This Looks Like the NHL’s Most Stacked “Elite Eight” Ever
Despite losing the defending champs, this second round is mega-talented on paper.
The defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights, a continuation of one of the most interestingly built teams in NHL history, were eliminated from the 2024 playoffs in Game 7 on Sunday night. That’s a bummer for the many well-known players on Vegas’ roster — and most of the time, we’d expect the playoffs to be worse off from a talent perspective when the champs get knocked out.
But in these playoffs, Vegas falling to the Dallas Stars Sunday might have created the most stacked “Elite Eight” of the NHL playoffs ever.
That’s if we measure the quality of the remaining field according to the average Elo rating of the eight teams left after Round 1 for each NHL postseason since 1980, when the league adopted a 16-team team bracket. Here are all of those second-round groups, ranked by average Elo:
This year’s group of the Hurricanes, Panthers, Avalanche, Rangers, Stars, Bruins, Oilers and Canucks edges out the final eight from the 2022 postseason, which ended up producing the best Stanley Cup Final matchup in 33 years (again, on paper) when the Colorado Avalanche eventually faced the Tampa Bay Lightning for the title. This year’s bunch doesn’t boast a stronger top team — or a stronger worst team — than in 2022, though it is stronger in the middle of the remaining pack.
Oddly enough, that happened because the Stars eliminated the Golden Knights. If Vegas had won, the champs’ Elo would have dragged 2024’s field slightly below 2022 for the best of the modern era.
That may sound odd — Vegas played Dallas tough throughout the series and even held a 2-0 lead early on — but the Stars led the Western Conference in goal differential during the regular season while the Knights were still scrapping to secure a playoff bid with about 6 weeks left on the schedule. Based on seeding or any other metric that simply used 2023-24 data, it would have been an upset for the defending champions to keep their season rolling.
Instead, the Stars will move on and bolster the résumé of an absolutely stacked second round in this year’s playoffs. We already got a taste of how competitive Round 2 will be with the Rangers’ 4-3 win over Carolina in a clash of Eastern Conference titans on Sunday afternoon. If the Elo ratings are any guide, the next couple of weeks are going to be full of those types of tense contests — and maybe help produce an even more stacked “Final Four” when all is said and done.
Filed under: NHL