The 2024 portion of the NHL season is over. The 2025 segment begins Wednesday when the New Jersey Devils visit the Los Angeles Kings in the only game on New Year’s Day.
There are already a dozen or so teams that can begin making their Stanley Cup Playoff plans for late April – and about the same number that can begin planning their summer vacations. Barring injuries, there figure to be at least a half-dozen 100-point scorers and a 50-goal scorer or two.
Teams like the Washington Capitals and Winnipeg Jets will try to continue the success that has led to them being the biggest surprises of the season. The New York Rangers and Nashville Predators, two teams from whom big things were expected, will try to regroup and deliver before they fall too far behind in the playoff race.
The race for the Stanley Cup could also be impacted by an NHL in-season tournament. The regular season will come to a halt for 12 days after games of Feb. 9 for the first 4 Nations Face-off, featuring teams from the United States, Canada, Sweden and Finland. Games will be played in Montreal and Boston from Feb. 12-20; NHL coaches and general managers will hope that none of their players taking part in the tournament get hurt.
5 NHL storylines to follow in 2025
Here are five things to watch for in league play as the NHL enters the 2025 portion of its season.
1. The Gr8 chase
Alex Ovechkin’s quest to overtake Wayne Gretzky as the NHL all-time leading goal scorer hit a 16-game pothole when he broke his left fibula against the Utah Hockey Club on Nov. 18 – after he had scored his 14th and 15th goals in his 18th game of the season. He finally returned Saturday and scored in each of his next two games, giving him 17 goals in 21 games this season and 870 for his career. He needs 25 to pass Gretzky, who broke Gordie Howe’s career goal-scoring record by scoring No. 802 on March 23, 1994, and retired with 894 in 1999.
Ovechkin has 45 games to break the mark this season – difficult, but not impossible. He’s scored at a pace better than that in 14 of his first 19 NHL seasons, and was off to the best goal-scoring start of his career before the injury.
Gretzky agreed to join NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman to be there in person if and when Ovechkin gets within hailing distance of the record. His teammates will be doing everything they can to help him break the record this season.
“We’re excited,” longtime teammate Tom Wilson said. “When he’s walking up to the ice, people are climbing on top of each other to get videos of him and he’s taking the hockey world on a crazy ride right now. It’s rock star stuff. He’s the man.”
2. Can Rangers rebound without Igor Shesterkin?
The New York Rangers, the defending Presidents’ Trophy winners, were 12-4-1 in their first 17 games after a 4-3 road win against the Vancouver Canucks on Nov. 19 – not surprising for a team that was expected to contend for the Stanley Cup this season. What’s happened to them since defies belief.
New York enters the new year on a slide that has seen them lose 15 of their past 19 games. That includes four straight losses, each by at least two goals. They’ve lost when they’ve played well, as they did Monday in a 5-3 road loss to the Florida Panthers which saw them dominate play for most of the game – and they’ve had games like a 5-0 loss at New Jersey on Dec. 23 when they mailed it in.
At 16-19-1, they are last in the Metropolitan Division and 15th in the Eastern Conference. Even worse, their best player, goalie Igor Shesterkin, was placed on injured reserve Tuesday with an upper-body issue – one that may stem from having Florida forward Sam Bennett knocked into him by defenseman Ryan Lindgren in the third period on Monday . Shesterkin has lost three straight and five of his past six starts, but he’s still one of the best goalies in the sport, ranking third in the NHL with 14.11 goals saved above expected, according to Clear Sight Analytics, so losing him for any more than the required three games would be an enormous blow to a team that’s already reeling.
That’s especially so since the Rangers begin a stretch of five games in 10 days when the Boston Bruins come to Madison Square Garden on Thursday. They are scheduled to play 14 games in the month of January. Helping the Rangers avoid falling out of the playoff race would be asking a lot of backup Jonathan Quick and veteran recall Louis Domingue.
3. More coaching changes?
The fourth NHL coaching change of the season took place Saturday when the Detroit Red Wings fired Derek Lalonde and hired Todd McLellan. The Red Wings joined the Boston Bruins (fired Jim Montgomery, hired Joe Sacco), St. Louis Blues (fired Drew Bannister, hired Montgomery) and Chicago Blackhawks (fired Luke Richardson, hired Anders Sorensen) in making a change behind the bench.
Only the Bruins have shown any significant improvement; they’ve worked their way into third place in the Atlantic Division.
But Lalonde might not be the last coach to walk the plank this season.
Peter Laviolette, who led the Rangers to the Presidents’ Trophy in the 2023-24 regular season and within two wins of the Stanley Cup Final, could be the next to go. The Rangers have plummeted like a rock since mid-November and often played like they didn’t care; Laviolette could pay the price if his team doesn’t snap out of it.
The Nashville Predators, one of the League’s big disappointments after opening the vault for big-ticket free-agent forwards Steven Stamkos and Jonathan Marchessault, might opt to ditch Andrew Brunette. Their playoff hopes are all but gone, and someone must take the blame.
Greg Cronin could be on thin ice in Anaheim, where the Ducks have made little progress in his 1 1/2 seasons behind the bench. Anaheim hasn’t made the playoffs since 2017-18 and is on track to finish seventh or eighth in the Pacific Division for the fifth straight season.
4. A scoring title (at last) for Nathan MacKinnon?
Nathan MacKinnon won the Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche in 2022, the Hart Trophy and Ted Lindsay Award in 2023-24, the Lady Byng Trophy for skillful and gentlemanly play in 2019-20 and the Calder Trophy as the NH rookie of the year in 2013-14.
The most prominent piece of hardware he hasn’t won is the Art Ross Trophy as the League’s leading scorer. That could change this season.
MacKinnon, who finished second to Nikita Kucherov of the Tampa Bay Lightning last season with 140 points, begins 2025 with a league-leading 61 points in 38 games, five more than runner-up Leon Draisaitl. That’s a 131-point pace over a full season.
But MacKinnon will have a host of challengers in addition to Draisaitl. The most notable ones are Kucherov, who’s on pace for 135 points and whose team has played four fewer games than Colorado – and five-time Art Ross winner Connor McDavid of the Oilers, who closed 2024 with two assists in a 3-1 win over Utah and has 54 points in 34 games (he missed three with injuries).
5. Hellebuyck goes for Vezina Trophy repeat
Connor Hellebuyck of the Winnipeg Jets has won the Vezina Trophy as the top NHL goalie twice, including last season. He’s making a case for a repeat this season – and staking his claim to being the best goalie of the 2020s.
Hellebuyck is the biggest reason the Jets are battling for the Presidents’ Trophy. He enters the new year leading all goalies in the “Triple Crown” categories – wins (24; no one else has reached 20), goals-against average (2.00) and save percentage (.936) – and he’s also tops in shutouts with five.
His first win in 2025 will give Hellebuyck 300 in his NHL career, and he’s on track to threaten the NHL single-season record of 48 wins set by Martin Brodeur in 2006-07 and matched by Washington’s Braden Holtby in 2015-16. His career high is 44, set in 2017-18. He also figures to be the starter for the U.S. at the 4 Nations event.
Hellebuyck would be the first repeat winner since Brodeur in 2006-07 and 2007-08, and would join Dominik Hasek (six), Brodeur (four) and Patrick Roy (three) as the only goaltenders to win the Vezina more than twice since the current format came into use in 1981-82.