Welcome back to A Couple of Goons, in which Walter Hickey and I have silly conversations tangentially about hockey. This time around, America and Canada’s favorite semi-annual hockey podcast is back to preview “post-view” the first two weeks of the NHL season. Walt and I talk parity vs. stasis, how Florida inexplicably perfected hockey, why the Mammoth might be the league’s stinkiest team (literally, mascot-wise) and how to tell when your coach is doomed. (Hint: check the PDO.)
We also dug into my favorite and not-so-favorite early-season trends in the 2025-26 NHL Elo forecast model:
🏒 2025-26 NHL Team Elo Power Rankings & Goals Above Replacement Player Ratings 📉
The following page contains a list of NHL teams with their Elo ratings and projected wins for the 2025-26 season. It also features Goals Above Replacement data, which is described here. Find the raw GAR and Elo data in the spreadsheet folder here. Also, check out
We say we’re going to try to do this a little more often than usual (which is to say, more than 1-2x per season, lol), but every grand journey begins with a single step, so this is that for now. Enjoy!
