Who’s Ready to Dominate the NHL in 2024-25?

Diving into hockey's biggest storylines and questions entering the new season.

Steven Stamkos, newly of the Nashville Predators, was one of the offseason’s biggest names to change addresses. (Joel Auerbach/Getty Images)

The North American portion of the 2024-25 NHL schedule is set to officially drop the puck on Tuesday night, and the league’s 108th season promises change up and down the ice. For one thing, there is a brand-new team — the Utah Hockey Club (née Arizona Coyotes), whose clean debut look offsets its generic name — to go with a number of new faces in weird new places — see that photo of ex-Lightning captain Steven Stamkos in a Nashville uniform above.

To help keep track of it all, let’s dive into the forecasts — and some of the biggest storylines and burning questions as well — heading into the new campaign. We’ll begin by looking at the current “preseason” odds in my Elo model, through the opening couple of Devils-Sabres games in Czechia (which did count toward the regular season standings):

The usual disclaimer on these Elo models: The initial ratings for a new season are based on a regressed version of the final 2023-24 ratings — meaning they don’t yet know about Stamkos, rookie No. 1 pick Macklin Celebrini of the San Jose Sharks, or any of the other player movement from the offseason. So right now, they’re mostly good to set a starting point for each team’s performance and estimate the uncertainty around their chances to make, and advance through, the playoffs on the path to the Stanley Cup.

One more set of data points that might be more illuminating is each team’s net Goals Above Replacement (GAR) value added minus lost over the offseason via trades, free agency and other avenues of player acquisition. In an ESPN story this summer, I looked at this metric in the form of 2023-24 production, which has the advantage of strictly measuring value-in versus value-out since the end of last season. However, we can also use the established level of a player’s GAR — essentially a recency-weighted average of production over the past three seasons — to get what’s perhaps a better sense of talent added/lost, independent of who might have had uncharacteristic seasons in 2023-24.

Here’s a plot of that metric versus current Elo, which (not coincidentally) have a negative correlation to each other in a salary-capped league where the best teams face headwinds and the worst teams have a chance to get better:

Guided in part by these numbers, here are some of those big questions that jump out to me ahead of the season:

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🥅 Who Can Out-Panther the Panthers?

A year after falling short in their surprise trip to the Stanley Cup Final, the Florida Panthers rebounded with an even stronger season in 2023-24 — one which eventually led to the franchise’s first championship. Plenty of factors went into the Panthers’ ongoing success, from the grit and talent of Matthew Tkachuk, the playmaking of Aleksander Barkov, the sharp-when-it-counted goaltending of Sergei Bobrovsky, the clutch scoring of Carter Verhaeghe and the two-way blueline play of Gustav Forsling.

But one of the biggest factors was the team’s transformation from finesse to physical — and in a copycat sport, it’s worth asking which team might pursue the same strategy. In terms of teams within striking distance of a league-average Elo, the rosters who added the most net 2023-24 penalty minutes from newcomers were the Capitals (by far the leader in this category after picking up Pierre-Luc Dubois, Brandon Duhaime, Jakob Chychrun, Andrew Mangiapane and Matt Roy), Blues, Flames and Sabres. I’ve always doubted that the “just add grit” approach does much for a team, but it did seem to be a winning ingredient for Florida that others are trying on for size.

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🥅 What Does Canada Have to Do for a Cup?

At this point, it’s not exactly breaking news that no Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup since 1993, more than three decades ago. But for most of last season, it was looking like the best chance for a club from the Great White North to end the drought since it first began. Four Canadian squads made the playoffs, and they each ranked among the league’s Top 11 teams by Elo heading into the playoffs. Things looked even better as the postseason progressed, with Connor McDavid’s Oilers going all the way to the Stanley Cup Final — and climbing out of a 3-0 hole in the series to force a Game 7.

But the Oilers ultimately ran out of gas in the deciding contest — extending Canadian teams’ Game 7 losing streak in the Final to five in a row during the drought — and the Cup-less streak continued for at least another season. Now that things are starting fresh again, which teams are closest to ending it? Unsurprisingly, by Elo, the Oilers (11 percent) have the best chance, followed by the Jets and Canucks (4 percent apiece) and the Maple Leafs (3 percent). Those four are also the leaders in the betting odds, which feature Edmonton as the most likely Cup winner of any team (!) while considering the Leafs ninth-most-likely. And who knows? Maybe the promotion of Auston Matthews to captain will be what it takes to put Toronto — and Canada as a whole — over the top.

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🥅 Which Newcomers Will Make the Biggest Splash?

Matthews, with his brand-new “C”, isn’t the only star with a new uniform this year. By 2023-24 GAR, the best players from last season to change teams over the summer were C Jake Guentzel (now with Tampa Bay), Cs Stamkos and Jonathan Marchessault and D Brady Skjei (Nashville), G Cam Talbot (Detroit), G Linus Ullmark (Ottawa) and F Teuvo Teravainen (Chicago).

Look at the data across multiple seasons — as we did in our team chart above — and C Tyler Toffoli (San Jose), LW Jeff Skinner (Edmonton), D Brandon Montour (Seattle), RW Vladimir Tarasenko (Detroit), G Logan Thompson (Washington) and C Elias Lindholm (Boston) join the list of valuable newcomers. And LW Jake DeBrusk (Vancouver), D Matt Roy (Washington), D Brett Pesce (New Jersey) and D Nikita Zadorov (Boston) were paid to rank among the highest-impact acquisitions on the free agent market. New Devils netminder Jacob Markström could also have a major effect on the Cup chase if he rediscovers his form of 2021-22 (20.9 GAR).

We also have to mention the rookie C Celebrini’s debut season in San Jose. After seeing the impact made by other recent rookies like Elias Pettersson (2019), Cale Makar and Adam Fox (2020), Kirill Kaprizov (2021), Moritz Seider (2022), Matty Beniers (2023) and Connor Bedard (2024), it will be interesting to see what kind of numbers he ends up producing right away. It’s also worth highlighting two other rookies — Philadelphia’s Matvei Michkov, who is actually the betting favorite to win Rookie of the Year, and Dallas’ Logan Stankoven, who had 8 points in 19 games with a +6 rating during the Stars’ playoff run last year.

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🥅 How Good Will Bedard’s Blackhawks Be?

Speaking of Bedard, he was plenty solid (22 goals and 61 points in 68 games) en route to the Calder Trophy at age 18 last season. But he also missed six weeks with a broken jaw, and had a horrendous on-ice scoring margin (-44 plus/minus) even by the standards of a rookie on a very bad team. He should make huge strides in Year 2… and he’ll have a greatly improved supporting cast to help him, too. According to our GAR added chart, no team upgraded their talent more than Chicago since the end of last season, and that’s on top of the players they already had.

Where might that land the Blackhawks by season’s end? Elo sets their over/under for points at 71.9, with a 3 percent playoff probability, but we noted already that it doesn’t know about the new additions. FanDuel sets their point total at 74.5, with a 13 percent playoff chance (before removing the vig), and I’m wondering if the over is a good play in Chicago this season.

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🥅 Can the Kraken — and Devils — Bounce Back?

Aside from the Bruins — who were coming down from the greatest regular season ever — and the Sharks — who built maybe the worst team ever — the two most disappointing teams of 2023-24 according to year-over-year SRS change were the Seattle Kraken and New Jersey Devils. That was quite a difference from 2022-23, when both clubs were among the most improved teams in the league, and the future seemed bright. (What goes up, must come down.)

So what’s in store for Seattle and New Jersey in 2024-25? The Devils are slightly closer to the Cup in Elo, and a LOT closer in the betting odds — where FanDuel lists them as the third-most likely winner of any team (tied with Colorado and Dallas). New Jersey had a good offseason, looked great in the Czech games, and they are unshackled from the Lindy Ruff regime, though I think No. 3 in the Cup odds is a bit much with D Luke Hughes out for at least another month. As for Seattle, rebounds from Beniers, André Burakovsky and some of the other underperformers from last season would go a long way. Someday, this team has to pair a good offensive performance with strong goaltending in the same season — and when that happens, watch out.

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🥅 Will Utah Be a Hockey Hotbed?

As mentioned up top, the Phoenix/Arizona Coyotes are now the Utah Hockey Club. That means ditching the desert and a 4,600-seat college arena for a more proper venue in Salt Lake City — hopefully with more professional ownership as well. It may be the honeymoon period, but the fans in Utah are excited for their new squad, with strong season-ticket sales early on. But will the product on the ice be any better? Maybe! Arizona had the league’s second-youngest roster last season, and they posted the franchise’s third-best GPG differential (-0.22) of the past decade, with forwards Clayton Keller, Nick Schmaltz, Matias Maccelli and Dylan Guenther, D-man Sean Durzi and G Connor Ingram looking like decent building blocks for the future. Toss in some solid net offseason GAR added — D Mikhail Sergachev was the biggest pickup — and a playoff bid is hardly out of the question.

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🥅 Can Ovi Catch Gretzky?

The biggest record chase of the season, by far, will be Alexander Ovechkin’s ongoing pursuit of Wayne Gretzky for the NHL’s all-time goals record. Ovi needs just 41 more goals to tie the Great One, a tally you used to be able to count on from the Great Eight most years — he has 13 seasons of 41+ goals, the most of any player in history. He even had 42 in 2022-23, which would let him clear the record by a single goal if he pulled it off again.

However, Ovechkin slowed down some (by his standards) last season, scoring just 31 goals overall and 0.39 per game, both career lows in a full season. Here’s how many games it would take Ovi to tie — and pass — Gretzky at different levels of goals-per-game:

Obviously, if Ovechkin magically returned to his career-best goals-per-game pace from his peak at age 22 in 2007-08, he would break the record with nearly 30 games to spare. And even at his career rate, he would break it with roughly a dozen games left in 2024-25. But of course, that’s unrealistic; even the career rate was mostly compiled as a younger scorer in his prime. At age 39, that’s no longer true of Ovechkin anymore.

The good news, however, is that Ovechkin could break the record within his next 79 games if he scores at his pace from the past three seasons, when he was already in his late 30s. (The big challenge there might be to simply play 79 games in a season, something he hasn’t done since 2018-19 at age 33 — though he came close, with 77 games, in 2021-22.) So a bid at the record this year is doable. But if he plays at his own pace just from last season, it would take 107 games to set the new record — pushing things into 2025-26 — and if he played at the cumulative pace of the 500+ goal club in their age-39 seasons, it would take over 150 more games (or nearly two additional seasons) to set a new record.

Like Gretzky himself, I’m rooting for it to happen, though it’s not the foregone conclusion it was looking like just a few years ago. (FanDuel only gives him +1000 odds to set the new record during the 2024-25 season.)

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🥅 What Would Be a Cool, Novel Cup Matchup?

With apologies to the Panthers, Oilers, Golden Knights, Avalanche, Lightning and other recent Cup Finalists, it’s always fun to get some different teams in the Stanley Cup mix — especially if they’ve been knocking on the door for a while.

That’s why I’m rooting to see these Cup combos, the most likely matches by Elo featuring a pair of teams we haven’t seen in the Final since the weird COVID-altered formats of 2020 and 2021:

• Carolina Hurricanes vs. Dallas Stars (2.9 percent chance)

• New York Rangers vs. Stars (2.3 percent)

• Hurricanes vs Winnipeg Jets and Boston Bruins vs. Stars (1.7 percent each)

• Rangers vs. Jets and Rangers vs. Vancouver Canucks (1.3 percent each)

• Stars vs. Toronto Maple Leafs (1.2 percent)

• Rangers vs. Nashville Predators (1.1 percent)

• Bruins-Jets and Bruins-Canucks (1.0 percent each)

Of course, the odds are much higher that we’ll get a Final with the Panthers again, or one of the other recent visitors to the championship round. And that would be cool, too — we have had only one back-to-back-to-back Finalist (as Florida would be) since the 1983-85 Oilers, and that was the 2020-22 Lightning.

It’s special to see continued dominance as well as fresh faces at the top — and luckily for us, both options are very much on the table for the NHL in 2024-25. Now, let’s drop the puck and see what happens next.

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Filed under: NHL, Elo ratings, Hockey