrini, but I’m also not not saying it. But even if you don’t, you’ll have a top-five pick to pad an already excellent prospect pool. Kyle Davidson knows what he’s doing, and while this is the easy part, he’s acing it. It just happens that acing it means losing a lot… for now.
9. Montreal Canadiens
The negative: The once-proud Canadiens will miss the playoffs by a mile yet again, and might post their third straight last-place finish in a division they share with constant disasters like Ottawa and Buffalo. And if everything breaks right next year, the upside for this roster is… what, finishing 10 points out of the playoffs instead of 20?
Positive thought #1: Juraj Slafkovsky. That’s it, that’s all you need to say. After looking like a potential bust in year one, he’s made the leap as a sophomore and now looks like the right pick from the murky 2022 draft. His numbers for the year won’t be great, but he looks like a legitimate difference-maker.
Positive thought #2: The prospect pool is good, and maybe even very good depending on whether you’re a David Reinbacher believer. And they somehow pulled off the trick of turning Sean Monahan into first-round picks in each of the next two drafts, so more is on the way. Mix in another step forward from Nick Suzuki, and the future looks reasonably bright, especially if they can get Cole Caufield going again.
Positive thought #3: Sam Montembeault looks like a real goalie, Cayden Primeau may get there too, and Jacob Fowler is on the way. That doesn’t mean any of them are ready to be a star, and certainly doesn’t mean that they’ll measure up to the iconic goalies who’ve come before in Montreal. But after years of the position being a weakness, they may go into next year with some confidence for a change. Or at least, not a feeling of impending doom.
8. Anaheim Ducks
The negative: They were extraordinarily bad, and will still need some lottery luck for that to turn into a top-three pick. To make matters worse, the shine is off of Trevor Zegras, Mason McTavish didn’t make a big leap, and Leo Carlsson hasn’t had the rookie season you were hoping for. It’s one thing to be bad, but if your key young players aren’t making strides, you’re kind of screwed.
Positive thought #1: Let’s pump the brakes on worrying about the young guys. That’s a good idea most years, but especially so in one where we’ve seen guys like Quinton Byfield and Alexis Lafrenière finally break through after taking a few years to figure it out. Oh, and the guy who might win the Art Ross and the Hart had his struggles over his first three years. Give it time, the Ducks young core will be fine.
Positive thought #2: Aside from the young guys who are already here, they’ve also got one of the best prospects lists in the league. They even managed the rare trick of improving it during the season, thanks to adding Cutter Gauthier in a surprise deal with the Flyers. He didn’t come cheap, exactly, but he’s the sort of player who’s almost never available at all. And of course, they’ll have another top-five pick this year.
Positive thought #3: The young guys may not have made big leaps, but Frank Vatrano seemed to. That’s good news, either because it gives you a 30-goal presence on the wing that you weren’t expecting, or because Pat Verbeek can turn him into another future asset over the summer.
7. Arizona Coyotes
The negative: After a solid start, the Coyotes fell apart down the stretch, finishing well outside the playoff race. It’s the 11th time in 12 seasons that they’ve missed the playoffs, with the only exception coming in the expanded bubble year.
Positive thought #1: Let’s focus on that strong start. It wasn’t just a few games early on; they were a very respectable 19-14-2 on New Year’s Eve. You can build on that, especially as a young team. There’s something here.
Positive thought #2: They’ve also been finishing well, with five wins in their last nine games. We can’t just hand-wave away the awful stretch in the middle, especially the 14-game losing streak that torpedoed their season. Young teams sometimes lose focus and go through prolonged slumps, and this team had a truly awful one. But on either side of it, there was reason for optimism.
Positive thought #3: We’ve been down this road before, but it sure sounds like we’re finally going to get some clarity on the arena situation, one way or another. If it means shovels in the ground, that’s great for the Arizona Coyotes. If it means moving, that’s awful for the fan base but probably better for the team than another decade of uncertainty. Either way, it should be good news for the long term, depending on how you look at it.
6. Ottawa Senators
The negative: After yet another disastrous season that started with hope and ended without any meaningful late-season hockey, it’s time to ask some hard questions about whether this young core is as good as everyone spent the last few years assuming it would be.
Positive thought #1: The sale to Michael Andlauer didn’t become official until September, which was too late for new management to do anything but see how the season turned out. That makes this the first offseason for the new boss, one where he can finally crack open his wallet and start building a winner. No team was hurt more by ownership over the years, and now they finally have someone in charge who puts winning ahead of budgets and ego. If it doesn’t work under Andlauer then we can worry, but he hasn’t had a chance to make an impact yet.
Positive thought #2: Related to the first point, the era of stability as a virtue in Ottawa has to be ending. We heard it from players, and later from Andlauer and Steve Staios, and it made some sense early in the season. But now that DJ Smith and Pierre Dorion are gone and the results still look awful, any platitudes about staying the course won’t play. It’s time to get to work.
Positive thought #3: While the team was relatively healthy this year, they were missing Shane Pinto for half the season due to that bizarre gambling suspension. They’ll also presumably get some immediate help if/when they trade Jakob Chychrun or Thomas Chabot, and Joonas Korpisalo has shown signs of life over the last few weeks. Mix in a new coach and some aging curve improvement from Tim Stützle and Jake Sanderson, and the path to improvement isn’t hard to find here.
5. Seattle Kraken
Joey Daccord: Greatest goalie in Kraken history. (Bob Frid / USA Today)
The negative: In year three, the Kraken have taken a step back after last year’s playoff run. And with Shane Wright yet to make an impact and Matty Beniers hitting a sophomore wall, it’s fair to ask if the future is all that bright.
Positive thought #1: As far as Wright and (especially) Beniers go, we can just repeat what we said about the Ducks young players above. Don’t make me tap the “Quinton Byfield made your hot takes look silly” sign.
Positive thought #2: In Joey Daccord, they’ve found the greatest goaltender in franchise history. Granted, that’s an exceedingly low bar, given how the first two years went. But Daccord is a great story, and he’s signed cheap for another year after this one. Kraken fans had to spend the last two years listening to everyone lecture them about the importance of goaltending, even when things were going well. OK, now they’ve got a goaltender. Let’s build on that.
Positive thought #3: The big story with last year’s run was their shooting percentage – 11.6 percent in all situations, well above the league average of 10.1 percent – which everyone knew was unsustainably high. It did indeed come crashing down, but this year it’s swung to the other side, all the way down to 9.1 percent. Maybe that’s about right for the true talent of this group; it’s hard to say with what’s still essentially an expansion roster. But it’s also possible that this was an over-correction, and we’ll see it inch up closer to league average next year. If it does, and the goaltending holds, the Kraken get to right around an even goals differential, which is usually enough to at least be a playoff bubble team.
4. Columbus Blue Jackets
The negative: This. Otherwise, going great.
Positive thought #1: Look, this season was a disaster, but it also probably never had a chance. Once the whole Mike Babcock fiasco played out, it was over. We may never know whether Pascal Vincent would make a good NHL head coach under normal circumstances, but he never had an opportunity in Columbus. Remember, even Jared Bednar was awful when he was a late-offseason hire, and that was on a team with Nathan MacKinnon, Gabriel Landeskog and Mikko Rantanen. Sometimes you just have to burn the tapes, you know?
Positive thought #2: Those three stars from the 2016-17 Avalanche were all under 25. You know who else is? Adam Fantilli, Cole Sillinger, Kent Johnson and Kirill Marchenko. None of them had great seasons this year, but as those Avalanche reminded us, sometimes it takes time. The Blue Jackets’ pipeline is legitimately stacked. The future is bright.
Positive thought #3: For the first time in over a decade, there will be a new GM in Columbus. Almost certainly a new coach too. Get those hires right, and you’ve taken the key first steps toward rewriting that well-worn Blue Jackets story of failure.
3. San Jose Sharks
The negative: They’re finishing off what will arguably be the worst single-season any team has had in the cap era. Also, they’re old, they’re stuck with some bad contracts, and they’ve traded their two best players away for nickels on the dollar in the last year.
Positive thought #1: Those two star trades – Erik Karlsson and Tomas Hertl – were tough for fans to swallow, but necessary because the first step of a true rebuild is getting out from under big contracts. There isn’t much Mike Grier can do about deals like Logan Couture and Marc-Édouard Vlasic, but getting assets for Karlsson and Hertl before their contracts became anchors was the right move, and will pay off down the line.
Positive thought #2: Speaking of that Vlasic deal, it’s been considered one of the league’s worst for years now, but it’s only got two more seasons left. Couture has three. But that’s about it as far as bad contracts that extend past 2025. With some very good prospects on the way, the runway here is clearer than a lot of us might realize.
Positive thought #3: This is just one guy’s opinion so take it for what it’s worth, but I think Grier is up to the job here. He’s done a good job of being realistic about the team he’s inherited and didn’t make the common rookie GM mistake of holding out for perfect when “good enough” was on the table. The teardown part of a rebuild is always the easiest, and as fans of other teams on this list could tell you, you never really know what you’ve got in a front office until it’s time to start moving forward again. But based on what we’ve seen so far, I think the Sharks are in good hands.
2. Calgary Flames
How will the Jacob Markstrom saga end in Calgary? (Leah Hennel / Getty Images)
The negative: Last year, they saw their point total plunge, going from Cup contenders to missing the playoffs entirely. A lot of the blame fell on Darryl Sutter, who was shown the door and replaced with the more player-friendly Ryan Huska. Not only did that not reverse the fall, but this year’s team will end up even worse. They’re older than most teams on this list, are stuck with some bad contracts, and don’t have any elite prospects on the way. And while new GM Craig Conroy did eventually get around to trading veterans for future assets, his work got decidedly middling reviews. It’s looking more and more like losing Matthew Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau in 2022 was a franchise turning point, and not in a remotely good way.
I got depressed just writing that.
Positive thought #1: Flames fans might not love the returns on some of their sales, but the fact that they were doing it all is a good sign. The hardest part of a rebuild is accepting that one is needed, and denial is a dangerous thing, especially if it’s combined with ownership that banks on playoff dates. We can’t say for sure where the Flames are at as an organization, but they passed the early test of not clinging to veterans for a longshot playoff chase. Not all teams do.
Positive thought #2: One good news story from this season was Jacob Markstrom, who got back on track after a shaky 2022-23. He was also a target of trade rumors all year, which he did not seem to enjoy, so even the good news in Calgary comes with a bit of an odor. Still, it sure looks like Conroy is going to move his starter over the summer. And if the Devils don’t finally decide to pay up, maybe it will be a playoff team that crashes and burns in the first round because of goaltending. Conroy hasn’t hit a home run yet in terms of his seller moves, but this one should be a fastball right over the heart of the plate.
Positive thought #3: We mentioned the lack of elite prospects, which is a problem. But the system is reasonably deep with what Scott calls “B-plus” guys, which isn’t a bad place to be compared to other teams that start rebuilds with bare cupboards. The Flames have drafted well, they just haven’t drafted high. They still won’t, unless the lottery gods intervene, but they’re in a bit better shape than you might think.
1. Buffalo Sabres
The negative: It’s been 13 years since their last playoff game. Four years since the fan base appeared to hit rock bottom. Ten months since they watched the franchise savior who quit on them be rewarded with a Stanley Cup. And most important of all, one year since they finished a 91-point season, their first time finishing over .500 since 2012, to finally signal that better days were ahead and they were ready to contend for the playoffs.
And then… they took a big step backward. Again. Again!
I’ve been doing this column gimmick since the Grantland days, and the Sabres have been in every single one. In 2019 I wrote, “It could be worse”. In 2021 I wrote, “It can’t get any worse”. In 2017 I wrote “Eventually some super volcano will erupt and none of this will matter”, and I’m kind of mad about that because I could sure use that line now.
Honestly, I don’t know how you Sabres fans do it.
Positive thought #1: No team in the league has a better young blue line core. Rasmus Dahlin, Owen Power and Bowen Byram should all be studs for the next decade. There are more than a few teams out there that don’t have a single defenseman anywhere in the system with the outlook of any of those guys, and the Sabres have all three on the NHL roster. If the old adage about building from the net out still holds, the Sabres should be in great shape.
Positive thought #2: Oh, right, the net. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen has looked good and is only 25, right? And while Devon Levi’s season was a major letdown, he’s looked sharp in March and just turned 22. The Sabres could re-sign Luukkonen and ride that duo and see where it takes them. Or maybe more enticingly, Kevyn Adams could hold onto one young goalie while moving the other for veteran help, and go into next season without the position looking like a question mark.
Positive thought #3: The future is extremely bright. I realize Sabres fans might be sick of hearing that after over a decade of rebuilds, but they’ve got lots of young talent at the NHL level, plus Wheeler’s top-ranked prospect pool. The torch is being passed, as we saw this week when Jeff Skinner’s 1,000th game turned into the JJ Peterka show. There’s plenty to work with, for Don Granato or whoever replaces him. The pieces are in place for future success.
It’s just not here quite yet. Again.
(Top photo of the Buffalo Sabres: Jeff Vinnick / NHLI via Getty Images)
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