Yeah, you can’t do that.
If that’s not a suspension for McDavid, we riot. #Canucks pic.twitter.com/tzkHAp5exG
— Daniel Wagner (@passittobulis) January 19, 2025
Connor McDavid did indeed get a hearing with the Department of Player Safety, so his second career suspension is coming. Tyler Myers will get one too, as Saturday’s game between the Canucks and Oilers fell apart in the final moments.
And yes, some of that is on the referees, as Daniel points out. It also comes just days after McDavid got away with a potentially suspendable chicken wing that injured Marcus Johansson. If you’re the sort of fan who loves to boo the league’s best player while calling him dirty and/or a baby, it’s been a good week for you.
But honestly, and this is the old-school fan in me talking, having a reputation for being selectively careless with his stick and/or elbow probably isn’t the worst thing in the world for a guy like McDavid, even if it means the occasional league-mandated vacation. Thankfully, we’re well past the days when stars were expected to feed a cross-check to an opponent a few times a year just as a cost of doing business in a league that couldn’t keep up with them. But the occasional “accidental” foul might buy McDavid just a little bit of room out there, and that’s still part of the equation in the NHL whether we like it or not.
I haven’t forgotten about this week’s bonus five, which we’ll get to down below. For now, on to this week’s rankings …
Road to the Cup
The five teams with the best chances of winning the Stanley Cup.
Neither team is all that close to top-five contention these days, but we have to offer up a glove tap to the Bruins and Senators for giving us the game of the weekend.
I’m with Brady Tkachuk: That one had a whiff of the playoffs. The question is whether there will be room in the postseason for both of these teams. For now, we can look forward to the rematch in Boston on Thursday.
5. Dallas Stars (29-8-6, +31 true goals differential*) — The Panthers have earned a break, meaning they drop off the list for the first time all season and free up a spot. And there are more than a few teams with a decent case to make. By points percentage, the East’s next team is the Maple Leafs, who spent their Saturday teaching us all a valuable lesson about not pointing at the scoreboard too early. The Devils and Hurricanes are nearby, as are the Wild despite a recent slump. And if you know this section is about projecting the eventual Cup winner and would prefer a team with a track record of playoff success, the Avs and Lightning are worth a look.
But as you can see, I went with maybe the easiest pick. The Stars got back in the win column last night against the Red Wings, opening the door for me to reinstate my preseason Cup pick to their rightful space in the top five. I’m not going so far as to call them the favorites, unlike 25.9 percent of my colleagues, but they’re certainly in the mix.
They’ve got Carolina and Vegas up next, which means a chance to make me look smart. We know how that usually goes, so apologies in advance to Stars fans.
4. Winnipeg Jets (31-13-3, +52) — The Jets are one of the teams at the midseason mark that can skip over the whole playoff race handwringing thing and head straight to trade deadline speculation. Murat has you covered with his vision for a perfect Jets deadline.
3. Edmonton Oilers (29-14-3, +25) — By the way, the Oilers get a rematch with the Canucks on Thursday night. Each team has one game in between, so try not to act shocked when the McDavid and Myers suspensions both come in at two games.
2. Washington Capitals (31-10-5, +52) — Nice work by Shayna here on how the Capitals managed to pull off a feat that so many NHL teams aim for but very few can actually manage: retooling on the fly instead of rebuilding. Meanwhile, four straight wins featuring just two goals allowed puts a stop to any of those wobble wonders we had in recent weeks.
1. Vegas Golden Knights (29-14-3, +29) — Well, well, look who’s moved into top spot among Cup contenders in our staff predictions. Welcome to the bandwagon, everyone. Now please stop losing games to teams like the Predators and Hawks, guys, because you’re making us look bad.
*Goals differential without counting shootout decisions like the NHL does for some reason.
Not ranked: Vancouver Canucks — You can’t say this team doesn’t bring the intrigue every week. In addition to being part of that messy finish against the Oilers, it sure sounds like we were very close to a J.T. Miller trade over the weekend. Elliotte Friedman’s report on Hockey Night in Canada had the Canucks close to holding Miller out of the Saturday game due to a trade that was nearing the finish line, with Friedman adding he believed the Rangers were the other team involved.
That deal is now off, or at least on hold, but you don’t have to read very far between the lines to conclude that the end of this story may be imminent. It all comes in the wake of a week that saw the Miller story continue to overshadow everything, with fans and media breaking down footage of his effort on various plays and speculating over what the final straw might look like.
Meanwhile, there’s still the Elias Pettersson half of the equation. You’d assume a Miller trade might mean Pettersson stays, but that’s hardly guaranteed given some of the team’s comments earlier in the year about listening to offers on both guys. If they do decide to move him, it will be fascinating to see how some of the teams that desperately need high-end talent to kickstart their flailing rebuilds react. Personally, I’m a hard co-sign on this Laz piece on the Hawks going all in to land him, and you could make a similar case for teams like the Red Wings and Sabres; I can see this playing out like the 2023 Matthew Tkachuk sweepstakes, where too many teams tried to lowball while the one that stepped up with a big offer reaped the rewards. Then again, if Miller is out of the picture and the Canucks are still shopping their best remaining forward, that has to make you wonder about just what’s going on behind the scenes in Vancouver.
Either way, it’s going to be fascinating to watch it play out, maybe even over the next few days.
The bottom five
The five teams headed toward dead last and the best lottery odds for James Hagens Matthew Schaefer.
Jeremy had a cool story about Jake Neighbours designing an ASL-inspired Blues cap.
5. Seattle Kraken (20-24-3, -12) — Credit where it’s due, beating the Kings in regulation is impressive. Next up is this afternoon’s trip into Buffalo, a team the Kraken blew out two weeks ago, and the quest for the first two-game win streak of the new year.
4. Buffalo Sabres (17-23-5, -16) — The Sabres were part of some history over the weekend, which we’ll get to down below. But it wasn’t even their most impressive historical oddity of the week, thanks to this from Wednesday.
So the @BuffaloSabres scored a goal in the 3rd period without registering a shot on net. According to @nhl stats, this is the 3rd time it has happened in an NHL game since team shots in a period were kept in the stats in 1965-66. Detroit in 1986 and Montreal in 2016 against the… pic.twitter.com/eTJU8sGIGX
— Martin Biron (@martybiron43) January 16, 2025
You’re reading that correctly. The Sabres scored a goal in a full period in which they had zero shots. While that doesn’t seem like it should be possible, it can happen thanks to the automatic goal awarded for certain fouls with the net empty. That’s what happened to Ryan McLeod, who gets credit for scoring here even though the puck didn’t go near the net.
The 2024-25 Sabres: finding new ways to amuse and entertain the rest of us.
3. Nashville Predators (16-22-7, -25) — Things you don’t want to see written about your team at the halfway mark: “Could the Predators be the worst team in the NHL?” Even worse, the answer basically boils down to no, they’re not, and that’s just going to screw up their draft position.
2. San Jose Sharks (14-28-6, -43) — I can’t believe Scott and Harman let this end in a tie instead of settling it in a shootout.
1. Chicago Blackhawks (15-28-3, -38) — We are now into Day 6 of our ongoing international crisis over one person having an opinion about Lane Hutson. A reminder, if you encounter any Montreal Canadiens fans this week, do not attempt to engage or even acknowledge them. Simply turn and run, as fast as you can, preferably knocking over small children and the elderly as you go. It’s your only hope.
But I actually thought the bigger news out of Corey’s midseason ranking of the league’s under-23 players was Connor Bedard in third spot, behind Macklin Celebrini and Tim Stützle. Remember, the rankings are based on expectations for the players’ NHL careers. Have we really gone from Bedard being the next Crosby or McDavid-level generational player to only having the third-best long-term outlook among his own contemporaries? That seems harsh, but Corey knows his stuff, and I didn’t see a whole ton of Hawks fans looking to push back. Where are we at with Bedard, Chicago — still the franchise savior, or at risk of being merely great instead of transformative?
Not ranked: Pittsburgh Penguins — So how about those Penguins goalies, am I right?
In what could fairly be described as an up-and-down season in Pittsburgh, the week saw a pair of goalies demonstrating either end of the spectrum. Let’s start with the fun one. Alex Nedeljkovic, come on down …
Goalie goals are the best. This one deserves that bonus five that I promised you up above…
Bonus five: Cool things about the Nedeljkovic goalie goal
5. The crowd — The game was in Buffalo, but there were plenty of Penguins fans in the building. That produced a great combo; those road team interlopers mingled with bitter home fans in just the right ratio to get a fantastic crowd reaction. Is that the loudest that building has been all year? It might be.
4. The bump — Dude took a hit to get the shot off, with former Penguin Sam Lafferty dropping a shoulder into him. Sorry, Sam, you’ve got to be a little quicker to contact if you want to neutralize a true scoring threat.
3. The captain — If you haven’t seen the shot of a delighted Sidney Crosby realizing the puck is going in, click here immediately. Find somebody who looks at you, etc.
2. The celebration — Absolute A+ here. In fact, it’s quite possibly the best goalie goal celebration ever, although I might need more time to come to a final determination there. Nedeljkovic goes full Lambeau Leap into the Penguins’ bench, getting completely swallowed up by overjoyed teammates in an image so perfect it needs the Art But Make it Sports treatment. It hasn’t been a great year for this team, so it’s genuinely cool to see them get to really enjoy a moment.
1. The history — Every goalie goal makes its own kind of history, but those of us who are nerds about this sort of thing know that nobody had ever scored one in a game in which they also had an assist. Until now, as Nedeljkovic had already banked a second-period assist. His two points by a goalie in the same game isn’t the record — Jeff Reese still holds that with three — but Nedeljkovic becomes the first player in the history of the position to put a “1” in both scoring columns.
Tragically, he didn’t manage to find a sparring partner in the final three minutes to round out the first-ever goalie Gordie Howe hat trick, presumably because he’s saving something for the encore.
In conclusion: Goalie goals are the best, this was one of the better ones we’ve ever seen, it was one of the best moments of the season so far, and we are all better people for having witnessed it.
Penguins fans can feel free to stop reading now.
Yeah, we have to get to the other piece of goalie news from the week: The stunning decision to waive and demote Tristan Jarry, which would certainly seem to spell the end of the two-time All-Star in Pittsburgh. That would be stunning as in “I can’t believe they really did it,” rather than “this doesn’t make any sense,” but that’s the point — teams don’t like to admit their mistakes, especially this quickly. But the 2023 extension that marked one of the first major bits of business from incoming GM Kyle Dubas has aged poorly, to put it mildly.
It was supposed to be a stabilizing move but backfired in ways that weren’t hard to see coming. (Here’s Laz dropping a “D” grade on the move hours after it was announced, in case you think the criticism is only coming in hindsight.) Now the Penguins are stuck with a $5.3 million minor league goalie who was given a chance to prove he belongs and couldn’t live up to his deal.
OK, so now what? The Penguins continue to be an impossible team to nail down, since every time you’re ready to bury them they run off three wins in a row and you remember they have one of the greatest players of all time dragging them toward one last playoff run, but then they get close to a spot and immediately collapse. After Saturday’s loss to the Caps, they’re five points out of a wild card, but with six teams to pass who all have games in hand. They’re still right in the Eastern mix because everyone apart from Buffalo is, but is this really the team you think is going to get red-hot in the second half to pull away?
They could be. Given my near-total lack of success in predicting this team for the last few years, I’m staying far away from any flag-planting pronouncements here. I still think they could finish closer to dead last than the postseason. But if you told me they go full 1992-93 Penguins on us down the stretch, probably with Jarry leading the way, I’m not sure I’d argue.
All I know is Joel Blomqvist is going to do something cool soon, because whoever’s scripting this mess of a season has apparently decided to make the goalies the stars.
(Photo of the Penguins congratulating Alex Nedeljkovic on scoring an empty net goal against the Sabres: Bill Wippert / NHLI via Getty Images)
