Story Archive

Amid Winnipeg's collapse, Kyle Connor scored 92 goals-and-points with a plus-10 on-off, the star whose game held up best. Why the data says he, not Scheifele, is the Jet to build the bounce-back around.

Columbus has had a rising young core for years and no goalie to support it. Jet Greaves changed that with a plus-16.5 season, the exact piece the Blue Jackets were missing. The whole rebuild now rides on whether it was real.

Elias Pettersson's points cratered to 51 and the narrative called it a decline, but he still drove a plus-13 on-off on a 45 percent team. Vancouver allowed a league-worst 314 goals. The scary part isn't Pettersson; it's everything around him.

Philadelphia was a 51 percent possession team with a young core, a reborn Trevor Zegras, and the biggest cap war chest in hockey. Matvei Michkov is the jewel, but the Flyers are already good, and closer than anyone thinks.

Matthews scored 53 in 60 injury-shortened games but still drove play. Toronto's collapse was a 46 percent team allowing 295 goals behind a blue line where four of six defenders sank. The stars were never the problem.

The skeptics have Kaprizov backwards. He drove a plus-18 on-off, not just 89 points, and the Quinn Hughes trade gives Minnesota two of the league's biggest on-ice engines. The record contract is justified and the window is now.

The Kings lost Kopitar to retirement and answered with a winger in Panarin, leaving the first-line centre hole wide open. Los Angeles was a 51 percent team that scored 29 goals below expected. The season rests on whether Quinton Byfield finally leaps.

DeBrincat, Raymond, Larkin, Kane and a 60-point Seider give Detroit a real top five. It missed anyway, because the bottom six craters and the crease split in half behind Cam Talbot's minus-13. The Yzerplan built the hard part; the easy part keeps ending the season.

Colorado controlled 57 percent of the expected goals and allowed the fewest goals in hockey. On a team this deep, even the best defenceman alive posts an on-off that undersells him. The only thing left to prove is the only thing that counts.

Kucherov scored 130 points and the Lightning were a different, worse team the moment he sat. The best offensive player in hockey is carrying a roster that gets thinner every summer.

Eichel, Marner, Stone, Hertl. Vegas had the deepest forward group in hockey and a 54 percent team to show for it, even after trading Pavel Dorofeyev. The problem is a crease that cost it 14 goals.

The Robertson standoff owns the Dallas headlines, but the more important story is that the Rantanen blockbuster already worked. He is a two-way engine, and that is the leverage the Stars can afford to use.

Ovechkin scored 32 in the twilight, but Washington was a 51 percent team carried by one of the best goaltending seasons in hockey. The Capitals go as far as Logan Thompson takes them.

Hutson put up 78 points and a plus-17 on-off as a sophomore, and Montreal's blue line collapses without him. The most exciting thing about the Canadiens is also their biggest structural risk.

Forsberg scored 40 and Stamkos 42, so the stars were not the problem. Juuse Saros finished nine goals below average while his backup was eight above. Nashville's miss was a goaltending story.

Tkachuk played 31 games, Marchand 52, Barkov barely at all. Florida did not decline; it got hurt, and Bobrovsky cratered at the worst time. The whole season was a health report.

Clayton Keller scored 88 points and drove a plus-15 on-off, and he is not alone: Guenther, Schmaltz and Cooley give Utah a young, plus-possession core the league still isn't watching.

Shesterkin saved 21 goals above expected and Adam Fox drove a 60 percent share, and the Rangers finished near the East basement anyway. When the goalie and the No. 1 defenceman are that good, the forwards are the problem.

The NHL added two games per team and cut 40 back-to-backs. It paid for the extra dates by deleting the 20-day Olympic break, and it handed Buffalo 26 back-to-backs while Dallas got 12. Every game of the 2026-27 schedule, counted.

Winnipeg fell twenty-five places in a single season, the largest collapse of the salary cap era. Connor Hellebuyck ranked twenty-sixth of fifty-two goalies in goals saved above expected, and both ends of the ice went at once. The Jets should not trade him.

The Bruins look like a comfortable playoff team on paper. Underneath, they were out-chanced most nights and saved by one of the best goalie seasons in hockey. Going into the new year, that is not a plan.

Crosby keeps producing like a top-line centre deep into his career. The Penguins keep hovering, neither contending nor rebuilding. The numbers say that middle ground is the one outcome that wastes what is left of him.

The consensus is that McKenna wins the Calder and drags Toronto back to the playoffs. The first part is fair. The second misreads why the Leafs collapsed, because their stars were never the problem.

McDavid could have forced the issue and did not. He took a short, team-friendly extension and handed Edmonton a deadline. The numbers say his brilliance was never the problem, and that the clock on everything around him is now very short.

Nathan MacKinnon scored 127 points, buried 53 goals, and Colorado controlled 65 percent of the expected goals with him on the ice. The gap between him and the field last season was not close.

Anaheim made the playoffs and knocked off Edmonton, and it did so while scoring 21 fewer goals than its chances deserved. A young core that already drives play plus normal finishing luck equals a problem.

Binnington's reputation says franchise starter. The numbers say he cost the Blues more goals than any goalie in hockey last season, while the backup they barely play was one of the best.

Minnesota was already a 104-point team with one of the league's best play-drivers in Kirill Kaprizov. Adding Quinn Hughes, whose old team fell apart the moment he left the ice, turns good into dangerous.

The young centre is the face of a rising Blue Jackets team, and the raw tools are obvious. But the five-on-five data says Fantilli is still a work in progress, and that is exactly why Columbus should be patient.

Most champions coast on reputation the following summer. Carolina added to the best possession team in hockey. Entering 2026-27, the numbers say the Hurricanes are not just defending, they are favoured.

New York's young defenceman is reportedly in line for a franchise-altering extension. For a 59-point season that dragged a weak team uphill, the data says he has earned it, with one caveat worth watching.

Detroit's captain is the subject of a summer of speculation. The numbers on Dylan Larkin tell a more complicated story than either his believers or his critics want to hear.

With his future in Dallas one of the summer's talking points, the analytics on Jason Robertson are blunt. He is a genuine top-line star who scores and drives play, and the Stars should pay whatever it takes.

The Senators drove play like a Cup team and finished like a wild card, because their goaltending cost them two dozen goals. Fix the one fixable thing and Ottawa is a genuine problem.

Ask who the best goalie in hockey is and you hear the same few names. The number that isolates goaltending from everything in front of it points somewhere else entirely: Washington's Logan Thompson.

A week after breaking down a 103-point centre who barely moved the needle, here is the opposite kind of player: fewer points, a far bigger footprint, and a fraction of the fame.

81 points, a huge two-way workload, and a young team he dragged to the edge of the playoffs. Zach Werenski's season belonged in the Norris conversation. Playing in Columbus made sure it wasn't.

The longest drought in the sport is over, and Buffalo earned the celebration. But a 49 percent team that got 50 goals of good luck is not a 109-point team. The numbers say enjoy it, and prepare.

Mark Scheifele had a top-10 scoring season. At 5-on-5, the Jets were no better with him than without him, and heavily sheltered at that. Why Winnipeg's 103-point star and its collapse are the same story.

New Jersey finished with 87 points and a shrug. The underlying numbers say they were one of the most robbed teams in the league, average at 5-on-5, buried by cold finishing and a hurt Jack Hughes. The mirror image of Montreal, and a genuine 2026-27 sleeper.