My 🔥 Burning Questions 🔥 for the Second Half of the NHL Season
The Stanley Cup chase is wide-open, the MVP race is heating up, droughts are in danger of ending, and Cinderella stories are forming.
With the finale of the breakout-hit 4 Nations Face-Off going into the books on Thursday night — the Canadians beat the U.S., 3-2 in overtime, to reassert themselves as first among international equals — the NHL will drop the puck again on the 2024-25 season’s “second half”1 with nearly the whole league back in action on Saturday. That means now is a great time to take stock of the campaign so far, and ask my usual 🔥 Burning Questions 🔥 around seven topics that stand out to me as we look ahead to the playoffs.
🏒🔥 Are the Jets and Caps really this good?
Look at the leaguewide standings, and you’ll find a couple of teams at the top that few expected to dominate in 2024-25.
The Winnipeg Jets are No. 1 — a team that was surprisingly good last year as well, but whose customary late-season swoon ended in yet another five-game playoff ouster. And at No. 2, the Washington Capitals went from an old team with a substantially negative goal differential (-37), who suffered a first-round sweep, to a resurgent contender with a possible bridge to a post-Ovechkin future.
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