Story Archive

A generational talent went first to the team that collapsed to get him. San Jose stockpiled three first-rounders. Minnesota drafted three players all weekend. Here's how all 32 teams did at the 2026 Draft.

McTavish to St. Louis. Peterka to Boston. Nurse's $9.25M gone. Thirty-nine trades reshaped the league in two weeks - here's every one that matters, graded on paper before a single puck drops.

Four goalies, an emergency trade, a first-round exit. Then, in nine days, Stan Bowman hired Mike Babcock, moved Darnell Nurse's $9.25M, and rebuilt the crease around a Cup-winning goalie. Edmonton finally attacked the right problems.

The season is over and the Cup has a name on it. So we went back through the year's biggest trades - summer blockbusters and deadline dice-rolls - and graded them the only way that counts: by what actually happened.

[stat-banner:99=GP (incl. playoffs)|48=Points|+6=Plus/Minus|11:44=Avg TOI/GP|60%=On-Ice xGF% (MoneyPuck)|$6.0M=Cap Hit (CapWages)]

When the Carolina Hurricanes acquired Logan Stankoven from Dallas at the 2025 trade deadline, the immediate reaction across the league was measured skepticism. A year and a half later, after Carolina's Stanley Cup victory, the trade deserves a closer look at what the underlying numbers actually show

The 2025-26 NHL regular season is complete. Sixteen teams are in. Sixteen are out. The Colorado Avalanche finished first overall with 121 points. The Vancouver Canucks finished last with 58. Between those two extremes sits the most interesting question in hockey right now: what do these final standi

Vegas fired Cassidy with eight games left, went 7-0-1 under Tortorella, signed Carter Hart who went 6-0-0 at .930, watched Mitch Marner lead the playoffs with 21 points in 16 games, swept the 121-point Avalanche in the WCF, and lost the Stanley Cup Final to Carolina in six.

Colorado's 121-point Presidents' Trophy season had everything: MacKinnon's historic even-strength production, Landeskog's return, the Jennings Trophy, and a WCF sweep shaped by injuries to Makar and MacKinnon.

The Hurricanes swept their first two opponents to go 8-0, responded to losing ECF Game 1 with four straight, and to losing SCF Game 1 with five of the next six. Ehlers was the offseason's best signing. Stankoven was the trade that reshaped the franchise. Bussi stopped Marner's penalty shot and shut out Vegas in Game 6. Brind'Amour, who raised the Cup as Carolina's captain in 2006, raised it again as their coach.

The preseason over-under was 91.5 points. They scored 106. Caufield's 50, Suzuki's 100, two Game 7 wins, and a 5-2 win in Raleigh against the eventual champions. The rebuild arrived three years early.

Sixteen wins, three losses, one Stanley Cup. The complete, game-by-game record of how Rod Brind'Amour, Jordan Staal and Brandon Bussi led Carolina to the 2026 Cup, twenty years after the first.

Buffalo broke a 14-year drought, won 109 points and the Atlantic Division, and lost Game 7 of the second round to Montreal in overtime. Dahlin's Norris-and-Masterton season, Samuelsson's +41, the 10-game streak, and the goaltending decision that defined the summer.

Kaprizov passed Gaborik as the franchise goals leader in 121 fewer games. Boldy scored 42 and won Olympic gold. Quinn Hughes arrived from Vancouver and led the team in assists. Eleven years of first-round exits ended in Game 6 against Dallas. Then Minnesota led Game 5 in Colorado 3-0 entering the third, and the season was over an hour later.

Anaheim hadn't played a playoff game since 2018. Quenneville returned to the NHL. Gauthier scored 41 goals. The Ducks eliminated the defending Western champions in Round 1, then lost to Vegas with an 0-for-11 power play. Fifteen players got their first taste of the playoffs. The drought is over.

The preseason over-under was 84.5 points. They finished with 98. Beat Pittsburgh as 3.8% favourites. Swept by the eventual Cup champion Hurricanes in Round 2. The biggest single-season turnaround in the East. The Michkov question defines the summer.

Anze Kopitar's final NHL season ended in a Colorado sweep. Five straight first-round exits. Hiller fired in March. Kempe signed eight years, Panarin arrived, and a franchise must decide what comes next.

Nikita Kucherov scored 130 points. Andrei Vasilevskiy was a Vezina finalist. Tampa won 50 games. In Game 7 they outshot Montreal 29-9 and lost 2-1 on two deflection goals - the fourth straight first-round exit. Kucherov has never scored in any Game 7 of his career.

Third in the NHL. Third consecutive 50-win season. Robertson and Johnston the first teammates in franchise history to each score 40+. Then a six-game first-round loss to Minnesota with one goal from Rantanen and three from the rest of the forwards.

The Penguins returned to the playoffs after four years out, scored 288 goals (3rd in the NHL), and nearly completed an impossible 0-3 comeback against the Flyers. The summer that follows is the most consequential since Crosby signed his first contract.

Last in the East a year ago, back in the playoffs this year. Swayman a Vezina finalist. Nine playoff debutants. McAvoy played through a broken hand. And 0-3 at TD Garden when it counted.

138 points and a sixth Art Ross for McDavid. 1,000 career points and 14 missed games for Draisaitl. Four goalies. Both stars injured. Anaheim PP 50%. Knoblauch fired. The Edmonton question, one year older.

Year One as the Utah Mammoth: franchise records in wins, points, and points percentage. Guenther 40 goals. Vejmelka 38 wins. A first home playoff win at the Delta Center, and six games against the eventual Cup finalists.

The Senators had their best regular season in years - 99 points, Stutzle at point-per-game, Sanderson at Norris level. Then Zub went down in Game 1, Hall concussed Sanderson in Game 3, and Carolina swept them on the way to the Cup.

The Blue Jackets improved from a league-worst 59 points three years ago to genuine playoff contention - and then stalled. Fantilli career high in back-to-back years, Marchenko 60+ again, Greaves wins the job. Sixth straight missed playoff. The summer writes the ceiling.

Jack Hughes scored the Olympic gold overtime winner. The Devils then posted the worst home record in the NHL for three months, missed the playoffs by ten points, and fired Tom Fitzgerald three days before the season ended.

The Detroit Red Wings' 100th NHL season ended the same way the ninth, eighth, and seventh consecutive missed playoff seasons ended. Fading in March. Losing games they needed to win. Watching teams with inferior early-season records accumulate points in the stretch run while Detroit could not - the third straight year of the same collapse, this time from first in the Atlantic Division on January 25.

Four points. That is the margin between the 2025-26 St. Louis Blues and a Stanley Cup Playoff appearance. They won their last four games of the season - had they won two more across the prior two months, or converted one of the overtime losses in December into a regulation win, or not been

Kopitar is retired, Panarin is on the roster, and Peter Laviolette inherits five straight first-round exits. The case for the hire, the centre question Byfield has to answer, and the pieces Holland still needs by September.

Two players on the same non-playoff team each scored forty goals this season. One of them is thirty-six years old and scored twelve of those goals after the Olympic break in a second-half surge that was simultaneously remarkable and too late. The other is thirty-one and did it for the third time in

[stat-banner:$7.875M=Cap Hit (CapWages)|C=Position|Montreal=Team]

Tage Thompson is a productive NHL center who scores goals at a rate that justifies his contract. He's also a player whose underlying game reveals why Buffalo's coaching staff deploys him the way they do, and why the Sabres needed more than just his offense to reach the playoffs this season.

The surface-level read on Kirill Kaprizov's season misses the underlying story. While his counting stats don't match his previous career-best campaigns, his on-ice impact at five-on-five has never been more dominant. The gap between what shows up in the box score and what shows up in possession metr

[stat-banner:90=Games Played (incl. playoffs)|39=Points|+19=Plus/Minus|17:46=Avg TOI/GP|53%=On-Ice xGF% (MoneyPuck)|$5.2M=Cap Hit (CapWages)]

[stat-banner:103=Games Played (incl. playoffs)|61=Points|+20=Plus/Minus|17.3%=Shooting %|12:59=Avg TOI/GP|$5.0M=Cap Hit (CapWages)]

Jack Eichel has never been a player who wins arguments with surface-level stats alone. His value to the Vegas Golden Knights runs deeper than the points column, and understanding what makes him a franchise center requires looking at how he tilts the ice when he's on it.

The Vegas Golden Knights lost 32 of 53 faceoffs against the Carolina Hurricanes on Thursday night, a 39.6% success rate that should have translated into territorial trouble. Instead, both teams finished with exactly 24 shots on goal in Carolina's 4-2 victory.