On Sportsnet’s Hockey Central we do panel predictions each Friday for the Saturday night games that involve Canadian teams. Heading into last season I did not particularly believe in our beloved Canadian squads, and it buried me. Five Canadian teams finished with at least 96 points, five made the playoffs, two won their regular season division titles and the Jets earned the Presidents’ Trophy.
The country was happy, but at least in the panel standings, I got killed.
Heading into this season I expected some correction to all that Canadian success – surely they weren’t all that good – but I had tweaked my expectations. The Oilers had established themselves as being among the league’s elite, the Leafs lost Mitch Marner but added depth, and it seemed Montreal and Ottawa had arrived post-rebuild. I couldn’t see much reason for the Jets to take some huge step back, and so yeah, one would think these teams would mostly be pretty good again.
But again, one thought wrong.
Don’t look now Canada, but it’s ugly out there. League-wide, we currently have one team inside the playoff cut line – the Ottawa Senators – and even they’re not all that secure in a bizarrely tight Atlantic Division.
So let’s assess the situation and talk about what’s to come.
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Nick Kypreos and Justin Bourne talk all things hockey with some of the biggest names in the game. Watch live every weekday on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+ — or listen live on Sportsnet 590 The FAN — from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. ET.
Goal differential
When the NHL schedule comes to a close each year and you sort the standings by goal differential, you’ll notice a remarkably basic thing: Teams that are in the black — as in they have a positive goal differential — tend to make the playoffs, while the opposite is also true (with the odd exception). Seven playoff teams in each conference had positive goal differentials last season, and only two teams in the league that finished with a positive goal differential missed the post-season.
So, here are what the goal differentials are for the Canadian teams as of Dec. 3:
Winnipeg: +2
Toronto: -1
Ottawa: -2
Montreal: -8
Edmonton: -15
Vancouver: -18
Calgary: -21
These tend to be decent indicators of what teams really are, and more than a quarter of the way into the season, it ain’t pretty.
Now, there are plenty of excuses, and a few that are legit.
The Justifiable Excuses
The Oilers are off back-to-back Cup Final runs, and they’ve been badly hurt by injuries to key forwards (they also have the league’s worst team save percentage, though that’s not a justifiable excuse, as those goalies happen to play for your team and aren’t separate from it). But still, their underlying numbers haven’t been good for long stretches of play, so it’s not just been goaltending. Fully healthy now, everyone looks to be slotted in their right spot and so you’d expect the Oilers to take a series of steps from “openly bad” to “outright good.” We know that group can do it.
Edmonton has to be the favourite of all the Canadian teams that are outside the playoffs looking in to get things sorted out. A heavy road schedule to start the season wouldn’t have helped either, so again, things should improve here. They’ll need some saves for that to happen (little help here, Mr. Bowman?), but anything better than “dead last” in save percentage would be a step up at this point.
Injuries have hurt the Leafs for long stretches of action, the Canucks too, and Connor Hellebuyck being out isn’t going great for the Jets.
I don’t like watching people hand-wave away reasonable excuses like injuries, particularly when the Leafs were without Auston Matthews, Matthew Knies, Chris Tanev, Brandon Carlo, Anthony Stolarz, Scott Laughton, and more. You’d hear people say “Well other teams have injuries too.” Sure, but who your injured players are matters, and the Leafs went from a janky start with four new forwards right into the emergency room. Healthier now (but still without their top two right-handed defencemen), the time for those excuses are done.
The Canucks were the league’s number one “If they stay healthy, they could be a playoff team” team, as in, they had talent but their margin for error was tracing-paper thin, and the injury bug just destroyed them down the middle right out of the gate.
Those Jets lost their two best defensive performers in Dylan Samberg and Adam Lowry early, and now sit without Hellebuyck.
So yes, teams get injured, but they are differently affected by those things.
Now, our other Canadian teams are not the same as the ones we’ve just discussed.
Fringe teams on the fringe
Last year Ottawa and Montreal finished in the East’s two wild card spots, which is to say, they were more fringe playoff teams than great ones. Now in fairness, Ottawa was just a point shy of Florida for third in the division, finishing with 97 points, six better than the Canadiens, who were two points better than Columbus.
You have to separate the two, as Ottawa was far more competitive, owning a plus-nine goal differential while the Habs were minus-20, which was the lowest goal differential to make the playoffs by a good distance.
Still, Montreal added legitimately good players this offseason in Noah Dobson and Zachary Bolduc, and expectations were higher. Combined with a great start, it looked like they were moving into the next tier of competitors, going from “playoff team” to “could win playoff rounds.”
But a run of brutal goaltending has been part of what’s got them right back to where they were last year, sniffing around a playoff spot (currently two points back), with a minus-eight goal differential. There’s talk of them adding a top-end centre, and that could legitimately make all the difference, allowing other good players to face softer competition. Sportlogiq’s expected goals data actually shows they defend just fine (the goalies need to be better), but they don’t produce enough going the other way.
As far as the Sens go, it doesn’t seem like a mistake that they’re the one Canadian team holding down a playoff spot (tied for second in the Atlantic Division at 30 points with Boston and Detroit, with Montreal one point behind). They started the season getting dicey goaltending, and hung on. They lost their captain Brady Tkachuk for a long stretch, and hung on. They endured a brutal road trip, and head back home as the only team in the Atlantic with more home games remaining than road games, all while having hung on.
Tkachuk is back, Linus Ullmark is playing well, and they seem like Canada’s most sure thing to be a playoff team. Their defence corps is a great mix of good skaters and good defenders. But I mentioned how tight the standings are around them, and again, the margins look thin.
Heck, the Leafs have been a complete trainwreck so far this season, and they’re just three points back of Ottawa. Anything can happen there.
And finally, the Flames.
Let it goo, let it gooooo
That 96-point season in 2024-25 was incredible. So much went right, they worked like dogs and grinded out every point. They’re doing it again now, having earned points in seven of their last 10 games, which has them up to … tied for 15th in the Western Conference.
It’s admirable, and they’re well-coached and proud and competitive. But the roster isn’t there, the next draft is strong, and I think even Flames fans would say they’d be very content preparing their team to be competitive when the new arena opens in 2027.
Trades are looming, and it’s just a matter of time.
Overall assessment
So, how many of these teams do we think will make playoffs?
The yes division:
Oilers: I’m sticking with yes. That roster is too good to be this bad.
Senators: Another yes. They’ve got good pieces at every position and they compete.
The maybe division:
Jets: I can’t believe they’re in here after they just won the Presidents’ Trophy, but a lot has gone wrong. There were the early injuries, but also Jonathan Toews hasn’t been quite who they’d hoped he’d be, and I’m sure he’d say the same about his own game. The pair of Luke Schenn and Logan Stanley has been truly awful for them, at least statistically. And they play in the Central, which is the Group of Death. They aren’t far out of it, but with Lowry and Samberg back they need to start playing better to buy time for Hellebuyck to return. I think they’ll get a wild card spot in the West.
Leafs: I hate myself for this, but I do think they’ll make it (barring another run of bad injury luck). There’s too much talent there to not finish with a point total in the 90s even if they don’t add anything, and I also think they’d rather add at the deadline than just sit quietly on their hands and finish with 90 points.
Canadiens: I think they’ll make it. That defence corps skates as well as any in the league, and their goaltending isn’t this bad. And if they add, as rumoured, they should get back into the mid-90s in points pretty easily. Their fans should aggressively be rooting against Boston and Detroit the rest of the way, to go with their usual Leafs hatred.
The nope division:
Canucks: They’ve got some talented players and can win any game they’re in. But when you need everything to go right, and things start this bad, they snowball in the wrong direction. The outbound trades said to be looming will be the nail in the coffin here.
Flames: Nope, nor should they want to make the playoffs.
In the end, I’ve put the same five Canadian teams from last season back into this season’s playoffs. It’s a bold stance, I know. But I can’t see any of them worth burying yet. Just given their potential, they should be able to make the climbs back up the standings.
Here’s to hoping, because the worst-case assessment of the above information could look awfully grim with a more pessimistic eye.
