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The Stars might be pretty good after all, and maybe the Habs aren't as unbeatable as they looked to start. David Kirouac / Imagn Images
The biggest story through the season’s first month or so was that nobody knew anything.
OK, sure, there were a few teams that stuck to the script. The Colorado Avalanche were good. The Nashville Predators were bad. But in between, it was chaos. Teams nobody thought would be all that good were dominating. Teams we thought would be terrible were competitive, or better. And so many presumed contenders were struggling that you could barely hear the goal horns over the sounds of all the windows slamming shut.
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It seemed to set up a wild season where you could just throw out the preseason projections entirely. But then, over the last few weeks, something changed. Not entirely, and there are still plenty of surprises playing out. But doesn’t it feel like the hockey gods are trying hard to slam the brakes on this runaway season?
5. The Canadiens aren’t unbeatable – After looking like the East’s best team through the first dozen games, Montreal has lost five of six, including three straight in regulation in which they’ve been outscored 15-3. Injuries are a big factor, and every team faces some adversity eventually. But any early thoughts of the Canadiens running away from the rest of the Atlantic Division have faded.
4. The feel-good Penguins are struggling – They did get the win yesterday to split that European mini-series with the Predators, but it was just their second victory in their last seven. They’re still in a playoff spot, but by only two points after building a nice early cushion. Is it time to restart the Sidney Crosby trade rumors? Of course not. We’ll give them one more week on that.
3. The Lightning and Stars are still good – Remember when the Tampa Bay Lightning were 1-4-2 and looked like they were cooked? Never mind. They’ve won eight of 11 since, including beating the Panthers on Saturday despite missing half the roster. Meanwhile, the Dallas Stars are rolling again, winning five straight including their last two by a combined score of 12-1. Spoiler: One of these two teams is in this week’s top five.
2. The Mammoth aren’t the powerhouse we thought – More on that down below.
1. The Ducks come back to the pack – There wasn’t a better story over the first month than the young gun Ducks. They weren’t just winning, they were playing maybe the most exciting hockey of anyone in the league. But now they’ve lost three straight in regulation, including a shutout in Minnesota on Saturday. They’re at home for the next six, so they’ve got a chance to get it going again. But for now, they’re back to looking like a young team coming out of a rebuild.
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So there you go. It’s mid-November, and everything makes sense again. Now to take a big sip of water and check on the Pacific.
Four straight wins for Kings, who move into first place in the Pacific Division.
— Eric Stephens (@icemancometh) November 16, 2025
Ah. Well. Nevertheless.
On to this week’s rankings, where the toughest task was finding five teams I feel really good about to fill out the top five. (Spoiler alert: I could not.)
The five teams with the best chances of winning the Stanley Cup.
I’m still not really sure what to make of the Edmonton Oilers, who haven’t won a game in regulation since October. But I do know that as long as they’ve got these two guys, they’ll be at least vaguely terrifying at all times.
4. New Jersey Devils (13-4-1, +7) – The Jack Hughes injury is a brutal piece of news, with the star expected to miss eight weeks after undergoing surgery on his finger. The circumstances surrounding the situation remain mysterious; we know it was a “non-hockey” injury that happened at a team dinner, but not much more. Peter has more on who they’ll lean on in Hughes’ absence.
3. Dallas Stars (12-4-3, +9) – Well well, look who’s back. We haven’t seen them in the top five since the season’s opening week, but they’ve certainly earned a return appearance. Losing Thomas Harley will hurt, and the power play can’t run at 33 percent forever … we think. But for now, they look a lot like the all-star team most of us had them pegged as heading into the season.
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1. Colorado Avalanche (13-1-5, +33) – The thing with a guy like Cale Makar is that you only get so many opportunities to see a generationally great blueliner at the absolute height of his powers, so it was probably pretty exciting for him to get a chance to see Matthew Schaefer up close last night.
*Goals differential without counting shootout decisions like the NHL does for some reason.
Not ranked: Utah Mammoth – Let’s look back three weeks, which isn’t a long time unless you’re an NHL team, in which case it can be forever.
Three weeks ago today, the Mammoth had just gone into Winnipeg earned a regulation win over the Jets in a Central Division statement game. It was their seventh straight win, with the last four all coming against division rivals. The win brought their record to 8-2-0, and they were sitting alone on top of the Central. Their +13 goals differential was the best in the conference by a mile. And while we didn’t know it at the time, they were just a few days away from locking their best young player into a max-length extension.
In other words, it was all good. They crested to fifth spot in the Other Rankings. Everyone was on board. And yes, that includes me — the Mammoth hadn’t cracked the top five yet, but I listed them in the top spot of a “stories I’m starting to buy” list. The long-term view we preach around here meant I still had Colorado and Winnipeg ahead of them, but even I had to admit it was getting tough to hold that ground.
And then …
Their next game was an early-season showdown with the Oilers, which they lost to snap the win streak. No big deal, we all figured. But another loss followed, this one to the Lightning, and in hindsight it was the start of a slide back to the pack. In the eight games since I said I was buying, the Mammoth are just 2-5-1. Worse, both of those wins came against the Sabres, and one of those wasn’t even in regulation. They lost to the Leafs. Nobody loses to the Leafs.
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Today, their record sits at 10-7-1, good for fifth in the Central and 10 points back of the Avalanche for top spot. The goals differential is down to +3, behind even the Chicago Blackhawks. Things can change quickly in this league.
Let’s be clear – there are a lot worse places a team can be than sitting comfortably over .500 while just one win away from a playoff spot. If anything, this current snapshot might have felt just about right if you’d seen it before the season. They’re good, but hardly great. But it’s that tale-of-two-seasons context that makes it feel significantly worse.
Maybe it shouldn’t. The Mammoth came into the season as basically a coin flip to make the playoffs, according to Dom’s model. At the height of the win streak, their odds were just short of 75 percent. Now they’re down to about 65 percent, which still represents a decent chunk of progress. And unless you really believe in the Blackhawks keeping this up all season long, the playoff path in the Central actually looks better now than it did at the start of the season, thanks to the Wild and Blues struggling.
That’s not to say that everything is rainbows; they need better goaltending, the power play isn’t clicking and their leading scorer sure seems like he could be headed to the UFA market in the summer. But it shouldn’t feel like a crisis. This CJ column from two weeks ago laid out the path forward, and while the win-loss numbers have changed, most of the positivity still rings true.
The trajectory is still pointing up in Utah, even if the ceiling might not look quite as high as it did a few weeks ago.
The five teams headed towards dead last and the best lottery odds for Gavin McKenna (we think).
It was an ugly weekend for injuries, especially on blocked shots. Charlie McAvoy took the worst of it:
Charlie McAvoy leaves the the game after taking a puck to the face pic.twitter.com/QlsNdINYoD
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) November 16, 2025
Nick Foligno took one in the hand and will miss a month. And Drew Doughty looks like he’ll miss a few weeks after being hit in the ankle against Ottawa.
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5. Buffalo Sabres (6-8-4, -14) – It was good to see Rasmus Dahlin back with the team over the weekend. Even better, he helped them to a big comeback win over the Red Wings, snapping a five-game losing streak. They’re home for the next four, so if there’s any hope of climbing back into the mix before Thanksgiving, this would be it.
4. San Jose Sharks (8-8-3, -6) – We made a big production of the Blackhawks escaping the bottom five last week, which led to a few Sharks fans wanting to know why they didn’t deserve the same. It’s a fair point, although two straight regulation losses to drop them back to .500 puts a bit of a dent in the argument. They’re getting there, though.
3. Nashville Predators (6-10-4, -22) – The good news: After splitting two in Sweden, they get some time off before getting back to action on Saturday. The bad news: They get the Avalanche and the Panthers, so building some momentum won’t be easy.
2. St. Louis Blues (6-9-4, -20) – Yep, it’s getting to be about that time.
1. Calgary Flames (5-12-3, -18) – The week saw Dustin Wolf’s first shutout of the season, although it took only 17 saves to blank the Sharks. The Flames lost their other two, but we’ll find the positives where we can. Meanwhile, we’re apparently going to do the Rasmus Andersson trade rumor thing all year long.
Not ranked: Washington Capitals – Are we getting worried? Saturday’s shootout loss to the Devils was their fourth loss in five, and their eighth in the last ten. That’s dropped them all the way down to fake .500 and 14th in the East.
And in maybe the weirdest story of their season so far, that’s all happening despite Logan Thompson leading the league in both save percentage and goals-against average. Normally when a good team is struggling, you can just point at the goalie and say he needs to heat up. But in Washington, it may be the only part of their game that’s really working right now. And it’s not enough.
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The offense just isn’t holding up its end of the bargain. Alexander Ovechkin scored on Saturday, which is news because he’s got only five on the year. (Sorry Caps fans, it doesn’t look like the Halloween reverse jinx is going to work this time.) Connor McMichael has just six points after pushing 60 last year. The power play is struggling. And obviously, the Pierre-Luc Dubois injury is a problem.
It’s still a hole, though, and there’s work to be done. They’re at home for six of the next seven, although that stretch starts tonight against the suddenly rolling Kings, and also includes tough matchups like the Oilers, Lightning and Jets. It’s not a make-or-break few weeks quite yet … unless it goes badly. Which it might, if they can’t get the offense going.
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Sean McIndoe has been a senior NHL writer with The Athletic since 2018. He launched Down Goes Brown in 2008 and has been writing about hockey ever since, with stops including Grantland, Sportsnet and Vice Sports. His book, “The Down Goes Brown History of the NHL,” is available in book stores now. Follow Sean on Twitter @DownGoesBrown
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