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Quinn Hughes is the talk of the league this week. Derek Cain / Getty Images
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Good morning, hockey folks. Thirteen days until Christmas? I don’t know about you, but that means it’s 12 days until it’s time to frantically run out and buy gifts.
There’s a lot going on around the NHL right now, but the biggest story this week is, without a doubt, in Vancouver.
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After news filtered out last weekend that the Canucks were chatting with the Devils about trading team captain Quinn Hughes — one of the best defensemen in the league — the news cycle in what is perhaps the league’s most rabid market went into overdrive.
Yesterday, Canucks columnist Thomas Drance weighed in, and he didn’t pull any punches about the mess the last-place franchise finds itself in:
“What’s required in Vancouver is something less conventional, something focused more on accumulating value for the purpose of building a real contending team down the road. Not maximizing a middling team with clever depth additions for the purpose of making the playoffs ‘if everything goes right.’”
In other words, they need a real, smart, calculated rebuild — something Vancouver ownership has been reluctant to embrace even as the Canucks have consistently been a bottom-10 team the past dozen years.
Drance also references some painful moments in team history, including two tough trades that saw fan favorites Cam Neely and Pavel Bure shipped out of town. Few NHL franchises have as tortured a past as the Canucks, who have yet to win a Stanley Cup in their 55-year history despite three trips to the final.
Right now, they’re as far away from ending that drought as they’ve been in a long, long time. And with the best blueliner in franchise history on the verge of a difficult exit, they absolutely have to get this move right.
Bonus reads:
One week from today, at 11:59 p.m. local time next Friday, the NHL’s Christmas roster freeze kicks in. It goes for eight full days, and players on an NHL roster (or injured reserve) can’t be waived, traded or loaned in that time frame. Which is a nice bit of certainty for players and their families.
There also won’t be games for three days between Dec. 24 and Dec. 26, as per the CBA, which means I’ll be staring at my TV blankly. But those dark days weren’t always there.
My trivia questions for you are:
Answers at the bottom.
When we made our staff predictions before the season, the general consensus was that most of the teams that made the playoffs in 2024-25 would be back in again this year (14 of 16). This didn’t feel like a changing of the guard year, not with so many established teams returning similar rosters and so many others in the early days of rebuilds and retools.
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As everyone starts to pass the 30-game mark, however, that appears very much not the case.
After 13 games last night, eight teams are on pace for an 18-point-or-better improvement in the standings. Five others, meanwhile, are tracking for an 18-point-or-worse drop off, including last year’s Presidents’ Trophy winner (Winnipeg) headed for double that.
That volatility has made this one of the more unpredictable starts to a season in the cap era, which we can see in the following graphics that measure a team’s point pace compared to where it finished last year.
Let’s start with the East.
There’s been a lot of talk about the top of the West, with Colorado’s historic start and Dallas always proving a contender, but what stands out to me after doing this analysis is, on balance, the East is stronger.
After finishing exactly even last year, the average Eastern team is on pace for 94.6 points this season, compared to only 91.5 for the West. And that difference isn’t coming from overtime-loss points, as there have been more of those in the West.
How can the East be better, even with a team like the Avalanche piling up W’s? Depth. Other than Buffalo, absolutely every team is in the mix, and sharp rises for unexpected teams like the Flyers, Penguins and Islanders mean the majority of the conference is a 95- to 100-point threat.
OK, here’s the West.
This is obviously a much more top-heavy conference. But the steep falloff for the Jets, Flames, Canucks, Blues and Oilers (woof, Canada) has meant real opportunity for surprises beyond the big two. We’ve already said a ton about the Ducks here at Red Light, but two of the other youngest teams in the league, San Jose and Chicago, are even bigger shocks, given that everyone had them in the lottery group.
The challenge for all three of those clubs is going to be hanging on. Their underlying numbers aren’t great, and some of the more established powers will likely get their acts together in the second half, which is part of why the prediction models are down on their chances.
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Should be fun. Let’s move along.
Here are five fast facts you may have missed last night:
🚨 A bit of breaking news: Minutes before this newsletter went out, the Pittsburgh Penguins traded volatile goaltender Tristan Jarry and forward Sam Poulin to the Edmonton Oilers for fellow volatile goaltender Stuart Skinner, defenseman Brett Kulak and a 2029 second-round draft pick. Our experts graded the Jarry trade. We’ll have much more reaction to come, so keep an eye on our NHL page.
🏒 This week’s edition of the Power Rankings continues the holiday theme by making a Christmas list for every team and checking it twice. OK, just once.
🫨 Say what? Gavin McKenna isn’t No. 1 but fourth on a draft board? Corey Pronman explains why in his latest breakdown of the 2026 draft class.
📣 The dreaded MSG ramp walk gets the Peter Baugh treatment in this fun piece. “I wish our bus could’ve just driven up it!” says one player — and every media member who takes in a Rangers game.
📰 Speaking of the Rangers, they’ll be facing some old friends who left on not great terms when they take on the upstart Ducks on Monday. Jacob Trouba and Chris Kreider are back, and Vince Mercogliano caught up with them ahead of their upcoming revenge game.
🤔 Who was the worst NHL GM to last five-plus years on the job? DGB, of course, is all over it. But see how many you can guess before opening it …
📻 On “The Athletic Hockey Show,” Sean Gentille and Chris Johnston discussed the latest from Milan, including the disaster that is the Olympic hockey rink and what it could mean for the NHL players headed there in eight weeks.
So, how well do you know your NHL holiday history? 🧑🎄
The last of the league’s Christmas Day games were played more than five decades ago, way back in 1971, when there were six games, including the long-defunct California Golden Seals defeating the Los Angeles Kings. 🦭
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In all, between the start of the league and 1971-72, the NHL played 125 times on Christmas, with the Detroit Red Wings leading the way by appearing in 38 of them. Unsurprisingly, then, it is Gordie Howe who played in the most Xmas Day games: a remarkable 21.
And he had his best scoring night ever in one of those, with six points in a 8-1 trouncing of the Rangers back in 1956. 😮
His lesser-known nickname is actually Mr. Christmas Hockey.
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James Mirtle is a senior writer covering the NHL for The Athletic. James joined The Athletic as the inaugural editor in Canada in 2016 and served as senior managing editor of The Athletic NHL for four years. Previously, he spent 12 years as a sportswriter with The Globe and Mail. A native of Kamloops, B.C., he appears regularly on Sportsnet 590 The Fan and other radio stations across Canada. Follow James on Twitter @mirtle
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