Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

PHT Power Rankings: Which NHL teams are ready to bounce back?

pjimage

After looking at individual players ready to bounce back (or regress) ahead of the 2019-20 NHL season, it is time to shift our focus to the teams that are on the verge of doing the same.

This week’s PHT Power Rankings takes a look at the 15 teams that missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs a year ago and which ones are most likely to make a return trip to the postseason in 2020. It is pretty much a given that at least two or three of these teams is going to qualify this season, it is just a matter of which ones did enough.

To the rankings!

1. Florida Panthers. They have one of the best all-around players and salary cap bargains in the league in Aleksander Barkov, a good core of players around him, and just added a No. 1 goalie that is one of the best in the league to fill their biggest need. Maybe Sergei Bobrovsky’s contract turns into a salary cap disaster in three years, but he can still make a huge impact in the short-term.

2. New Jersey Devils. It would require a pretty dramatic one-year turnaround, but with the additions of P.K. Subban, Nikita Gusev, Jack Hughes, Wayne Simmonds, and the return of a healthy Taylor Hall it is not an impossible thought. The wild card will be a possibility if they can get something that resembles decent goaltending.

3. Chicago Blackhawks. There is reason to be concerned with their forward depth and their defense (the latter is a huge question mark), but they still have a couple of superstars and at least have the potential to have an outstanding goalie duo with Corey Crawford (assuming he is healthy) and Robin Lehner. This is still a team that believes it can win right now.

4. New York Rangers. After a huge offseason that featured some big scores (Artemi Panarin, Jacob Trouba, and Adam Fox) and some good luck (moving to No. 2 in the draft lottery to select Kaapo Kaako) expectations are going to be high in New York. (Maybe too high?) They are not yet a championship contender, but they will be a lot better.

5. Philadelphia Flyers. They made a lot of moves but I’m not sure if they are really any better than they were at the start of the offseason. That said, the game-changer here could be if Carter Hart is as good as advertised.

[Your 2019-20 NHL on NBC TV schedule]

6. Arizona Coyotes. They were crushed by injuries all season and still nearly made the playoffs. Better injury luck and the additions of Phil Kessel and Carl Soderberg might be enough to give them that extra push to sneak in.

7. Montreal Canadiens. Maybe this is little low for a 96-point team that was just two points back of a playoff spot, but I also think they played a little over their heads. What if Max Domi and Tomas Tatar aren’t as good as they were this past season? What did they do to add to the roster in any meaningful way? If anything, they only subtracted from it by dealing Andrew Shaw (19 goals, 47 points in only 63 games) back to Chicago.

8. Minnesota Wild. Paul Fenton may have only been there for one season but the damage he left behind could linger for a few years. There is a path back to the playoffs this season, but a lot needs to go right.

9. Buffalo Sabres. They actually had a really solid offseason, but they are so far behind the top-three teams in the division (and probably Florida now, too) that the playoffs still seem like a real long shot.

10. Edmonton Oilers. I would say Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl going off and having monster seasons might be enough to carry them to a playoff spot, but it is hard to imagine the duo being better than it was a year ago when they both finished in the top-four in the league in scoring ... and the team missed the playoffs by 11 points.

11. Vancouver Canucks. Elias Pettersson, Brock Boeser, and some of the other young players here will make the Canucks worth watching but there is not yet enough around them to make them a playoff team.

12. Anaheim Ducks. John Gibson is great, but is he great enough to make up for the rest of the roster around him? Not sure any goalie in the NHL is quite that great.

13. Detroit Red Wings. Steve Yzerman has his work cut out for him here. Other than bringing back Valtteri Filppula and the addition of a couple of rookies this is the same team that has been lurking around the bottom of the Eastern Conference for the past few years.

14. Los Angeles Kings. Maybe Jonathan Quick and Drew Doughty are better this season (they should be), but even if they are that will not be enough to make up for the rest of the roster. Just start the rebuild already.

15. Ottawa Senators. In terms of actual salary being paid this season it is by far the cheapest roster in the NHL with almost no long-term commitments. Winning is not the priority right now, and winning is not in their immediate future.

MORE POWER RANKINGS:
NHL teams under pressure to win this season
Bounce-back candidates
Top regression candidates
Breakout candidates

Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.