A new year brings a new slate of storylines as the NHL ushers in 2024.
From individual feats to franchises taking aim at the Stanley Cup, here are 12 storylines that could help shape the year ahead in the NHL.
Golden Knights look ready to run it back
Seven years ago, the Pittsburgh Penguins successfully defended their championship title to become the first back-to-back Stanley Cup champs since the Detroit Red Wings of the late 1990s. Three years ago, it was the Tampa Bay Lightning who pulled off the feat in 2020 and 2021, and even got two wins away from a three-peat in 2022 if not for the Colorado Avalanche’s dominant effort.
Now, it’s the Vegas Golden Knights’ turn to defend their castle, and halfway through the season the odds are in their favour. After several summers of sweeping changes, the roster didn’t undergo many renovations last off-season and that chemistry is clear. Vegas sits atop the Western Conference alongside the Vancouver Canucks and don’t seem to be slowing down.
There’s a twist this year, though: The Golden Knights are staring down what will be a particularly intriguing summer as a handful of core players are due new deals — a list headlined by original misfit and reigning Conn Smythe winner Jonathan Marchessault and the always-clutch Chandler Stephenson. Vegas has never shied away from bold market moves, making this always-intriguing team that much more fascinating in 2024.
How far can Canucks go?
Let’s talk about the other team dominating the West. The 22-9-4 Winnipeg Jets would surely like a word, but as we usher in 2024 there’s a clear favourite for the title of Canada’s best team: the Vancouver Canucks.
Sitting atop in the Western Conference, the Canucks are ranked first in goals and third in goals against per game. Three of the NHL’s top point-getters are Canucks (J.T. Miller, Quinn Hughes, Elias Pettersson), Brock Boesser is third in goals league-wide (24), and goalie Thatcher Demko is the NHL’s second winningest netminder through 25 starts (he’s lost only seven games).
They’re Canada’s best hope to bring the Stanley Cup back to Canada for the first time since the 1992-93 Montreal Canadiens, and if they keep up this pace, then maybe … just maybe. … We could be in for a Canucks-Rangers rematch 30 years in the making, considering both clubs are atop their respective conference standings as we enter 2024.
Canadian teams at crossroads
While the Jets and Canucks are cruising at a good clip, the rest of Canada’s clubs might need to find a different path forward.
Take the Edmonton Oilers, for starters, who enter the new year closer to being a lottery team than one in position for a post-season run. Whether or not their luck begins to change in 2024 depends largely on whether the club can get some support in net, yes, but what this really tees up is a remarkable effort from one Connor McDavid to drag his squad into the post-season himself and challenge for the Stanley Cup.
And then there’s the other Alberta team. Calgary Flames general manager Craig Conroy made it clear when he was promoted last spring he wouldn’t rush into any significant roster moves, particularly with regards to pending UFAs Elias Lindholm, Noah Hanifin and Chris Tanev — and he’s stayed true to his word. Should Conroy lean into a rebuild and start selling, trade season will likely begin when he says it does.
Head east to Ontario — yes, we’re skipping Winnipeg; they’re looking just fine, thank you very much — and you’ll find a Toronto Maple Leafs team battling its blue-paint problems, forced to waive the struggling Ilya Samsonov while Joseph Woll is sidelined. Meanwhile, it’s hard to pinpoint just one problem spot over in Ottawa — the team with what should’ve been a high ceiling but instead is still stuck in the basement. But a new management team appears to have a plan (and they appear not-at-all eager to tell anyone what it is). Even the Montreal Canadiens — a team still very much in the midst of its own rebuild — are ahead of the Senators in the standings. How these clubs welcome in 2024 could tell us a lot about their summer plans.
Willie stay or Willie go: Nylander watch heats up in Toronto
The current crisis in Toronto’s net is overshadowing the biggest story that will only get bigger as 2024 gets underway: The future of the league’s most unflappable star, William Nylander. The Swede has been one of the Maple Leafs’ most consistent goal-scorers over the past few seasons, and he’s coming off back-to-back career-high outputs and is on pace to do it again in his contract year. The 27-year-old pending UFA is the biggest name slated for free agency, but he’s made it clear he’s not looking to relocate. With Toronto’s other top-heavy contracts locked in, how will GM Brad Treliving navigate the road ahead? And how will his deal dictate this year’s free agent market?
Salary cap growth gives teams more room to play
The salary cap bump we’ve all been waiting for is due to arrive in 2024, finally bringing a little relief following a league-wide cap crunch that’s spanned nearly five years. The cap is expected to rise from 83.5 million in 2023-24 to $87.5 million on July 1, marking a 4.79 per cent jump — the largest year-over-year rise since the six per cent jump from 75 million to 79.5 between 2017-18 and 2018-19. Disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic saw the cap fall flat for three seasons followed by incremental increases of just $1 million in each of the past two off-seasons, making for a total increase of just $2 million since 2019.
With more than half the league capped out this season — per CapFriendly, seven clubs have $0 in projected cap space and 13 more have less than a million available — this relief couldn’t come at a better time.
Goalie carousel takes a big spin (at a cost)
For better or for worse, goaltending is always one of the biggest stories, no matter the year. But considering how many contenders are struggling to keep their creases clean at the mid-season mark, 2024 should bring a boom in goalie transactions. The only issue is, all this demand makes netminders all the pricier. Atop the list of Cup hopefuls looking for help in net are the Toronto Maple Leafs, Edmonton Oilers, New Jersey Devils and Carolina Hurricanes.
The Philadelphia Flyers are … a playoff team?
The Flyers were supposed to be a lottery team this year — head coach John Tortorella practically said as much when he penned a letter to Philly faithful last February in acknowledgement of team’s direction. And yet here they are, making rebuilds look easy. As the calendar turns to 2024, the Flyers sit third in the Metropolitan Division ahead of expected contenders like Carolina, New Jersey, and Pittsburgh while the teams we thought would be advancing out of rebuilds — Ottawa, Buffalo, Detroit — appear stuck at the bottom of the conference after taking a step back, not forward.
A lot can happen between now and the end of the regular season, of course, but Philadelphia’s presence in the playoff picture has the power to really shake things up — not to mention, have other franchises taking notes (or maybe even penning letters of their own?).
Connor Bedard, human highlight reel
Here’s another way to speed up your rebuild: Get yourself some uncanny lottery luck and pick up Connor Bedard first overall. The first-overall pick of 2023 is playing must-watch hockey every night. He’ll be bringing plenty of highlights into 2024, but might he also bring even more fortunes Chicago’s way? The Blackhawks currently look like they’ll be well-positioned in the lottery once again, and with more cap space than any other franchise might they make a big swing in free agency to land Bedard a veteran linemate?
Vegas draft could be first of its kind … and likely the last, too
The NHL draft is always a bit of a spectacle, the league’s biggest decision-makers all meeting and mingling and talking (and sometimes trading!) under one roof. This year promises to be more spectacular than most, though, as the event is set to take place at the Vegas Sphere — a globe-like arena built to bring an immersive experience through a wrap-around interior LED screen and similar technology wrapping the entire exterior, too.
The draft will make the NHL the first sports entity to hold an event at this unique, 18,600-seat venue, making this always-exciting event the first of its kind. It sounds like it’ll also be the last of its kind, too, however — the 2024 draft is likely to be the final year we’ll see all 32 teams gathered together for the major event. Beginning in 2025, the annual draft is reportedly taking on a decentralized format, with teams participating remotely from their own in-market facilities like we see in the NFL.
“I think it’ll be pretty dramatic,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in December of the Sphere-hosted event coming up on June 28-29.
Let’s hope so.
Let the Macklin Celebrini celebration begin
OK, so the hype around 2024’s prospective first overall pick, forward Macklin Celebrini, is already well underway — that’s bound to happen when you’ve got a Canadian kid with a killer nose for the net penned into that first-overall slot long before the puck drops on his draft year.
But it’s time to turn up the volume. The excitement around the Vancouver-born prospect has been getting louder since the 17-year-old hit the ice for Team Canada’s first game at the world junior championship in Sweden. It’s helped that he scored the eventual game-winner in the team’s first contest, tallied a team-leading five points in its second, and has four goals and eight points through four games so far. The Boston University freshman leads his college squad — the second-ranked program in the nation, behind Boston College — with 25 points in 15 games. Safe to say, the Terriers will have a lot more spectators down the stretch.
Arizona’s home arena situation could (finally) find a resolution
Yes, the Coyotes’ home-ice situation enters another year unresolved. But according to the latest reports, 2024 could finally be the year this long and arduous saga gets sorted out. As reported by Coyotes writer Craig Morgan in December, the franchise has selected a parcel of land for a new rink complex in northeast Phoenix.
Morgan also wrote that both the NHLPA and the league’s board of governors wants this arena issue resolved “by the end of the 2023-24 NHL season.”
After slow start to the season, can Ovechkin heat up and keep chasing history?
With just seven goals to his name through 34 games this season, Alex Ovechkin hasn’t looked like his usual self to open up 2023-24 — he even went 14 games without a single goal, a streak that he finally, mercifully, snapped against Columbus just before the holiday break. The runner-up on the NHL’s all-time goal-scoring list currently sits at 829 on his career — that’s 65 shy of the mark set by Wayne Gretzky. Ovechkin scored in his final game of 2023, and if the Capitals captain can open the new year on a hot streak, we could be preparing for history this time next year.
