Who has the most to gain these NHL playoffs?

The Narrative wars will be won on social media, podcasts, radio and television

Art by Nick Zararis

In a world where the media gatekeepers of excellence deem failing to win a championship a failure of a season, the postseason is the most actionable path to changing the narrative. Whether it’s an individual player, coach or executive, there is no more straightforward path to a new way than a playoff run for the ages. Getting to a conference final, especially unexpected can buy someone a whole lot of leeway and time with the greater public.

The NHL’s COVID-19 era is littered with just a handful of teams dominating the conversation and success. In all likelihood, the Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers, Colorado Avalanche and Vegas Golden Knights will define this decade as teams that’ve managed to sustain long-term contenders for an extended periods of time and managed to continually reinvent themselves.

It’s a real conundrum that decision makers in the NHL face how to maintain the core of a contender while also leaving room to improve. In the case of all four teams, they’ve each made varying degrees of gutsy calls to stay relevant and continue pushing the envelope.

The Panthers swung the Matthew Tkachuk trade and went to two straight cup finals.

The Lightning won two straight cups, went to three, and made the tough call to let the franchise’s all time best player Steven Stamkos leave in free agency so the team could pursue Jake Guentzel who’s fit like a glove.

The Avalanche played the second most players of any team in the entire NHL during the course of the 2024-2025 season between a combination of injuries and trades. GM Chris McFarland looked at the state of the roster and a looming Cale Makar extension which prompted him to make the unheard of decision to preemptively trade top 20 player in the sport Mikko Rantanen rather than losing him for nothing this upcoming summer.

Oh and Vegas? That franchise that prognosticators like Elliote Friedman and Pierre LeBrun decried for giving away Marc-Andre Fleury? That no one could ever win anything in this league treating players as so interchangeable? They had the third best record in the NHL this season and have a 1-0 lead in the first round of their playoff series vs the Minnesota Wild.

The point being there is always opportunity to materially change your circumstances in the NHL if you hold the political capital and have a vision to execute. There is no greater forum for forging a new way than in the best postseason, in spite of commissioner Gary Bettman’s nonsensical division centric format, to prove your worth as a player, coach or executive.

These playoffs in particular present as wide open a field of contenders as any season in recent memory. These are the ten players, coaches and executives with the most to gain this playoffs.

10. Robert Thomas center, St Louis Blues

Since the return to play from the NHL’s four nations break the last week of February, no player has recorded more points than St. Louis Blues forward Robert Thomas. Recording 40 points in 26 games is Connor McDavid-esque levels of production from a 25-year-old that’s floated around the periphery of star conversations over the last few seasons.

While the Blues mid-season turnaround is largely attributed to the team’s reinvented defense first approach under in season coaching hire Jim Montgomery, to be a defense team, St.Louis does still need some offense to win. That’s the nature of being a structured, defensive oriented group, it puts all the more pressure on your team’s few high-end offensive players to pick up a larger share of the load.

While no one expects Thomas to helm the Blues to an upset over the Winnipeg Jets, he certainly has the capacity to make things interesting. The forward opened the scoring in game number one, recording a power play goal early on a special teams unit that’s middle of the pack.

The Blues hung around in game number one and Thomas has the capacity to assert he belongs in the conversation as one of the league’s best players. A strong first round against a superior opponent back stopped by Connor Hellebuyck would go a long way in proving those bonafides after being left of off Team Canada during the 4 nations face off.

9. Bill Zito General Manager, Florida Panthers

After directing a team to two straight Stanley Cup finals and shattering an organizational glass ceiling, it might seem a bit far fetched to think Bill Zito has much left to gain. Winning a franchise with a relative late coming expansion franchise in the Panthers is the type of accomplishment most GMs can only dream of.

Hell, Zito’s done such a great job as head honcho in sun rise, the prevailing wisdom across the NHL today is that a team stuck needs to execute their own version of the Matthew Tkachuk trade. Make no mistake about it, since assuming the job in Florida, Zito has elevated the organization into one of the league’s true titans.

Since Zito was hired on September 2nd 2020, the Panthers have a 236-119-29 record, good for a 652 points percentage, the fourth highest of any team in the NHL over that span. Now, envision a world where the Panthers get to a third straight Stanley Cup final and even win in it. That would put Zito’s architecture in rarified air not just for the contemporary NHL, but for the entire history of the game

With the Panthers path to the eastern conference final facing a Tampa Bay Lightning shaped road block in round 1, the journey won’t be easy, but it is within reason. That alone should make other team’s nervous, especially if Zito’s biggest coup as GM, Tkahuck is back in the fold and rested after not playing hockey for the previous two months.

8. Alex Ovechkin winger, Washington Capitals

Alex Ovechkin is already the greatest goal scorer in the history of the NHL. The forward’s won a Stanley Cup, three Harts, 9 Rocket Richards, 3 Ted Lindsays, an Art Ross, a Calder and a Conn Smythe Trophy. Yes, Ovechkin is good enough that his career accolades take up three lines of copy in a newsletter.

But now, after accomplishing what many deemed impossible in conquering Wayne Gretzkys’s goal scoring record, he has a golden opportunity to bolster the Washington Capital’s organizational reputation. While the Capitals have always been a strong regular season team, they’ve won the President’s Trophy three times with Ovechkin, their playoff track record is a bit spotty.

No one can ever take away the magic of Ovechkin and co finally getting over the hump against the Penguins in 2018, but this year, the path is pretty straightforward. Being that the Capitals have only made the conference final once with Ovechkin, defeating a heavily underdog Montreal Canadiens team and then either the New Jersey Devils or Carolina Hurricanes doesn’t seem like an unreasonable ask.

For Ovechkin, this is an opportunity to push himself further towards the inner ring of the Hockey Hall of Fame. He’s already certified as one of the game’s all time greats, but one more meaningful run, especially at age 39? That would be quite the story for a franchise that’s riding high as possible on a medley of vibes.

7. Jim Nill GM, Dallas Stars

Ask most serious hockey fans who’s done the best job navigating the perils of a roster aging out over the last decade and most would come back to you with Jim Nill of the Dallas Stars. The third longest tenured GM in the league, Nill navigated the dual declines of marquee free agent signings Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin while building a young core around the duo to take the reigns of the team.

After making the Stanley Cup final in the 2020 bubble playoffs, the Stars have failed to return to the final, largely bowing out to teams with superior high end talent. For all of the Stars depth and quality pieces, they’ve lacked a true game breaker at a position of consequence. While I personally am still a big proponent of Jason Robertson’s game, he probably isn’t the caliber of player I once thought he’d be.

So, in the interest of no longer getting sonned come playoff time, Nill went big game hunting and acquired two way darling Mikko Rantanen in a mid-season trade to put his group over the top. While the Stars boast one of the deepest forward groups in the entire league, their back end, especially the right side of Cody Ceci, Ilya Lybushkin and Alex Petrovic is bad enough to sink a team’s prospects.

While Miro Heiskanen’s return looms over the first round series vs the Colorado Avalanche like an Undertaker gong on an episode of Friday Night Smackdown, the Stars are already down 1-0 in the series and Robertson might be out for a while. If Nill’s vision for a Stanley Cup is going to come to fruition, his forward group needs to find a way to swing this series until Heiskanen can get back in the mix and bump one of the three right-handed defensemen from the lineup.

6. Brady Tkachuk winger, Ottawa Senators

While no one doubts the big game reputation of his older brother Matthew, Brady Tkachuk, by virtue of being an Ottawa Senator, hasn’t had much exposure under the brightest of lights. The former 4th overall pick got a taste of the environment during the 4 Nations Face Off back in February but that was a very condensed format and he was just one component on a super team.

Now, Tkachuk as captain of Senators faces the prospect of already trailing 1-0 in a series where his team was thoroughly outplayed and looked like a bunch of punks. Brady has a reputation as a fiery, lightning rod type leader that can pull his guys into the fight when the going gets tough. That said, the team does need to meet a certain baseline level of competence for those intangibles to come into play.

Tkachuk’s 55 points in 72 regular season games was his lowest statistical output since the truncated 56 game regular season of 2021 and there are organizational questions for the Senators to address going forward. While making the playoffs this year is commendable and definitely a step in the right direction for Ottawa, the challenge no becomes finding the right mix of core pieces to build around.

There’s occasionally been conjecture that Brady could follow his older brother in leveraging his way to a team in the US if the Senators continued to falter. At age 25, the younger Tkachuk brother is entering the prime of his career and a genuine star, this series against the Toronto Maple Leafs is a chance to put his own personal stamp on the Senators franchise and affirmatively show he’s the base of the team going forward.

5. Jack Eichel Center, Vegas Golden Knights

I make no bones about it, I have always been a Jack Eichel guy from the moment he was relegated to exile in Western New York. Upon securing his medical freedom and escaping to the Vegas Golden Knights, he’s catapulted into the most compelling players in the entire league and one of its best players.

Anecdotally, leaving the 4 Four Nations Faceoff, I came away feeling Eichel was the best player to suit up for the United States who’s other big fish like Auston Matthews and Jack Hughes really failed to make an offensive impact. This year in particular, Eichel has taken marginal steps to be more noticeable defensively even if the underlying metrics haven’t necessarily followed suit.

For Eichel, driving another deep playoff run as the best forward on a consistent contender will only bolster a burgeoning reputation. Eichel is two years away from NHL free agency and very well could be the league’s first $20 million per year player by then at age 30.

But for right now, were Eichel to drive Vegas to another Stanley Cup final and take home a second trophy, even if the counting stats aren’t there, his team success would be a validation of players everywhere betting on themselves in pursuit of greener pastures. The Eichel trade catapulted Vegas from nice story to serious contender, now it’s a matter of seeing if they can be the second team this decade to win multiple Stanley Cups and.

4. Rod Brind’Amour Head Coach, Carolina Hurricanes

Since Rod Brind’Amour was hired in May of 2018, only two franchises have better win loss records than the Carolina Hurricanes. Under Brind’Amour’s stewardship, the Hurricanes are a model of regular season success, hard working, tenaciously forechecking and outright miserable to play against.

However, for all of the regular season success, Brind’Amour’s Hurricanes have a reputation for wilting on the biggest of stages. While there’s no shame in losing to a more talented team, the Hurricanes’ style of focusing on quantity of scoring chances has failed them against strong goaltending in the postseason, most notably two separate times to Igor Shesterkin and the New York Rangers.

While no one is calling for Brind’Amour’s head, the eastern conference’s softness at the top presents an opportunity for the Hurricanes to change the narrative. Carolina came out flying and absolutely mowed down the Devils. The Hurricanes are expected to prevail in round one but they haven’t had issues doing that.

After so consistently taking care of business from October through early April, there’s a clamoring for more. It’s not unreasonable to expect the Hurricanes to raise their expectations as a franchise. The team is a far cry from the Jeff Skinner and Alex Semin years of being cannon fodder in the old south eastern conference. The Hurricanes are capable of making a run, it’s simply a matter of making things break their own way as opposed to falling prey to their own shooting luck.

3. Connor Hellebuyck goaltender, Winnipeg Jets

Connor Hellebuyck of the Winnipeg Jets is undoubtedly the most decorated regular season goalie of his era. The American will likely win his third Vezina trophy overall and second straight this June and he holds a career regular season stat line of 332-185-44, a .918 save percentage and 2.56 goals against average.

The Jets buy and large go as Hellebuyck goes and over the last two regular seasons, they’ve been amongst the NHL’s best. But unfortunately for the Jets and Hellebuyck, his postseason performances haven’t been requisite with success and Winnipeg’s formula for success has fallen apart.

Entering this year’s playoffs, Hellebuyck was 18-27, with a .910 save percentage, 2.85 goals against average and 2.25 goals saved above expected. While the save percentage isn’t awful, the volume of offense conceded is particularly concerning for a Jets team that’s oriented around its goaltender being its best player.

Luckily for Hellebuyck, the Jets team in front of him this year is the best version of the 2.0 iteration. It features a league best power play that scores 29.8 percent of the time and the best defensive unit since the team’s 2017-2018 Conference final appearance.

The Jets avoided the pitfall of a first round matchup against the Stars or Avalanche, now it’s incumbent upon them to carry their regular season success over into the Spring, take care of business against the Blues and get ready for a second round war. Teams that eventually win the Stanley Cup typically play between 21 and 23 playoff games, meaning it’s imperative to win series in 5 or 6 games and avoid additional wear and tear.

2. Nikita Kucherov Winger, Tampa Bay Lightning

At 31-years-old, Kucherov has four Art Rosses, two Stanley Cups, a Ted Lindsay and a Hart Trophy under his belt. The Russian winger has 167 points in 147 career playoff games including a whopping 66 points over the 51 games of the Tampa Bay Lightning’s back to back Stanley Cup wins.

For Kucherov, this is an opportunity to enter himself into a different tier of conversation. Never quite considered the same tier of player as Auston Matthews, Connor McDavid or Nathan MacKinnon, Kucherov has never quite reached that mainstream perception in spite of a sure fire Hall of Fame career.

If Kucherov were able to once again dial it all the way up and drive Tampa Bay to a fourth cup final appearance in conjunction with his accomplishments, there’s an argument to be made for him as the best European born forward in the history of the NHL. While Nick Lidstrom and his seven Norris Trophies likely will reign the mountain top as best European born player ever, up front, Kucherov is already in the conversation.

The battle of Florida gets under way tonight and I’m fascinated to see how a clash of era defining teams goes this time around. With a deeper lineup around Kucherov this season, the opportunity for another meaningful playoff run is directly in front of the Lightning. There’s a strong argument to be made the Lightning’s hardest playoff opponent in the Eastern Conference will be the Panthers in the very first round.

Get out of Bettman’s division laden trap, make another Stanley Cup final, win a third cup? That’s certainly enough for me to argue on Kucherov’s behalf.

1. Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner Center/Winger, Toronto Maple Leafs

It was obvious. Before you opened this E-Mail or clicked on the link, you knew the top spot would be a permutation of Toronto Maple Leafs stars. It’s pretty simple and straightforward to understand. Incredible regular season results, biblical levels of playoff futility.

The Maple Leafs have the easiest matchup of the Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner era in the Ottawa Senators. They’re up to a 1-0 series lead and won game number one in resounding fashion. Sure, a matchup against the winner of the battle of Florida lay on the horizon, but one thing at a time. Win the franchise’s second playoff series since 2004, then worry about the cloud on the horizon.

Marner and Matthews are two of the world’s best players since entering the league. Matthews has the second most goals (401) and Marner has the 10th most points since 2016. They’re both likely on Hall of Fame and jersey retirement trajectories if the back half of their 20s is nearly as good as the first.

But, without playoff accomplishments to bolster their collective resumes, the “how does this effect the Leafs?” discourse will reach biblical plague levels this summer. With Marner a pending unrestricted free agent and the opportunity to bail should the playoffs not go well, this is a last dance opportunity for the Maple Leafs.

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Winning has a funny way of curing all perceived shortcomings. Everyone isn’t a winner until they’ve won and the Maple Leafs have a long way to go in righting their narrative. Winning a provincial rivalry first round series would go a long way in setting the tone for the future direction of the team.

Let me know who you think has the most to gain these playoffs above