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The 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs are here, but not for the Flyers. Who should Flyers fans bandwagon this year? We have a ranking.
The 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs begin Saturday and we could not be more excited. Well, we definitely would be about a billion times more excited if the Philadelphia Flyers were involved but here we are.
Our favorite hockey team will not be lacing up for one of the most exciting times on the hockey calendar, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t have some sort of rooting interest. There are several teams involved that we would either love to see lose in embarrassing fashion and several others who we wouldn’t mind seeing them lift the Stanley Cup in a couple months.
But how can we figure out which is which? The most natural way for a lowly hockey blogger to get out their thoughts is just by one single way: A ranking.
Going through all 16 teams in order, we have here a (personal) ranking of who we would like to see win the Stanley Cup:
Yeah, of course this team is at the bottom. The lowly Devils are limping into this postseason without their child-like star, Jack Hughes, and by all accounts they should be swiftly kicked in the rear end, bouncing out of the playoffs quickly.
The Devils are up against the Carolina Hurricanes in Round 1 without the player that makes their whole thing work. This could be disastrous but there is no pity in our hearts. This team shouldn’t even exist.
You’ve had your fun, Edmonton. You reached the Final last year but now is the time to take a step back. You hire not-good people and generally have a whole bad vibe about you right now. Since the league is fairly wide open, the team with the best player on the planet to just waltz to the Cup is so boring and not what we want at all.
Edmonton would be a middle-of-the-pack team in normal circumstances for us, but considering that the Flyers have their first-round pick this year and if they make the Western Conference Final, that pick immediately gets put in the 29-32 overall range, that is not what we want. If they lose before that, it’s the 24th overall pick. That’s better! So, sorry Leon and Connor, we need the Los Angeles Kings to deliver sweet justice for you beating them three years in a row and when they finally have home-ice advantage in this matchup, to come out the winners.
Back-to-back championships can be cool and good, but if the Panthers win a second consecutive Cup, every single team in the NHL is going to try to play some north-south hard-forechecking game and will not try anything different for several years. Who wants to watch that? The Panthers need to lose for the sanity of the sport.
It’s kind of the same deal. Yeah, they managed to shift their roster on the fly, sending out Stamkos and Sergachev and giving players who were luxuries as depth players their deserved top roles. Oh, and signing Jake Guentzel certainly helps. But the Lightning would just be such a same-old option.
It would cement them as a dynasty, though. Three rings on the fingers of Kucherov, Hedman, Vasilevskiy, and all the others, would be something special. But again — boring! This is not a list of predicting who will win — if that was the case the Lightning would be near the top — but we don’t want to see the typical teams make it there once again.
For those real pearlclutchers that want the Flyers to maximize their draft potential, the Avalanche would of course be right by the bottom with the Oilers. If both of those teams don’t make the Western Conference Final, then that’s 24th and 25th overall belonging to Philadelphia — not a bad option.
But, the reason why the Avalanche are just slightly higher in this ranking is just admiring what they have managed to pull off throughout this season. Anchored by Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar, and having top-end complementary talents like Artturi Lehkonen, Devon Toews, and the rest; the Avalanche managed to built upon what they brought with them into this campaign.
Enough ink has been spilled on the Mikko Rantanen trade and Martin Necas is looking like an absolute stud and essentially replaced his production up there. But what they did in rebuilding their goaltending tandem from scratch, fixing their center depth with just a couple of deadline trades, taking problem contracts for defensemen and turning them into serviceable pieces, and even bringing back old pal Erik Johnson for some morale recovery — was simply incredible.
They deserve at least a little bit of credit and we need more teams to do this, so if they won maybe general managers would be wheeling and dealing a whole lot more.
Here’s another stupid team that won recently. The Golden Knights have never known pain — all they have experienced is some level of success since they came into the NHL and while they could certainly earn their way to a second title, it feels nasty to actually want that for them. You can appreciate a team but also want them to not experience glory, and that’s exactly where we are.
It is admirable just how aggressive this team is. Prospects? They’re just young players to ship out for more sure things. Draft picks? It’s just currency. That relentless and ruthless pursuit to immediately improve and strike now instead of hold future assets tight to their chest, is the only reason why Vegas isn’t near the bottom of this list. It’s fun and we want more teams to be like this for our entertainment, but also they’re spoiled.
Dallas sucks. Sometimes it’s as easy to say something everyone in Philadelphia can agree with: Dallas sucks.
Montreal can be very annoying and when they were having their own identity crisis fueled by jealousy caused by Matvei Michkov being a Flyer, it only got worse with a whole lot of their fans trying to justify their team not drafting the talented winger. Fact is, he didn’t want to play there.
Anyways, we can feel comfortable knowing that the likelihood of the Canadiens lifting the Stanley Cup is about as much as winning the lottery while being struck by lightning twice. So, they can be in the middle here due to worse options.
It is too fun to make fun of the Leafs for their misfortunes for them to be near the top of this list. Sure, they are talented and in a vacuum their top players are extremely enjoyable to watch, but we live for the chaos and nothing is more chaotic than seeing the sheer panic leaking out of Southern Ontario and from the media up there when it’s another first-round-loss disaster for this team.
Thanks to Scott Laughton, though (and Philippe Myers if you really have a soft spot for him), they get boosted into the middle of this ranking. We would lose the ability to poke fun at the weirdest fan base in the sport, which is sad, but Laughton lifting the Cup would bring a tear to our eye.
The Kings grind the game down to a halt and just suffocates every single ounce of offense from their opponent. It isn’t pretty hockey to watch, but they have been successful at it this season — enough to get home-ice advantage against the Oilers in the first round. But outside of maybe their style of play, this is just an enjoyable team to put your feelings behind.
Anze Kopitar going into the twilight years of his career, but pushed by this new and powerful young core led by Quinton Byfield. Drew Doughty revitalizing his career and suddenly being on a blue line that plays some of the most defensively sound hockey in the league. Darcy Kuemper once being a bad contract and now a good goalie. The Kings have managed to maneuver from one core to another — with some bumps along the way like trading away Brock Faber, but alas — and now seem right back into having the same sort of juice they did in 2012.
Plus, now they don’t have ugly sweaters.
Flyers fans should bandwagon this Wild team for kind of just one reason and that’s being an example of what could happen. The Minnesota Wild have never tanked, ever. The highest they have ever selected was their first ever draft, taking Marian Gaborik at third overall back in 2000. And in the modern era, it’s just been slowly gathering more and more talent through the years. Some top-10 picks like Jonas Brodin and Marco Rossi; and then obviously getting lucky with Kirill Kaprizov and Jared Spurgeon turning into franchise legends.
But they are proof that if you do everything right, teams don’t have to bottom out to be good. Sure, it makes it a whole lot easier. But in almost every single re-draft, each year whoever the Wild have selected and developed, ends up higher. Joel Eriksson Ek and Matt Boldy might be perfect examples. Hell, they could be an even better team if Bill Guerin isn’t obsessed with overpaying for veteran depth and trading away unproven forwards for guys who are 6-foot-5.
Or, maybe you can just cheer for them to win the Cup so that they are more happy to trade away Marco Rossi.
Yeah, it’s a divisional rival and all that stuff, but wouldn’t it just bring some joy to your hockey heart to see Ovechkin lift that thing again? And maybe if you take a step back and see what they managed to do last summer, we can also take a little reflection on what could be possible in Philadelphia.
Teams are generally a little to cautious but the Capitals threw that little thing to the wind and either traded for or signed a whole lot of players who were good but generally not seen as necessary on their former teams. Washington took advantage of that and look at that, they won the division. Now, are more teams going to be possibly cautious to let go their middle-six forwards and middle-pairing defensemen? Maybe. But also, in the distant future, we could look back on this Capitals team and see the Flyers make similar enough moves if everything works out.
This is yet another example of a roster building strategy that could spell good things for the Flyers. Again, another team that has really good players all taken in the later half of the first round or even deeper in whatever draft they were taken. And, of course, an example of offer sheets working for the team.
Maybe you find the city of St. Louis disgusting or the general vibe of this team abhorrent, but you will have to admit that if the Blues were crowned champions, it would result in an absolutely bonkers summer filled with offer sheets being tossed around the entire continent like nothing. Maybe for pure transactional entertainment alone, we all want this. Also, Jim Montgomery winning a Cup would be cool.
The Winnipeg Jets fan base is rabid. Seeing them go deep into the postseason would be enough to get the blood pumping in excitement for whatever atmosphere comes across our screens. It would be a blast to see a team that has to be so cautious about their moves because they have to be certain a player would want to stay in their city, to finally get rewarded for their hard work. Kevin Cheveldayoff might have the toughest gig in the NHL.
And maybe again, it is another example for people worried that the Flyers aren’t outright tanking every single year for the top prospect, to chill out a bit. Just three players on the entire team were taken in the top 10 picks by the Jets: Mark Scheifele, Nikolaj Ehlers, and Cole Perfetti. Everyone else was in a range that most teams fan bases would hate being in, like Josh Morrisey at 13th overall and Kyle Connor at 17th overall. Jets have had to do a whole lot of legwork to put together this roster.
If anything, it would be cool to see someone new win the Cup, too.
This is almost certainly a blog bias due to who is running the show over there in Raleigh, but even if we didn’t care about someone who has bylines on this website having their name engraved on the Cup, seeing the Hurricanes push the envelope in every single way and be rewarded, would be perfect. While they don’t always do the most perfect thing for their team — like signing Tony DeAngelo — they generally always hit and if they don’t, then they pivot easily.
Most teams would stick with Mikko Rantanen and pray that he would eventually play like he did in the past. But the Hurricanes took that little red flag, and some contract negotiation troubles, and then bolstered their team more for the long term and suddenly, they have yet another very exciting young core of players.
Can you imagine what Seth Jarvis is going to do with the Stanley Cup? It would be wild.
Claude Giroux. You can feel your way about the Ottawa Senators or a Canadian team finally ending the 32-year drought, but every single person with a heart in Philadelphia might be crying tears of joy looking at the former captain and legend of the Flyers, finally lifting that thing over his head on the ice.
We don’t think anything else needs to be said, even if we do think that their team generally is great and Brady Tkachuk is a loveable maniac.
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