Two weeks. That’s all we’ve got left, and if you’re like me, the finish line suddenly appearing at this time of year is always a bit jarring. The NHL season tends to unfold with predictable beats — the excitement of opening night, the “it’s still early” vibe of the first month or two, the depressing December realization that there’s still four months to go, the weeks of deadline hype, and then a stretch run that seems way too long right up until it isn’t. That’s where we’re at now. It’s April, do you know where your favorite team is?
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Maybe not, as there are still a few teams with plenty to play for. And that means it’s worth looking ahead and the biggest games on this week’s schedule.
It’s a bit of a weird one, especially later in the week. We get 14 games on Thursday, an unusually busy slate for a weeknight. On Friday, nothing at all — not even a single game. And then on Saturday, we’re all in, with all 32 teams in action over the course of about 13 hours, starting at 12:30 ET. If you save room for dessert, there’s two games on Sunday, although neither of them is any good.
So sure, make alternate plans on Friday and Sunday. But the rest of the week is busy, and packed with important matchups. So many, in fact, that it wasn’t easy to narrow the list down to five. Here’s what to watch for over the coming days.
Top five biggest games to look forward to this week
5. Thursday: Kings at Golden Knights — Top spot in the Pacific is still up for grabs, and this game looms as a key chance for the Kings to break out of a late-season cold patch. For extra drama, will Jonathan Quick face his former team?
4. Tomorrow: Penguins at Devils — Every Penguins game is crucial as they try to hold onto the last wild-card spot. Meanwhile, the Devils are still gunning for the top spot in the Metro, which means avoiding the Rangers in round one. There’s an outside chance that these two teams could meet in the first round, but if not then Devils fans would have to settle for a chance to help Sidney Crosby miss the postseason for the first time in his career.
3. Tonight: Golden Knights at Wild — Two teams fighting to win their divisions, meaning we could look back at this as the battle of the one-seeds and/or a conference final preview. Both teams are very good, but neither seems to have everyone believing in them quite yet. The Knights took the two points on Saturday, but a decisive win here could be a late-season turning point. And did we mention the Marc-Andre Fleury factor?
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2. Tomorrow: Oilers at Kings — Yeah, the Pacific is kind of dominating this list. It’s just a really fun division right now, and you know I’m going to be on board with an old-school Smythe Division showdown. Right now, this is a round-one preview, although both teams would love to avoid that by moving into first place and setting up an easier wild-card matchup. It’s also a rematch of last week’s Oilers shutout win, so the pressure here is on the Kings.
1. Wednesday: Flames and Jets — Easy call here, as the Flames’ hunt for the final wild-card spot brings them face-to-face with the team they’re chasing. It’s not quite winner-take-all, but it will feel like a playoff game, not to mention the most meaningful matchup of the regular season so far. One important factor to keep in mind: The Flames play the night before at home against Chicago, while the Jets will have been off since last night.
Honorable mentions: Flyers/Blues in a key lottery game on Tuesday, Leafs/Bruins in a “prove it” game on Thursday, and a bunch of good games on Saturday, including Knights/Stars, Devils/Bruins and Avalanche/Kings, plus Coyotes/Ducks in a tank battle and a Predators/Jets game that could be huge or meaningless depending on what Nashville does the rest of the week.
We’re at that wonderful time of year when even one game can shift fortunes significantly. Let’s get to what the rankings look like right now.
Road to the Cup
The five teams with the best chances of winning the Stanley Cup.
If you’re into weird stats, this was kind of cool:
This is a real stat from last night — and no, we’re not joking. 👀 pic.twitter.com/hLTNu8cldL — NHL (@NHL) April 2, 2023
5. New Jersey Devils (48-21-8, +51 true goals differential*) — They seemed like they’d straightened out after a recent slump, with last week’s win over the Rangers giving them control of home ice in the first round (with the Hurricanes still very much in range). But watching them get torn apart by the Jets last night was at least a little bit concerning, especially for a fan base that was already getting a little cranky. For now, they’re still in the top five. For now.
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4. Edmonton Oilers (45-23-9, +56) — I’ve been on and off the bandwagon all year, but they’re looking scary again, so I’m finally putting them in the top five. They may run out of time to catch the Knights for the top spot in the Pacific, but I’m not sure that matters as much as it would in other divisions. Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl are unstoppable, the whole “it’s only two guys” thing doesn’t really apply anymore with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Zach Hyman and Evander Kane all producing, and the goaltending shouldn’t be as much of an issue when it’s all Stuart Skinner in the playoffs. Add it all up, and I might still be low on them.
3. Colorado Avalanche (45-24-6, +42) — The Central is going to come right down to the wire, and that’s going to matter because I’d rather play Seattle in round one than Dallas or Minnesota. Still, I think the Avs are the best of the three Central contenders wherever they finish, especially if Gabriel Landeskog makes it back.
2. Carolina Hurricanes (49-18-9, +51) – This makes it 15 weeks in a row that I’ve had Eastern teams in both of the top two spots. That whole way has been Boston as the one, then either Carolina or New Jersey (plus one week of Tampa) as the two. But with both New Jersey and Carolina slowing down a bit lately, and the path out of the Eastern Conference looking brutal, it’s worth wondering if it should be a Western team here instead. The Avs have been hovering, the Stars and Wild have had their moment, and the Oilers are scary right now. I guess the answer is “we’ll see” because we’ve still got two weeks left of rankings to sort through.
Meanwhile, the Hurricanes won both their weekend games, so they can keep the spot for now.
1. Boston Bruins (60-12-5, +120) — I was going to write something here about the Bruins’ quest for 60 wins, but uh, I just checked and they already got there. That ties them with the 1976-77 Canadiens and leaves them two back of the 1995-96 Wings and the 2018-19 Lightning for the all-time record. With five games left, getting to 63 seems doable, and getting to those dynasty Habs’ mark of 132 points might be too. If that happens, we can look forward to a fun argument between old-school fans and modern ones over which season was the most impressive. Can’t wait, I’m sure everyone will be very reasonable about that.
*Goals differential without counting shootout decisions like the NHL does for some reason.
Not ranked: Leafs and Lightning — It’s on. We’ve known for what feels like months now that they’d almost certainly meet in the first round, but we can drop the “almost” after the weekend. It’s a rematch of last year, probably with the Leafs having home ice again.
TOR and TBL have been matched up with each other as projected playoff opponents every day since 11/27. That’s 126 days, 52 Leafs games, 57 Lightning games without any change in projected opponent, plus 7 TOR and 5 TBL more to go. 75% of the season with the same Round 1 opponent. https://t.co/cm1geWYjLu — Jeff Veillette (@JeffVeillette) April 2, 2023
So, is there any reason to think anything will be different this time?
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On one hand, not really. The standings say that both teams have taken a small step back this year, but relative to each other it’s pretty much a wash. Everyone’s hurting these days, but there aren’t any major injuries, assuming Ryan O’Reilly is good to go. Auston Matthews hasn’t been as good this year, but he’s been heating up lately, while Brayden Point is having a career year in Tampa. It’s still going to be Jon Cooper vs. Sheldon Keefe. It’s still Andrei Vasilevskiy vs. Very Much Not Andrei Vasilevskiy. Both teams made moves at the deadline, but O’Reilly was the only name that you’d think would move the needle much. The Leafs are under all sorts of pressure to win because everyone’s getting fired if they don’t, but we thought that last year too.
So who you got? My guess is probably the same team you thought would win last year, unless you buy into the idea that last year’s loss was the one that finally taught the Leafs a lesson about how to win when it matters. That’s a neat narrative, but at this point, that’s all it is. Which means this series should end up about the same as last year.
So, a Lightning win, right? Well, not necessarily, because last year’s series was a seven-game classic, one that saw Tampa need a third-period comeback (and some questionable penalty calls) to stay alive in Game 6, and a controversial no-goal in Game 7 that could have turned the momentum. All of which is to say, you could make the case that it was pretty much a coin flip. That leads us to that whole argument about what the playoffs actually are — did the Lightning win that coin flip because one team had to, or because they know how to come through in the clutch and the Leafs don’t? And if the Leafs lost because they don’t know how to win, did they fix that through experience or by landing O’Reilly or by balling up their fists and trying extra hard?
We’re not sure. And knowing how all this tends to work, we won’t be sure until the series is over, at which point we’ll be completely sure. Of course, this was the year the Leafs figured it all out, at least enough to vanquish an aging and tired dynasty! Or not, because of course these Lightning warriors aren’t going to surrender their Eastern Conference crown to a bunch of hotshot kids who don’t want to do what it takes when it’s all on the line!
All we know is that everything we know about these two teams tells us the series should be close, probably going another seven. Given how cruel the hockey gods can be, that might mean we’re in for an anticlimactic sweep. And yes, I already know what my pick is, but you’ll have to wait another two weeks to hear it.
The bottom five
The five teams that are headed towards dead last, and the best lottery odds for Connor Bedard.
We do love a good “first career NHL goal” moment, don’t we folks?
5. Montreal Canadiens (30-41-6, -62) — It was a bad week, one that included some potential friction between coach and GM and even saw the Habs booed by their home crowd (and then later by their coach too).
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That was kind of a weird moment because we all know that teams are tanking at this point, and you’d think fans would be OK with losses given the draft stakes. So does this mean that Habs fans are good and smart because they demand excellence, or bad and dumb because they’re too impatient and demanding and that’s why Canadian teams never win the Cup anymore? I’m pretty sure the answer is “it depends on how this all plays out at the lottery”, so put a pin in this one for now.
4. San Jose Sharks (22-39-15, -63) — I move them up to the one-spot last week, and they respond with their first three-game win streak since November. Man, the weekend rankings curse just doesn’t miss.
Meanwhile, Erik Karlsson continues to be ridiculous, and is now just four points away from becoming the first defenseman to hit 100 since Brian Leetch in 1992.
3. Anaheim Ducks (23-44-10, -122) — When you’re this bad, you’ve got to laugh to keep from crying:
It wasn’t a giant teddy bear this time. Our Ducks once again got quite the surprise at a recent autograph signing 😂#FlyTogether pic.twitter.com/JHX8uVaWmn — Anaheim Ducks (@AnaheimDucks) March 31, 2023
Also crying: Flames fans, for roughly 57 minutes of last night’s game. Two points are two points but that wasn’t the easy win they were hoping for, especially as the Jets were toying with the Devils. The chase continues.
2. Columbus Blue Jackets (24-44-8, -100) — This is the time of year when sometimes you get a good team playing like its season is on the line against a bad team that just wants it all to be over, and when that happens you get what we had on Saturday. The Panthers’ 7-0 win was embarrassing, especially since it was the sixth time in their last nine games that they’ve given up six or more. (Apparently trading your only decent goaltender isn’t great for the old goals-against average.) They did beat Ottawa yesterday, so they’ve got that going for them.
1. Chicago Blackhawks (24-46-6, -91) — Jonathan Toews is back, which was a genuinely cool moment for both the player and the fan base. Beyond that, the Hawks are back in dead last and Mark has a look at what next year might hold.
Not ranked: Detroit Red Wings — The last time we checked in on the Wings was trade deadline week, when they were facing a two-game showdown against the Senators to determine which team would stay in the wild-card race. It did not go well, to put it mildly, and led to Steve Yzerman flipping the switch to seller mode at the deadline. Gone were Tyler Bertuzzi, Jakub Vrana, Filip Hronek and even Oskar Sundqvist. It was a white flag being waved, and not surprisingly, the Wings have been spinning their wheels ever since.
That’s bad. And of course, since this is the Connor Bedard year, that means it’s good. It’s left Detroit in a tenuous position in terms of their lottery odds, as they won’t get into the bottom six, but they’re right in the middle of that next tier. Lose enough down the stretch, and they could jump ahead of teams like the Flyers and Canucks. Start winning, and they could step behind the Capitals, Blues, and even the Senators or Sabres. Last night was a win in Toronto, and it at least temporarily moved them up three spots in the standings.
Does any of it matter, given that the Wings never win the lottery anyway? Maybe not, but even if you’re not dreaming of Bedard, a few spots here or there can make a big difference on a top-10 pick. You could argue that the Red Wings are a little closer to contending than they look, but there’s still a way to go. This year’s draft could be a big part of that.
Given that, the schedule the rest of the way is interesting. They get Montreal tomorrow and Buffalo on Thursday, two games with solid tanking implications. After that, the slate gets a lot tougher, at least in theory. They’ll face a Penguins team that should be desperate for wins, then finish with the Stars, Hurricanes and Lightning. Maybe some of those teams will be looking ahead to the playoffs, but a string of losses looks possible.
That would be bad, which means it would be good. And then we can all wait yet another year to see when, or if, Yzerman gets this team back to feeling like it matters.
(Photo of Auston Matthews and Brayden Point: Mark Blinch / NHLI via Getty Images)