Ovechkin’s pursuit of Gretzky, wild-card races among things to watch
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And now, the final push to the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The 2025 NHL Trade Deadline has come and gone, passing at 3 p.m. ET Friday even though there were still deals coming through after that time.
We’ll be sifting through the impact of the trades made Friday and the preceding days for the next several days, but the teams, and the players who got moved, are moving on with the playoffs coming into focus.
We are already into the last quarter of the NHL season, the playoff races almost everywhere are tight and Alex Ovechkin is 10 goals away from breaking Wayne Gretzky‘s all-time goals record.
Here are 10 storylines that will highlight the final quarter of the season right through April 17, the final day of the regular season.
Ovechkin is continuing his pursuit of Gretzky’s record of 894 goals, with 885 going into the Washington Capitals game against the Seattle Kraken at Capital One Arena on Sunday.
If he stays as his pace of 0.68 goals per game this season, Ovechkin would break Gretzky’s record on April 6 against the New York Islanders at UBS Arena. If you go by his career goals per game pace of 0.60 he would break it April 12 against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
On top of it all, his next point will be his 1,600th, making him the 11th player in NHL history to hit that milestone.
Visit NHL.com/GR8Chase to watch classic milestone goals & highlights, read exclusive stories and more!
All eyes will be on forward Mikko Rantanen when he is expected to make his debut with the Dallas Stars against the Edmonton Oilers at Rogers Place on Saturday (10 p.m. ET; CBC, SN, CITY, Victory+).
The Stars acquired Rantanen from the Carolina Hurricanes on Friday. They also signed him to an eight-year, $96 million contract ($12 million average annual value). Carolina previously acquired Rantanen from the Colorado Avalanche on Jan. 24, but couldn’t re-sign him so they traded him.
The game that will grab the attention of fans in Dallas, Denver and beyond will be March 16, when Rantanen plays against the Colorado Avalanche, his former team, for the first time at Ball Arena (3:30 p.m. ET; MAX, truTV, TNT, ALT, SN (JIP), TVAS).
And, wouldn’t you know, that very well could be a preview of a Western Conference First Round matchup. Nobody could have predicted even a week ago, heck a few days ago, that Rantanen could be playing for the Stars against the Avalanche in the playoffs.
NHL Tonight reacts to the Mikko Rantanen trade
If the Avalanche and Stars are going to play in the first round it would mean the Minnesota Wild would have to drop into fourth place.
That’s close to happening already. Colorado and Minnesota are tied for third with 76 points each, with the Wild losing 3-1 to the Vancouver Canucks on Friday.
The Avalanche added Brock Nelson and Charlie Coyle to fortify their center depth.
The Winnipeg Jets have an eight-point lead on the Stars for first place in the division. They beefed up Friday by adding forward Brandon Tanev and defenseman Luke Schenn.
The Stars are eight points clear of Colorado and Minnesota. Obviously, they added Rantanen, but they will be getting defenseman Miro Heiskanen and forward Tyler Seguin back at some point too, maybe for Game 1 of the first round.
The race, though, is for third, and the potential of that juicy Stars-Avalanche matchup, which will be about more than Rantanen, who will be a centerpiece going against Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar.
Brad Marchand playing for the Florida Panthers will look weird and probably feel weird for a while. He’s been a constant with the Boston Bruins, their captain for the past two seasons, but he’s a pending unrestricted free agent and he was traded to Florida on Friday.
The Panthers play in Boston on Tuesday, but Marchand likely won’t be healthy enough to suit up for that game. He’s currently dealing with an upper-body injury.
It’s not known when he’ll be able to play, but if he’s healthy and Matthew Tkachuk is back in the Panthers’ lineup at the start of the playoffs, coach Paul Maurice will have the ability to send out a line of Sam Bennett between Tkachuk and Marchand.
Intimidating. Menacing. Trouble. All of the above.
Three points separate the top three teams in the Atlantic Division.
The Panthers are first with 81 points in 63 games. The Toronto Maple Leafs are second with 79 points in 62 games. The Tampa Bay Lightning have played their way into the race for first with 11 wins in 13 games (11-1-1). They have 78 points in 62 games.
Finishing first is key in this division, because that 2-3 matchup is going to be brutal for whoever is in it.
The Panthers and Maple Leafs still play each other three times; at Toronto on March 13 and April 2, and at Florida on April 8. Tampa Bay plays Florida and Toronto once each.
Florida added Marchand, but as mentioned above it’s not clear when he will play. Toronto got center Scott Laughton and defenseman Brandon Carlo, bolstering its depth down the middle and on the back end. Tampa Bay acquired forwards Oliver Bjorkstrand and Yanni Gourde.
For a long time the one playoff matchup that looked like a sure thing was the New Jersey Devils and Carolina Hurricanes in the Metropolitan Division’s 2-3 matchup.
That one is looking more and more dicey these days.
The Hurricanes have a six-point lead on the Devils, 78-72, but the Hurricanes traded Rantanen to the Dallas Stars.
Yes, they got back forward Logan Stankoven in the trade and he will go right into their lineup, but Rantanen was the player that was supposed to put the Hurricanes over the top when they got him on Jan. 24. He was supposed to be the playoff gamechanger for them. It didn’t work out and now he’s gone so where does that leave the Hurricanes in their pursuit of the Stanley Cup?
The Devils lost center Jack Hughes to a season-ending shoulder injury, and defenseman Dougie Hamilton is also out of the lineup for the time being. That’s their No. 1 center and No. 1 defenseman out at a time when their No. 1 goalie, Jacob Markstrom, is just coming back from a long-term injury.
New Jersey added center Cody Glass in a trade from the Pittsburgh Penguins and defenseman Brian Dumoulin in a trade with the Anaheim Ducks, but that doesn’t replace Hughes and Hamilton.
So is the Hurricanes-Devils matchup in jeopardy? That depends on the teams coming up behind them.
Speaking of the teams who will try to catch the Devils and/or Hurricanes, it’s most notably the Columbus Blue Jackets and New York Rangers in the Metropolitan Division. The Ottawa Senators, Detroit Red Wings and Montreal Canadiens are all in the wild-card race from the Atlantic.
The Boston Bruins, New York Islanders and Philadelphia Flyers are close too, but they all sold at the deadline, so the focus comes off of them for now.
The Blue Jackets, in the first wild-card spot with 68 points, added forward Luke Kunin, a quiet but potentially impactful addition that could be a seamless fit as an all-situations forward. Most notably, they kept pending UFA defenseman Ivan Provorov without re-signing him.
The Rangers, with 67 points, threaded the needle between buyer and seller, trading defenseman Ryan Lindgren and forwards Jimmy Vesey and Reilly Smith while acquiring defenseman Carson Soucy. They hope to get forward Chris Kreider and defenseman Adam Fox back for the stretch run.
The Senators, who also have 67 points, added forwards Dylan Cozens and Fabian Zetterlund, but they had to give to get so in order to acquire Cozens they had to give up Josh Norris. Will that disrupt the chemistry in the Senators room? That’s the big question because Norris was clearly a big part of it judging by captain Brady Tkachuk‘s emotional media scrum on Friday.
The Red Wings and Canadiens each have 66 points.
The Canadiens stood pat at the deadline, which means they did not trade pending UFAs Joel Armia and David Savard. They’re 5-0-1 in their past six games.
The Red Wings bolstered their depth by adding goalie Petr Mrazek and forward Craig Smith, but they did not replace Andrew Copp, their No. 2 center who is out for the rest of the season with a pectoral muscle injury. They’ve lost five straight after Friday’s 5-2 loss to Washington.
The Calgary Flames, Vancouver Canucks, St. Louis Blues and Utah Hockey Club were quiet on deadline day.
What does that mean for the race for the second wild card into the playoffs from the Western Conference?
Those are the four teams vying for that spot as of now, with the Anaheim Ducks on the fringes of it.
Six points separate Nathan MacKinnon (98), Leon Draisaitl (94) and Nikita Kucherov (92) in the race for the Art Ross Trophy as the NHL’s leading scorer.
MacKinnon and the Avalanche have 19 games remaining. Draisaitl and the Edmonton Oilers have 20 games left to play. Kucherov and the Lightning also have 20 games left.
Kucherov won the Art Ross Trophy last season with 144 points, four more than MacKinnon. Draisaitl finished second in 2022-23, but he was 25 points behind teammate Connor McDavid, who, by the way, is fourth in the race this season but with 79 points.
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Draisaitl is leading the race for the Rocket Richard Trophy as the NHL’s leading goal scorer. He has 46 in 62 games, which puts him right on pace for 60 goals.
There has been at least one 60-goal scorer in each of the past three seasons, with Auston Matthews scoring 69 last season. Draisaitl’s career high is 55 in 2021-22, when Matthews scored 60 to win the Rocket Richard Trophy. Draisaitl has never won the Rocket Richard Trophy.
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