NHL Weekend Showdown: Will Canada’s Playoff Hopes Spark a Holiday Crisis?

Thanksgiving week is here, and if you’re Stateside, you’re probably knee-deep in plans—whether that’s dodging airports or carving the turkey with the family. By game day, most folks will be hunched over the couch, eyes half-closed, pigs-in-blankets at hand, tuning in to the familiar drone of NFL rules and reruns of past glories. But it’s a different vibe just north of the border. For the Canadians, this stretch sparks a very different kind of holiday anxiety — one fixated squarely on the rollercoaster rides their NHL teams are taking them on this season. And honestly, that’s the story I’m finding a lot more captivating.

So, let’s put down the gravy and juice up the skates as we ski through a whirlwind tour of Canadian hockey: just how deep is the panic pool in your neck of the woods? Is optimism still clinging on, or is it time to prepare that “rebuild” talk over poutine? From Ottawa’s cautious hope to Toronto’s staggering struggles, there’s drama aplenty—and I’m here to unpack it all with you. Ready? Let’s skate.

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If you’re American, this is Thanksgiving week. There’s a good chance you’re making plans to see friends and family. You might be traveling, in which case we wish you the best of luck with all that. By Thursday, if all goes well, you’ll have a belly full of turkey and a full slate of NFL games to doze to.

If you’re a Canadian, you’re probably busy panicking about your NHL team.

For our purposes, that second group is more interesting than the first. So let’s take a quick tour around the country and ask the question: Just how worried should you be right now?

Bonus five seven: Panic rankings for Canadian teams

7. Ottawa Senators: Probably the only team that doesn’t really qualify for this exercise. They haven’t been great, but they’ve been good enough to stay near the top of the Atlantic while captain Brady Tkachuk recovered from injury. He could be back this week, so between that and Linus Ullmark’s performance trending up in recent games, the vibes are good in Ottawa.

6. Winnipeg Jets: Record-wise, they’re doing fine, even as the Colorado Avalanche pull away in a tough Central. But the last week brought two concerning stories: A trade request from a player who was supposed to be part of the long-term plans, and an injury to their most important player. Both situations should be resolved long before the playoffs, but the road might be bumpy for a few weeks. Ah well, as long as none of their Central rivals are suddenly completely unbeatable.

5. Montreal Canadiens: So it turns out they’re not going to run away with the Atlantic after all. Not with that goaltending. The question is whether the recent losing streak is this team regressing back to playoff also-ran, or merely a good young team getting some much-needed lessons in handling adversity. Saturday’s win was a positive sign, but let’s see them do it against a good team.

4. Calgary Flames: It feels weird to have the team that’s spent a lot of time dead last in the league only midway down the list, but I think that speaks to the difference between panic and despair. Flames fans should be well onto the acceptance phase of things by now, so the panic here might sound more like, “Wait, are they actually going to sell as hard as they need to, or will they talk themselves into some sort of half-hearted reload instead?”

3. Vancouver Canucks: They’re just not very good. Worse, they’re in danger of falling out of the playoff race completely. And if Vancouver fans think they’re sick of the Quinn Hughes discourse now, wait until this team is ten points out at the holiday break and facing a second half of treading water at best.

2. Edmonton Oilers: Man, they needed that win on Saturday, even as it didn’t really make you feel any better about their issues. We all know a goalie move has to come at some point, and the longer Stan Bowman waits the more the pressure mounts. A playoff miss still seems unlikely. But it’s not impossible, and given how disastrous that would be for the franchise, the prospect is terrifying.

1.5 Quebec Nordiques: They don’t exist. They haven’t existed since 1995. It’s becoming increasingly clear they will never exist again. Still, it could be worse, they could be the …

1. Toronto Maple Leafs: They’re under .500, have the worst road record in the league and it seems increasingly clear they’re going to miss the playoffs for the first time in a decade. They just got embarrassed by their rivals on “Hockey Night in Canada.” The Sabres have now passed them, leaving them in dead last in the East. Everyone’s hurt, but they weren’t any good when they were healthy. They don’t own their own first-round picks for this year or next. The coach may be out of answers and the front office seems completely paralyzed. Other than that, going great.

Wow, that was fun. On to the power rankings, where it will not shock you to learn that it’s an all-American top five this week…

Road to the Cup

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

The Flyers moved into a wild-card spot on Saturday. Are they for real? Eh, do you want to know the terrifying truth, or do you want to see them sock three dingers in 26 seconds?

Go back and watch the pass on that second goal. Filthy.

5. Vegas Golden Knights (10-4-7, +8 true goals differential*) – They remain my Pacific pick, although the Ducks are warming up again. The two teams met on Saturday, and it was Mitch Marner’s overtime playmaking that decided it.

4. Tampa Bay Lightning (12-7-2, +6) – I’ve seen enough – welcome back to the top five, Atlantic Division. It had been four weeks away, but the Lightning have done enough despite all their injuries to break the streak.

3. Dallas Stars (13-5-4, +10) – So apparently Mikko Rantanen is dirty now.

“This one tonight, there’s no excuse for it.”

The panel share their thoughts on Mikko Rantanen’s second game misconduct in three games. pic.twitter.com/XXphkG90Hx

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) November 23, 2025

That put him into first place in the league in penalty minutes. Everyone else will get a chance to keep up, though, as Rantanen will sit one game automatically because he’s had two game misconducts.

2. Carolina Hurricanes (14-6-2, +13) – The best news for the Hurricanes this week might be the Devils stumbling a bit without Jack Hughes, allowing Carolina to build just a bit of breathing room. Meanwhile, there was buzz during the week about Andrei Svechnikov either asking for a trade or at least indicating he’d be OK with one, but it doesn’t sound like that will go anywhere.

1. Colorado Avalanche (16-1-5, +40) – The streak is over! No, not their winning streak, which reached nine with last night’s 1-0 win over Chicago. But that close score did snap their streak of five straight wins by exactly three goals. Keep it up with this sort of progress, and somebody will be able to beat these guys by New Year’s.

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

Not ranked: Los Angeles Kings – Two things were true about the Kings heading into this season. The first: They’d been a good team for four years in a row, making the playoffs each season while averaging over 100 points. While they’d lost to the Oilers in the first round in each of those years, calling into question the height of their ceiling, they were clearly at least a playoff-caliber team, and were coming off a 2024-25 season that was the best of the bunch.

The second true thing was that it hadn’t been good enough to keep Rob Blake employed, and new GM Ken Holland had been pretty unanimously panned for his offseason work. Dom had them dead last on his summer improvement rankings and there wasn’t exactly a ton of pushback. And when you combined those offseason reviews with a general sense of fatigue with a team that had delivered the same result four years running, there were more than a few of us who dropped the Kings off our playoff list for this year, making room for one of the younger and/or more interesting teams.

Then the season started, and we all waited to find out what the Kings would be. Good? Bad? Somewhere in the middle?

And now we know the answer: Yes.

They were bad for the first few weeks, winning just one of their first six games. And all the haters were proven right.

Except then they worked their way back up past fake .500, before winning five of six to move into first place in the Pacific. And their loyal fans were vindicated.

Only now they’ve lost three straight, allowing the Ducks and Knights and even the Kraken to push past them. With the Oilers still lurking and the Sharks surging, the Kings once again look like they might not even be a playoff team. But also, it’s three games, and all three were one-goal losses, and they still managed two OTL points, so what are we even doing here?

The answer, unsatisfying as it is, seems to be something like this: The Kings aren’t great, but they’re not as bad as a lot of us thought, and in a Pacific Division that refuses to follow expectations, that’s probably enough to keep them hanging around the race all year long.

(There was some post-goal controversy on that one; the details are here.)

All three California teams are confusing, a problem that Eric tried to help me with in last week’s newsletter. (Are you subscribed? You should subscribe.) He had the Kings pegged as a scrappy possession team that was getting good goaltending from Darcy Kuemper, and was banking points by getting to overtime as often as possible. That last part is important, because they’re now up to 10 overtime appearances, going 4-6 in the extra frame. It’s true the hockey gods hate the loser point, but it’s also true that coaches love them, and it’s how you can win 10 of 22 games and still be close to .600 in today’s NHL.

Great. So are they good or bad or stuck in the middle? It’s been all three, at least so far. But if I had to pick an option to ride with, it would be the last one. They’re fine, with gusts up to very good. And in this year’s Pacific, that’s probably enough. Get them into the playoffs, with solid goaltending and a classic last-dance storyline from Anze Kopitar, and who knows what could happen. Especially if they can somehow avoid the Oilers for a change. They’d have a shot. I think. Maybe.

Kings fans, help me out here. Where are we at with this year’s edition? Should us sleepy east-coasters be paying more attention, or is the simple “They’re OK” answer the right one?

The bottom five

The five teams headed towards dead last and the best lottery odds for Gavin McKenna (we think).

Since this is the section for feeling bad, make sure you don’t miss this collection of every team’s regrettable trades.

5. Buffalo Sabres (9-9-4, -5) – I can’t say I was super close to putting the Leafs or Rangers here. Long-term view, all that stuff. I did think about the Canucks. For now, we’ll stick with the Sabres, who looked good yesterday and are making a strong case to escape this section.

4. San Jose Sharks (11-9-3, -4) – I’m not really sure how I feel about this:

Tarps off, Shark tooth necklace on.

A new tradition has begun. pic.twitter.com/Wml6WPPm4W

— San Jose Sharks (@SanJoseSharks) November 19, 2025

3. St. Louis Blues (7-9-6, -21) – Some good stuff from Jeremy this week, with a look at the Blues’ new top line and how Jim Montgomery is approaching a losing season.

2. Calgary Flames (8-13-3, -14) – Got to be honest: While the Rantanen hit was ugly, if I’m a Flames fan I sure don’t mind seeing Jonathan Huberdeau get in there and drop the gloves. His contract means he’ll probably always be open to criticism, but he hasn’t checked out.

1. Nashville Predators (6-11-4, -25) – They had almost a week off after being shut out by the Penguins to end their mini-series in Sweden. The result: Another shutout, this time against the Avalanche. When they face the Panthers tonight, it will have been ten days since their last goal.

Not ranked: Columbus Blue Jackets – They were a great story last year, riding the emotion of the Johnny Gaudreau tragedy and a Norris-worthy breakout from Zach Werenski almost all the way to a playoff spot. That “almost” was the painful twist, with the Blue Jackets eventually ending up two points shy after a late-season losing streak dug a hole that even six straight wins to end the season weren’t enough to climb out of.

The question coming into this year was whether there was a path to improvement. I wasn’t convinced there was, and 70 percent of our staff agreed, but I was hoping I’d be wrong. So far this year, the Blue Jackets are playing to a 93-point pace, which would have been enough last year but may not be this time. But they’ve got points in seven of their last eight, including a tough Saturday loss to the Red Wings that saw Columbus blow a two-goal lead they held midway through the third. They were technically holding down a playoff spot when that game ended (by points but not by percentage), but have since been bumped back out.

All that said, there’s plenty of room for optimism in Columbus. Start with Jet Greaves, the rookie goalie who’s looked the part of an NHL starter. Werenski has shown last year wasn’t a fluke and Kirill Marchenko is on pace for a career year at 25.

And then there’s the guy I mostly wanted to talk about: Adam Fantilli. The No. 3 pick from the 2023 draft hasn’t been getting the kind of attention names like Connor Bedard, Macklin Celebrini and Leo Carlsson have had this year. And that’s fair, because those guys are out-producing him on teams that are bigger surprises. But you might think that a guy who just turned 21 and already has a 31-goal season under his belt would get a little bit more credit. Maybe his highlight-reel OT winner in Toronto will help in that regard. Maybe it shouldn’t have to.

Aaron Portzline had his quarter-season grades, and they were mostly solid. There have been some rough starts for veterans like Sean Monahan and Boone Jenner, and Kent Johnson and Cole Sillinger are reminding us that even highly drafted prospects can have their ups and downs. But with lots of runway left on the season, some room for improvement is hardly the worst thing in the world.

We may get a good sense of where this team is headed over the next few weeks, as the Blue Jackets play their next nine against Eastern teams, most of whom are right in the middle of the playoff mix. You can’t clinch anything in November, but it’s a chance to make a few statements.

We’ll see where it goes, but don’t sleep on this team. They didn’t get the storybook finish they probably deserved last year, but maybe that was just setting the stage for something bigger.