The Biggest Story Lines of the Second Half of the NHL Season
We’re just past the halfway point of the 2024-25 NHL season, and while some things around the league feel like business as usual, others—like Alex Ovechkin’s record chase, the fight for supremacy in the West, and the Rangers’ downfall—are brand-new
We’re just past the halfway point of the 2024-25 NHL season, that bustling time of year when the trade rumors get toasty, the hot hands threaten to cool, and some overlooked teams find their footing. And while some things around the league feel like business as usual—Nathan MacKinnon, Leon Draisaitl, and Nikita Kucherov are atop the points leaderboard; Connor Hellebuyck is flummoxing Winnipeg’s opponents; and Leafs fans are fretting about statistical regression, Auston Matthews’s health, and Mitch Marner’s praise of his team’s effort in a loss—a number of other stories are shaping this particular season. So to help catch you up on the haps in the hockey world, here are some headlines, some open questions, and only a few rants about the New York Rangers, honest.
The Great 8’s Gretzky Chase Continues Apace
Ordinarily, some player notching an empty-net goal to seal a 4-1 win in early January would not constitute a noteworthy event. But this was no ordinary empty-net goal, because Alex Ovechkin is no ordinary player. With 873 career goals to his name, the 39-year-old fountain-swimming, gap-toothed-grinning, Putin-simping Capitals captain has a genuine shot at making NHL history: He’s on track to eclipse Wayne Gretzky’s all-time regular-season goal-scoring record of 894, maybe even as soon as this season. That’s why these days, every lamp Ovechkin lights is a headline event all its own.
At the start of October, Ovechkin needed 42 more goals to leapfrog Gretzky. And as of this week, with 38 games left to play, the mighty righty has lopped that magic number nearly in half. He’s now 21 goals away from tying the record and 22 from owning a new one outright. “Russian machine never breaks,” goes the famous Ovechkin bon mot, but at this point I’m starting to wonder whether what he was saying all along was never brakes. Either way, he’s yet to be stopped.
Ovechkin’s production over the course of his career has been so steady that he has already surpassed Gretzky’s best efforts by at least one measure. Even though he missed a stretch of 16 games this November and December with a fractured fibula, Ovechkin still managed to reach the 20-goal mark for a 20th consecutive season this past weekend, something even the Great One never did. (The only other NHLer to have achieved this is the late, great Gordie Howe.) Ovechkin’s feat is one of longevity, to be sure, but his production has also been remarkably swift over the course of his career. While unlikely, it remains within the realm of possibility that Ovechkin might not only reach Gretzky’s record but also do so faster than his predecessor. “The fact that Ovi is nipping at Gretzky’s heels is just crazy,” marveled retired NHLer Mike Knuble—the only player to have been teammates with both Gretzky and Ovechkin—to ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski in this wonderful feature.
The most surprising aspect of how the Great Chase has unfolded this year, though, isn’t Ovechkin’s consistency or even his speed. It’s his team. The Washington Capitals are 29-10-5, good for first place in the Metropolitan Division. Head coach Spencer Carbery is a leading candidate for the Jack Adams coach of the year award. (Though if I were him, I’m not sure whether I’d want it; that thing can be a worse curse than an EA Sports cover.) Dylan Strome has turned in some of the best play of his career. Offseason acquisition Jakob Chychrun has blue line savvy and one hell of a wrister. And the goaltending tandem of Logan Thompson and Charlie Lindgren has been good enough to cause headaches—for opponents and the Caps front office alike.
But while this unexpectedly good season in Washington enriches and brings even more meaning to Ovechkin’s chase, it also complicates things. As Sean McIndoe pointed out in his ranking of the best and worst backdrops for a record-setting game, there’s a delicate balance between the thrill of Ovi’s chase and the prioritization of an NHL playoffs race. Should Ovi pull to within four or five goals of Gretzky’s mark at some point, both the Great One himself and Gary Bettman will start attending all of his games, just in case. To me, this sounds heavenly! (Please let there be a record-setting stroke trick with playoff implications in Pittsburgh’s building as the commish looks on, please.) But I bet Carbery wouldn’t be too thrilled by the extra layer of distraction.
Or, on another extreme, let’s say that some combination of middle-aged slowdown and strategic load management sets Ovechkin on a pace that pushes the pursuit into next season. (To me, this is probably the most likely outcome.) In that case, imagine how downright decadent it will feel if he scores playoff goals—vital, wasteful playoff goals—in the interim, fiddling around like some kid again as the hockey world waits.
In related news: Whither Sid the Kid?
Ovechkin’s chase reminds me a little bit of another time I eagerly tuned in night after night to see whether a star NHL player might break an extreme Gretzky record. Back in 2010, Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby went 25 straight games with a point to his name—a glorious streak that didn’t wind up making it even halfway to the Great One’s record of 51 games in a row.
I bring this up not to compare Ovechkin and Crosby (who is on track to pass Gretzky on a different all-time leaderboard and who has won three Stanley Cups, thankyouverymuch) but because I’m incapable of untangling the two of them. There’s just no Great 8 in my mind without no. 87, no flashes of Ovi all wound up for the one-timer without visions of Sid doubled over for a pivotal face-off. Lords of the dot, each in their own way. Fraternal twin princes of the NHL(’s marketing department) since the mid-aughts. Rivals united in having lived up to impossible hype for the better part of two decades. Never change, I used to think, watching Ovi warm his hands and cool his jets, seeing Crosby tape up his stick and downplay, more than once, the jacked-up-ness of his jawline. And incredibly, they never really did change, did they?
Their personalities held true, as did their production (for the most part). They signed new deals with the same franchises that drafted them when they were 17 (Crosby) and 18 (Ovechkin), deals that will end as they’re pushing 40.
Unfortunately, though, Crosby’s season hasn’t been quite as charmed as Ovechkin’s. The Penguins have spent a lot of time flapping helplessly around the ice, allowing 36 more goals than they’ve scored. The Athletic’s Josh Yohe, who has covered Pittsburgh hockey for many years, described the locker room around Thanksgiving as “eerie and, frankly, depressing” and added that “Crosby looked as unhappy as I’ve ever seen him while standing with the puck that commemorated his 600th career NHL goal.” It’s hard to imagine Crosby changing things up at this juncture. But for once, I find myself wishing he would.
The 4 Nations Get(s) Into Formation
Hey, maybe some good old-fashioned Team Canada hockey will provide just the boost that Sid the Kid needs! Roughly one month from now, during the sports calendar lull between the Super Bowl and March Madness, the NHL will debut the 4 Nations Face-Off, a seven-game, four-team, two-city mini-tournament that will showcase some of the league’s top athletes over the span of about a week.
Canada, Finland, Sweden, and the U.S. are the titular 4 Nations that will be represented; other countries were excluded for reasons that range from “not enough NHL players to fill out a roster” (Slovakia, Germany, etc.) to “won’t stop antagonizing Ukraine” (Russia) to “mumblemumble, yeah, no, the logistics; so sorry!” (Czechia, which channeled that snub-ee energy all the way to a World Championship gold medal last summer.)
Hosted partly in Montreal and partly in Boston, the 4 Nations Face-Off will feature round-robin play before concluding with one championship game. There’s no semifinal round, which is also because of mumblemumble, yeah, no, the logistics, as I understand it. Bespoke format notwithstanding, the 4 Nations can hopefully be a nice tune-up for the 2026 Olympics. And in the short term, perhaps the temporary change of scenery, line mates, and coaches’ voices the tourney provides will be a welcome shake-up for any players who just wanna get away for a minute. I’m looking at you, Mika Zibanejad, but I digress …
The fine experts at NHL.com put together a lively and comprehensive collection of all the things they’re looking forward to seeing during the event, like Team USA’s double band of brothers (Jack and Quinn Hughes—sorry, Luke—and Brady and Matthew Tkachuk) and Team Sweden’s trio of suave elders on the blue line. They shout out the “Nova Scotia Mafia” (a collective consisting of Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon, and Brad Marchand, repping their native far-eastern lands for Team Canada) and gently remind readers NOT to sleep on Team Finland, which boasts Patrik Laine and Sebastian Aho and Aleksander Barkov, oh my!
As for my hopes and dreams, I’m building a shrine to goalie Connor Hellyebuck. I’m crossing my fingers that Team USA can siphon a little momentum from their 18-and-under countrymen who just won back-to-back World Juniors, most recently in overtime. (Honestly, these might be my all-time favorite jerseys?? How do we get these on our guys and gals in Milano Cortina 2026, Chipotle patches and all??) And I’m trusting that the Americans know to draw on their own powerful internal sources of energy—the chip on Jack Eichel’s shoulder, the shit-eating grin on Tkachuk (either one)’s mug, the pure white-hot desire within Auston Matthews to swirlie the hell out of Mitch Marner—so that they may rise up and conquer the objectively stacked Team Canada.
Speaking of which, my other desire for 4 Nations is that it brings forth the full spectrum of Canadian emotion about national hockey roster construction, coaching strategy, power-play composition, and other miscellaneous stressors. I don’t even really mind if Canada wins the whole thing, so long as there’s at least one game (or one incendiary morning skate interview) that makes the nation’s fans lash out at the players, Hockey Canada, Jon Cooper, or one another.
So far, I have a good feeling about this: The tournament is still a month away, and we already have PK Subban accosting American athletes with questions like: “Your mom, Chantal, she’s from Canada, right? She’s from Winnipeg? What’s going on here?”
In related news: Canada’s Cup quest continues, 32 years later.
Speaking recently about the Canadian national team and the constant microscope it’s under, Marchand said, “That’s what comes with playing for Canada. It’s the country that cares about hockey the most. It’s the most scrutinized. That’s part of being in the position we’re in. And we’ll take that any day.”
If that’s how Marchand feels from the safety of the Boston Bruins locker room, imagine how it must feel for a guy like Connor McDavid. McDavid is still smarting from last June, when he was just one little win away from finally bringing the Stanley Cup back to Canada for the first time since 1993. And the months ahead may well saddle him with new burdens and pressures, new calcifying layers of shoulda and coulda.
But consider the opportunity that exists out there in the ether, too: Seventeen-ish months from now, McDavid could be a curse-breaking two-time Stanley Cup champ with an Olympic gold medal, living an entirely different reality. Every journey of a thousand miles starts with a single 4 Nations Face-Off. That’s how the saying goes, right?
The New York Rangers Are in Great Danger
It all happened so fast! It was only a couple of months ago, near the start of November, that the Rangers seemed ready to switch on the cruise control. The team was 8-2-1, following a nice 5-2 thwacking of the Islanders. A week or two earlier, one of the season’s big looming question marks had been neatly resolved when the Blueshirts inked Alexis Lafreniere to a sensible seven-year deal. Another win for Chris Drury! I thought at the time. I was young then, and hopeful.
Surely they’d soon lock in goalie Igor Shesterkin as well. And my biggest fear at the time was that their surefire success might become its own hazard—monotonous at best and oppressive at worst. Last year, after winning the Presidents’ Trophy, New York fizzled out before reaching the Cup Final, and I wondered: Would every victory this season be immediately undermined by the uneasy feeling that it’s not until May and June that the wins really count?
I needn’t have worried: The Rangers lost their next game 6-1 to the Buffalo freakin’ Sabres. In early December, New York dropped six out of seven games and traded away team captain Jacob Trouba (against the spirit, though not the letter, of his contract). By the middle of the month, they’d also traded the team’s precious young fawn Kaapo Kakko. By the New Year, they’d lost another nine out of 11 games. Things grew so dire that I actually consoled myself by thinking: At least I properly appreciated that Chris Kreider hat trick in the playoffs last season. You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want. At least I was right about Shesterkin.
Amazingly, despite all of this, the Eastern Conference is so jumbled up that the 20-20-3 Rangers still have ample time to turn things around and eke out a wild-card playoff spot. Regardless of whether they’ll do so, though, New York isn’t the only team to have had some real double-thumbs-down days of late. There’s the Boston Bruins, whose campaign has gone poorly enough that (a) the team fired its coach six weeks into the season and (b) the other day Marchand and David Pastrnak had to publicly shoot down rumors that a feud between them was destroying the franchise. (Does anybody remember laughter?!)
And then there are the Islanders, who have been both unlucky and mediocre, a dreadful combination. Hey, how about Brock Nelson to Boston, then? Who says no? Well, apparently Lou Lamoriello. And I hesitate to even get into the plight of Steven Stamkos and his new team, the Nashville Predators, whose whole season has been the hockey embodiment of Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes. All you can do is shudder.
In related news: The Vancouver Canucks are on the phone.
After falling to the Oilers in seven games in the second round last season, the Canucks entered this year with high hopes for what they could accomplish. But 10 overtime losses—six of them on home ice—are no way to build morale or direction. If the playoffs started today, Vancouver would be on the outside looking in. Earlier this month, the Canucks made it known that they’d entertain trade proposals, even from other Western Conference teams, for forwards Elias Pettersson—whom they just signed to an eight-year, $92.8 million extension last March—and J.T. Miller. Maybe Pettersson will eventually land in Columbus, where the Blue Jackets have outperformed expectations and might be looking to make a splash. Maybe he’ll wind up going to the desperate Bruins. Or perhaps he’d be a good fit in Chicago, where another young star sure could use a new friend.
Some Young Guns Have All the Fun!
Just as they were at the end of last season, the San Jose Sharks and the Chicago Blackhawks are once again the NHL’s two biggest losers. Since this fall, both teams have been beaten more than twice as many times as they’ve won, and their combined goal differentials sum to a horrifying minus-80. San Jose has lost games by ignominious scores like 8-3 and 8-1, while the Blackhawks hosted the Winter Classic at Wrigley Field and were embarrassed, 6-2, in what turned out to be some unfriendly confines. The Sharks fired their old head coach at the end of last season; the Blackhawks canned theirs just this past December.
Such similar futility—yet you wouldn’t know it if you were to sit and watch the teams play. The auras that surround the Sharks and the Hawks are wildly distinct, even if the teams’ records are close to the same. To put it in Chicago terms, one team has the vibe of a Ferris Bueller (plays hooky, joins random parades, chicks dig him)—and the other is, I’m sorry to say, increasingly Principal Rooney–esque (grim faced, tightly wound, represents a draconian institution).
In San Jose, 2024 first overall draft pick Macklin Celebrini and his broseph Will Smith are two of nine rookies who have infused the Sharks franchise with all the energy of a box of puppies—and the rapid, chaotic growth and development, too. For his part, Celebrini scores OT winners, wins puck battles in the corners, busts out the rainbow stick tape on Pride Night, lives with Joe Thornton, and lip-synchs to LeBron James on TikTok. The party can’t last like this forever, but for now it is, to put it in South Bay terms, hella fun.
In Chicago, however, the excitement from Connor Bedard’s 2023-24 rookie season has worn off, and things just seem bad. “We got dog-walked,” Bedard fumed after the Winter Classic. On Saturday night, he smashed his stick on the ground while coming off the ice. And on Monday night, after he scored his 100th career NHL point in just 112 games, he had no interest in celebrating. “Couldn’t care less,” Bedard said.
Bedard won the Calder Trophy last season as the league’s top rookie; this year, Celebrini is a front-runner, though he’s far from the only potential winner. The Flyers’ Matvei Michkov made an immediate impact—though his early production has tapered off slightly. Montreal Canadiens defenseman Lane Hutson has some of the best numbers for a rookie Habs defenseman since Chris Chelios. And Calgary Flames goalie Dustin Wolf’s 5x5 save percentage of .944 has helped the Flames rise into playoff contention.
In related news: How will the West be won?
As of Tuesday night, six of the NHL’s top seven teams (as sorted by point percentage) all hail from the Western Conference. Leading their divisions are the Jets—whose Kyle Connor recorded a hat trick Tuesday night over Vancouver in the span of six and a half minutes—and the Golden Knights, just doing that thing they do.
The L.A. Kings, led by 20 goals from Adrian Kempe and 40 points from longtime captain Anze Kopitar, are quietly hanging right with Vegas and Edmonton in the Pacific. In the Central, the Minnesota Wild have been elevated by the play of Kirill Kaprizov—a Hart Trophy candidate who was on more than a point-per-game pace until being sidelined by injury in late December—as well as by Marc-Andre Fleury, the 40-year-old ageless wonder who is playing his final season in net. In his past couple of games, Fleury shut down those rowdy Sharks (and their fans) and got emotional over a farewell tribute from his former team in Vegas. The rookies are cool and all, but that old guy? He’s still got it.
Can Rod Brind’Amour Win a Little Bit More?
On December 28, in his 488th game behind the bench, Carolina Hurricanes head coach Rod “the Bod” Brind’Amour recorded his 300th victory, making him the fastest NHL coach to achieve that milestone. It was a well-earned achievement for Brind’Amour, the former Crazy Eight, Cup-winning Hurricanes captain who got the job in 2018.
In the six and a half years since the Rodfather took over, Carolina has become known and respected for Brind’Amour’s system, one that emphasizes eager-beaver forechecking, opportunistic defense, and a platooning next-man-up mindset. And the Hurricanes have become a perennial postseason presence, making it to the playoffs for the past six years in a row. Of course, there’s still work to be done: Twice during that stretch, Carolina has advanced to the Eastern Conference final—and both times, the Canes have been swept.
This summer, the roster went through a partial reset. The team parted ways with a handful of key players, including forwards Jake Guentzel and Teuvo Teravainen and second defensive pairing Brady Skjei and Brett Pesce. But Brind’Amour’s ability to adapt his strategies to serve the evolving dynamics of his roster will go a long way in determining whether the Hurricanes can finally break through their conference final ceiling—or if they’ll wind up right back where they always are: near the top of the standings, just so long as it’s still the regular season.
In related news: There can be only one. What becomes of the rest?
Sixteen teams make it into the NHL playoffs each spring, the culmination of six months’ worth of scrapping and dangling and shuffling line combinations. But from there, it takes only about a week for the culling to begin. One by one, 15 of those teams will fall frustrated by the wayside, their promising seasons ending in bitter defeat.
I know, I know: This is a clichéd postseason insight, right up there with “A series doesn’t start until a team loses at home.” Of course there can be only one champion; that’s the whole point! Still, looking ahead to April through June and thinking about which team might wind up winning it all, I can’t help but wonder about which 15 won’t. Take the Dallas Stars, for instance, who have been knocking on the door for some time now—still with no answer. Since 2020, the Stars have reached the Cup Final once and the Western Conference final in back-to-back years, losing all three series in six games. That’s a lot of sore knuckles.
At some point, the chill of patience gives way to the agony of complacence. Teams that thought they were moving toward their future look back and see that they were mostly just running in place. A few months from now, the Stars or the Canes or the Leafs or the Caps or any of the other hopefuls will face a stark reality: There may technically be three Stanley Cups out there in the world, but winning the Stanley Cup? That’s just one of one. It’s cruel math, but it’s the arithmetic of ambition in the NHL. And when everything finally adds up just right, nothing can ever be subtracted.
