NHL Weekend Rankings: The Shocking Stories Everyone’s Buzzing About—But Are They True?

Ah, the first few weeks of the NHL season — a whirlwind of hope, confusion, and those wild swings that remind us why hockey is endlessly fascinating. Just a week ago, the Panthers were basking atop the rankings, undefeated, while the Bruins looked nearly untouchable, and the Sabres seemed to have lost their scoring touch for good. Fast forward, and everything feels unsettled, like a house of cards you keep staring at wondering: is it going to fall, or hold steady? There’s a story behind every game, each night serving a fresh slice of drama — but the real challenge is deciding which of those tales will stick and which are destined to fizzle out before the calendar flips past October. This week, buckle up as we challenge some early narratives that are begging for a second look, if not a complete overhaul. Time to call out those “sure things” that might just be smoke and mirrors. LEARN MORE

You have to love the early weeks of an NHL season. One week ago, in our first rankings of the year, we had the Panthers in the top spot because they were 3-0-0, were wondering if anyone could beat the Bruins, and were trying to figure out if the Sabres would ever score again.

Things can change quickly, you might say. And every night of NHL action is trying to tell us something. The question is how much of it is real, and how much we should ignore. This week, let’s use our bonus five to plant a few flags in that latter territory.

Bonus five: Early season stories I’m not buying (yet)

5. The Lightning are cooked – Nah. They’ve only managed one win in their first six, which clearly isn’t ideal, and they’re oh-for-three against 2025 playoff teams. This is an older team, and Andrei Vasilevskiy looks shaky, so there’s a degree of temptation to wonder if they’ll be this year’s Bruins. But they won’t, because Jon Cooper will get it figured out in plenty of time for them to make the playoffs. And when most of the core already has two rings, making the playoffs is all that matters. Other teams can worry about seeding and home ice. Tampa just needs an invitation to the dance to be right in the mix.

4. The Kraken have figured it out – Only four teams in the league haven’t suffered a regulation loss yet, and (spoiler alert) the other three are in our top five. The Kraken are not, although they did escape the bottom five spot they were holding last week. Beyond that, we’re going to need to see more before we start inscribing Lane Lambert’s name on the Jack Adams. Games later this week against the Capitals, Jets and Oilers will offer an opportunity to make me look bad.

3. The Senators are in big trouble – The key word being “big” because the Senators are clearly struggling. They’re 2-4-0 with just one regulation win, including losses to the Predators, Sabres and Saturday at home to the Islanders — three games you’d have penciled in as wins. Worse, Brady Tkachuk is out for weeks, and Linus Ullmark doesn’t look anything like what he was last year, let alone a Vezina candidate. So sure, there are reasons for concern, especially for a team that’s repeatedly sunk themselves with slow starts over the years. But this is a playoff-caliber roster, even without Tkachuk, so I’m not hitting any panic buttons. If they’re not at least back to fake .500 by the end of the month, we can revisit.

2. Everyone who picked Connor McDavid in the prediction contest is done – He was by far the top pick for the bonus question, which means a lot of you are counting on him to score at least 45 goals to save your entry. Somehow, he’s yet to score even once in six games. What an overpaid bum. But he’s still getting 50.

1. The Red Wings are the team to beat – OK, even the world’s most hardcore Wings fan isn’t going this far quite yet. But five wins in a row after what had seemed like a disastrous opener has certainly changed the mood in Detroit. I’m not fully on board quite yet, but a look a their upcoming schedule makes you wonder just how many points they can bank before the magic runs out. It’s quite possible it could be enough to put them in comfortable control of their playoff destiny.

On to this week’s rankings…

Road to the Cup

The five teams with the best chances of winning the Stanley Cup.

We have a goalie controversy in Toronto. Not in the sense of Anthony Stolarz losing his job. More like losing his mind, as he apparently doesn’t enjoy getting run over several times a game and then watching the team in front of him float through their defensive assignment. Goalies sure are weird, aren’t they?

5. Florida Panthers (3-4-0, -5  true goals differential*) – We called it last week, although it wasn’t supposed to happen this quickly. But yeah, the champs are already causing problems in ranking land, dropping four straight games after their perfect start. Am I keeping them in the top five because of our precious long-term view, or because I’m too stubborn to drop a team from number one all the way off the list altogether? You know what, don’t act like it couldn’t be both.

Also: Brad Marchand, still weird.

4. Winnipeg Jets (4-1-0, +9) – Ideally, our top five shouldn’t have three teams from the same division in it. It happened a few times last year with the Jets, Stars and Avalanche, and I can’t promise we’ll be able to avoid it this year. But we do for one week, as the Jets slip into the Stars’ spot on the strength of an impressive start.

3. Vegas Golden Knights (4-0-2, +8) – The Jack Eichel MVP watch is well and truly on, as he leads the scoring race with 15 points in just six games. That puts him on a 205-point pace, which is obviously ridiculous — regression to the mean tells us he’s unlikely to end up with over 200. But yeah, that top six in Vegas is terrifying right now.

2. Carolina Hurricanes (5-0-0, +12) – They’ve posted the league’s only perfect record, although it hasn’t exactly come against elite competition. That changes starting tonight, as this week brings the Knights, Avalanche and Stars.

1. Colorado Avalanche (5-0-1, +12) – They’ve given up exactly one goal in all five wins, and their only loss was in a shootout so it was fake. And they’ve done all that without Mackenzie Blackwood. Maybe you don’t actually need your starting goalie to be healthy if Nathan MacKinnon and Martin Necas have the puck in the other end for the entire game.

*Goals differential without counting shootout decisions like the NHL does for some reason.

Not ranked: New Jersey Devils – They’re 4-1-0 and the last two wins have come against last year’s Stanley Cup finalists. That’s pretty good, and seems like a solid indication that all the “playoff sure-thing” accolades weren’t misplaced.

I’ll admit I was a little less enthusiastic than others, if only because this was a 91-point team last year. That left a decent amount of ground to gain to get to truly elite contender status, and even some better luck in terms of health wouldn’t necessarily be enough. But five games in, this version of the Devils looks close to the best-case scenario: balanced scoring, solid defense and elite goaltending.

The twist is that the goaltending has mostly come from Jake Allen, with Jacob Markstrom out for the next few weeks. Yes, injuries are already an issue again, although so far they’re not translating into losses like they did last year.

So should they be in the top five? There’s certainly a case to be made given how they’ve started the season. The Hurricanes being perfect kind of locks them into one spot for the Metro, and I don’t think the division deserves two quite yet. But the upcoming schedule gives the Devils a chance to make their case — they get the Leafs and Wild, a classic trap game against the Sharks, and then a home-and-home with the Avalanche that starts on Sunday. If they can keep beating good teams, we may not be able to keep them out. But that’s a big if.

(And if that sounds wishy-washy … hey, at least I’m not the only one who apparently gets confused watching the Devils.)

The bottom five

The five teams headed toward dead last and the best lottery odds for Gavin McKenna.

I’d normally have a witty quip here about the guys from Dude Perfect running down NHL mascots, but Carlton the Bear getting his name trash-talked by a dude called Sparky left me too furious to form a thought.

5. New York Islanders (2-3-0, -3) – They’ve won their last two, picking on struggling Canadian teams to get back into the Metro mix. With the Sharks up next Tuesday night, they’ve got a chance to get back to .500, which would have felt like a big step just a week ago.

4. Philadelphia Flyers (2-2-1, -1) – Kevin dives in on the recent success of the third line of Noah Cates, Tyson Foerster and Bobby Brink, a combination that maybe shouldn’t work but so far has been.

3. Nashville Predators (2-2-2, -4) – Three straight losses have wiped away much of the optimism from a decent first week. Saturday’s loss to the Jets was probably the first time this year you’d say Juuse Saros was part of the problem. They start a five-game homestand Tuesday, and it’s already feeling like the pressure is on.

2. Chicago Blackhawks (3-2-2, +5) – We’ll give them credit, they’re looking feisty so far. We don’t overreact around here so we’re not going to proclaim the rebuild over quite yet. But for this week, at least, the Sharks vs. Hawks battle for the one-spot was not a tough call.

1. San Jose Sharks (0-3-2, -12) – We have a saying in the power rankings world: “When in doubt, put the only winless team in the league at the bottom.” And somehow, getting shut out on the way to a fifth straight loss wasn’t even the worst news of the weekend.

In other news, the Sharks are apparently ready to start shipping out young assets for immediate help:

“I’d give up one of my children for a f–king win.”

Ryan Warsofsky didn’t hold back when discussing the Sharks’ early-season woes 😬 pic.twitter.com/WStUHcS1HM

— Sharks on NBCS (@NBCSSharks) October 19, 2025

Not ranked: Calgary Flames – It’s worth a reminder that last year’s Flames missed the playoffs despite having the 15th best record in a league where 16 teams qualify. They were five points better than both the Canadiens and Devils, but a top-heavy West meant they had no path to the postseason despite finishing with an impressive 96 points.

Given that context, you might have figured the Flames would be a trendy playoff pick this year. Instead, they seemed to have been virtually forgotten. (Only 11 percent of our staff thought they’d make it, which was less than half the support the 80-point Ducks got.) If there was a consensus, it seems it was that last year’s Flames were a fluke that didn’t even really pay off, and would drop back down the standings this year while other, more interesting teams passed them by.

That would seem to set that stage for a classic “everybody gave up on us” statement season. The problem, at least so far, is that sometimes, “everybody” ends up being right.

Six games into the season, the Flames look awful. They can’t score, they can barely keep the puck out of their own net and they’re stuck at a miserable 1-5-0. Worse, their only win came in a shootout way back on opening night. They’re not out of the playoff hunt, because it’s impossible to be out this early. But they’re getting dangerously close before the season even really gets going.

And while we can point to plenty of players who are off to slow starts, it’s not hard to find the big story in Calgary. It’s Dustin Wolf, last year’s revelation who seemed to have emerged as a legitimate star in goal as a 23-year-old rookie. He finished second in Calder balloting and even earned a few Hart votes. That performance earned him a big new contract (and, indirectly, a smaller one for his coach too). The Flames had plenty of question marks, but the assumption was that they were all set at the most important position for the next decade or so.

Five games isn’t a decade, and it’s barely even any kind of sample size. But so far, the goalie of the future is putting up mid-1980s numbers. There’s no reason to try to draw any meaningful conclusions from that, beyond the fact that the Flames aren’t good enough to be able to afford an extended slump by their young star. They’re already running out of time.

The good news is Jonathan Huberdeau is back, making his season debut on Saturday after a preseason injury sidelined him for the first five games. Huberdeau may never live up to his contract, but he’s still a talented playmaker whose absolute floor is about 50 points. On a team that’s dead last in goals scored, that will help.

And hoo boy, does this team needs all the help it can get. The Other Rankings had them at 31st, and while the whole long-term thing that we do over here means we’re not putting them in the bottom five just yet, we can only hold off for so long.

The Flames get the Jets twice this week, with the Canadiens in between. It’s too early, sure. But we may be a week or two away from too late.