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With fewer than 10 games left in the regular season for most teams and the playoffs coming up in a couple weeks, it’s a good time to catch up on what’s happening in the NHL. Here are a few things to know as we enter the homestretch.
The Leafs got a jump on their housecleaning.
On its way to missing the playoffs for the first time in a decade, Toronto abruptly fired general manager Brad Treliving last night after less than three seasons in charge. The Leafs failed to get past the second round on Treliving’s watch, and it’s now been 22 years since the franchise’s last trip to the conference final.
Head coach Craig Berube kept his job, for now, though you have to figure he’ll be out too once ownership-group president Keith Pelley finds a replacement for Treliving. And, clearly, some changes are needed on the ice with the team ranking 27th in regulation wins following last summer’s departure of star forward Mitch Marner and the season-ending knee injury suffered by captain Auston Matthews earlier this month.
The Leafs were heavily criticized for not immediately retaliating against Anaheim’s Radko Gudas for his knee-on-knee hit on Matthews, which landed Gudas a five-game suspension from the league. They finally sought their pound of flesh last night as Max Domi fought Gudas off the opening faceoff of Toronto’s rematch against the Ducks. But it was too little, too late, and Gudas actually earned more respect by suiting up to face the music despite a lower-body injury that kept him out of Saturday’s key divisional matchup against Edmonton. Here’s more on the Leafs’ disastrous season.
Vegas rolled the dice on a new coach.
The struggling Golden Knights fired Bruce Cassidy on Sunday with only eight games left in the season and brought in fiery John Tortorella in hopes of sparking a turnaround. So far, so good, as Vegas beat league-worst Vancouver 4-2 last night to get within one point of idle Edmonton for second place in the soft Pacific Division.
Cassidy coached Vegas to a Stanley Cup championship in 2023, his first season with the club. But the Golden Knights are infamously unsentimental — they canned Gerard Gallant just two years after he took a first-year expansion team to the Stanley Cup final and won coach of the year — and the team had already lost a franchise-record 42 games this season under Cassidy.
One of the goals for Tortorella will be to get more out of Marner. He got an eight-year, $96-million US deal from Vegas after a 102-point year in Toronto but is on pace for less than 80 points.
It’s been a tough year for Canadian teams.
I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but it’s been a really long time since a Canadian-based team won the Stanley Cup. Thirty-three years, in fact. And there’s a good chance the drought continues because, if the playoffs started today, only two Canadian clubs would make it: the Montreal Canadiens and the Edmonton Oilers.
Montreal has done a great job of expanding on its surprising return to the playoffs last year, when the rebuilding Canadiens nabbed the final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference before losing in five games to the top-seeded Capitals. The Habs (42-21-10) currently have the sixth-best record in the league and have pretty much secured a playoff spot. Captain Nick Suzuki ranks eighth in the league with a career-high 91 points, Cole Caufield is second with 46 goals (also a career best) and Calder Trophy winner Lane Hutson is third among defencemen with 73 points in 73 games.
Edmonton ranks second in the Pacific Division — one spot higher than Montreal in the Atlantic — but the vibes around the Oilers (37-28-9) are much worse. For one thing, they’re on pace for just 92 points after four straight years with at least 101. And star forward Leon Draisaitl is out for the rest of the regular season due to a lower-body injury he suffered on March 15.
But the Oilers have a few things going for them. Despite sitting 17th in the overall standings, they’re only four points behind Anaheim for top spot in the cushy Pacific race, which Connor McDavid recently likened to a “pillow fight.” And, due to the NHL’s silly playoff format, they likely won’t have to face Central powers Colorado or Dallas (the top two teams overall) or even Minnesota until the Western Conference final.
A couple other Canadian teams remain in the hunt. Ottawa is one point out of a wild-card spot in the East, while reigning Presidents’ Trophy champion Winnipeg is three out in the West. Calgary and Toronto are all but mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, while Vancouver is officially done with a league-worst 21-44-8 record — a whopping 17 points behind 31st-place Chicago.
But maybe we can adopt Buffalo?
The Queen City sits right across the Peace Bridge from Fort Erie, Ont., and its hockey-loving residents have a semi-inexplicable fondness for Labatt beer that I don’t think is even matched here in Canada. Plus, the Sabres are actually fun again! After going an NHL-record 14 years without reaching the playoffs, Buffalo (45-21-8) is suddenly battling perennial power Tampa Bay for first place in the Atlantic and sports the fifth-best record in the entire league.
Led by 6-foot-6 sniper Tage Thompson (37 goals), defenceman Rasmus Dahlin (67 points) and 66-year-old coach Lindy Ruff (the front-runner for the Jack Adams Award) the Sabres have been the NHL’s hottest team since Dec. 9, when they beat the Oilers to begin a 10-game winning streak. From that date forward, their record is an incredible 34-7-4, and they’re now tied with Tampa for the second-most regulation wins in the league, trailing only Colorado.
If the playoffs started today, the Sabres would face Montreal in a juicy Atlantic Division matchup that would draw plenty of Hab fans from across the border to the games in Buffalo. Edmonton would meet Pacific rival Vegas in a rematch of last year’s second-round series, which the Oilers took in five.
The scoring race is coming down to the wire.
Three players are engaged in a tight battle for the Art Ross Trophy. McDavid leads with 124 points, followed by Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov (121) and Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon (120).
If McDavid holds on, this would be his sixth Art Ross, moving the 29-year-old into a tie for second all-time with Mario Lemieux and Gordie Howe. Wayne Gretzky tops the list with 10.
Kucherov, 32, is chasing his fourth Art Ross, which would put him past Bobby Hull and Guy Lafleur and into a tie with Stan Mikita for the seventh-most ever. MacKinnon, 30, has never captured the scoring title, despite winning the Hart Trophy for MVP in 2024, when Kucherov beat him by four points.
With Colorado on its way to winning the Presidents’ Trophy (the Avalanche lead Dallas by eight points atop the overall standings), MacKinnon is currently the slight favourite to nab his second Hart in three years. He’s also closing in on his first Rocket Richard Trophy with a league-high 49 goals, though Caufield (46) is giving him a run for his money and McDavid remains an outside threat with 42.
Montreal also has a rookie-of-the-year contender in forward Ivan Demidov (57 points), but the Calder Trophy will almost certainly go to 18-year-old defenceman Matthew Schaefer of the New York Islanders, who has 22 goals and 56 points and could finish as the rookie leader in both categories.
There’s no award for breakout player of the year, but it would surely go to Macklin Celebrini. After dazzling on Canada’s top line at the Winter Olympics in Italy, the 19-year-old San Jose Sharks centre reached the 100-point plateau last night, becoming just the sixth teenager in NHL history to do so. He joins Gretzky, Lemieux, Sidney Crosby, Jimmy Carson and Dale Hawerchuk.
Celebrini, who had 25 goals and 63 points as a rookie last year, is already up to 38 and 101 with 10 games still to go. With the Sharks just two points out of a playoff spot after finishing dead last overall the past two years, their young superstar could get some MVP votes if he leads the franchise to its first post-season berth in seven years.
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