One off-season question facing each of the NHL’s non-playoff teams

On Sunday night, the Washington Capitals became the first team eliminated from the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs, swept aside by the New York Rangers as Alex Ovechkin was held pointless in a series for the first time in his career.

That elimination means the next few days will be filled with exit meetings, press conferences and questions from the media to the players, coach and GM about what the takeaways are from this season, and what that could mean for summer plans.

Before long, seven other playoff teams will follow Washington out the door and face their own unique summer scenarios. The Winnipeg Jets, on the brink and with Connor Hellebuyck a mid-game pull, could be there before long. The Tampa Bay Lightning, down 3-1 to Florida, are facing the possibility of back-to-back first-round exits. And God only knows what’s in store for the Toronto Maple Leafs, who are also down 3-1 in their series to Boston, which is playing out identically to some of their other ugly eliminations.

So, later this week or early next, we could be exploring what’s next for the teams eliminated from the first round of the playoffs. But first, we’ll take one last look back at the regular season, and one question facing each of the 16 teams that didn’t make the playoff cut in 2024.

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St. Louis Blues: Who will be next year’s head coach?

After winning the Stanley Cup in 2019, the Blues weren’t able to keep the momentum of being a contender and had to dismiss Craig Berube, the head coach who led the championship season turnaround. And while Berube will be a coaching candidate in a few places this summer, the Blues themselves are seeking his replacement after missing the playoffs. Under interim Drew Bannister, the Blues went 30-19-5, giving them the league’s 12th-best points percentage from when he took over in mid-December. He’ll be a factor in this process.

“Told him he’s going to be a candidate for the head coaching job. I feel that for the process, it’s necessary to interview a few people. But what I told him was when we made the coaching change, I was creating a list, and it was deep and extensive,” GM Doug Armstrong said. “As I watched him perform and I watched our team perform, I started to cross names off that list and now Drew is one of a very small number of people I want to talk to moving forward. I thought he did a very good job. He was able to put a balance of pushing and prodding to get the best team on the ice every night, with also throwing a little hope out there and a blind eye to putting young players in situations they hadn’t been in, and living with the results. I think that’s how you grow.”

Detroit Red Wings: What is the balance GM Steve Yzerman will draw in an important off-season?

Missing the playoffs by a tie-breaker, just one more point would have got the Red Wings to the playoffs, ending GM Steve Yzerman’s most successful season in Detroit as a manager. But after overseeing five straight seasons of missing the playoffs, expectations are rising, and with that comes the pressure of dealing with a critical off-season. Six veterans are UFAs, some prospects will make a push for a roster spot in camp, and the Wings will need to strike a balance here. On one hand, they’ve been building up through the draft and opportunities to some of those players will come. On the other, they need to become a better defensive unit, find a goaltender and replace any outgoing scorers who don’t return, such as Patrick Kane.

“I don’t really foresee anything dramatic,” Yzerman said at his year-end press conference, on how he sees the summer playing out. Nonetheless, the Wings need to start thinking of pushing some chips in and will likely be a rumour-mill darling for big summer UFAs.

Pittsburgh Penguins: Where does Kyle Dubas go from here?

After missing the playoffs for a second year in a row, and having not even won a series since 2018, the Penguins are in an impossible position. They’re not rebuilding from the ground up, but are they capable of contending? In GM Kyle Dubas’ first year on the job, he sold Jake Guentzel off at the trade deadline, the sort of move Sidney Crosby said was a “new experience” in his career — and not in a good way.

“I think you all have a good idea from what we did at the trade deadline, we need to reposition where the team has been for the last couple decades,” Dubas said after the regular season. “I think, justifiably, the team for a long time has been pushing to move assets in attempts to win, and the team has won here three times and been in contention for far longer than that. But we need to reposition the way we go about it. We’ve started to do that, replenish the assets we have in an attempt to not be sitting here two days after the regular season and having year-end press conferences and meetings.”

Crosby, it should be mentioned, will be able to sign an extension with the Penguins on July 1, if he so chooses. And as long as he’s around, with Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Erik Karlsson each with multiple years remaining on contracts, a flyby rebuild is about all you can do. Does that mean Guentzel becomes a free agent target if he doesn’t re-sign with Carolina first? Is goaltending an area they could look to shake up, after Tristan Jarry struggled and lost the job when the games mattered most?

Minnesota Wild: How can they improve in the final season of the buyout cap crunch, and can they position themselves to re-sign Kirill Kaprizov next summer?

The 2024-25 season will be the last of Minnesota’s self-imposed salary cap purgatory, as the buyouts to Ryan Suter and Zach Parise — that will still count for $14.743 million on the books next season — will pinch the purse strings one more time. That’s not an excuse for GM Bill Guerin, who made it clear at his year-end press conference that the goal was to win now and that his summer would be spent addressing the areas he felt were most in need of attention to get this team back to the playoffs.

“We’ll look at our salary cap situation, see what our options are, but to me up front is going to be one of our main objectives, to improve the forward group,” Guerin said. “I think what I missed on this year was the depth, and we need to create better depth in the organization to help insulate the other guys.”

One year from now, star forward Kirill Kaprizov will be eligible to sign an extension ahead of his five-year deal entering its final season. At the end, he’ll be UFA eligible, and so as much as the Wild will focus on returning to the playoffs in 2025, in the back of their minds they have to be thinking about how they’re positioning themselves — both competitively and cap-wise — to get a further commitment from Kaprizov.

Philadelphia Flyers: Who’s part of the future and who will go?

Such a disappointing end to the season, backing out of a playoff spot, shouldn’t cause fans to lose sight of the fact that the Flyers largely overachieved this season. A rebuilding outfit, the Flyers were alive until the end, but GM Daniel Briere said the key for the off-season will be keeping focus on the long-term plan: don’t expect this to be a team aggressively seeking veterans to get them in next season.

“I know the expectation next year will be that we gotta get to the playoffs,” Briere said. “I don’t know that we’re there yet. It was a great year, but there’s still a long ways to go. We have to be very careful with that.”

Still, you figure there will be changes and we wonder what it could mean for the likes of Morgan Frost, Joel Farabee or even leading scorer Travis Konecny who all have at one time or another been caught up in some kind of trade rumour. Konecny and Frost both have one year left on their contracts, and Frost especially was in head coach John Tortorella’s dog house early this season before going on a two-month tear after the calendar flipped to 2024.

Buffalo Sabres: Lindy Ruff is in as head coach, but how will GM Kevyn Adams adjust the roster?

Not a nostalgic hire, but one made because GM Adams thinks he’s the right person for the job at this point in time, Ruff returns to Buffalo at a key moment in this era. After missing out on the playoffs by a single point last season, in 2023-24 the Sabres were chasing all season after a low start, and finished seven points out of the race. Several of their young cornerstone players had down seasons, and the result forced Adams into a coaching change.

Ruff returns fresh off a playoff miss himself, unable to lead the New Jersey Devils there for a second year in a row. A more talented team farther down the track than Buffalo, Ruff at least appears to have a better situation in Buffalo’s crease after Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen stepped up.

But there’s no time to waste for Ruff or Adams. These Sabres aren’t rebuilding anymore, and have to actually get into the playoffs here in short order. All the biggest contract commitments have been doled out to the core, so now we’re at the stage where we’ll learn if those were the right call or not. A year ago, it looked like a great setup, but today questions linger. The Sabres have missed the playoffs 13 years in a row now and already had to step back from one rebuilt core when the Jack Eichel era fizzled out. As much as it’ll be in Ruff to get the most out of the Sabres group next season, it’s also on Adams to make the necessary off-season adjustments to the roster, or else he could be next on the chopping block.

New Jersey Devils: How aggressively should they go after a No. 1 goalie?

The Achilles’ heel here has been obvious for some time, but rather than go hard in the trade market last summer to address his goaltending, Devils GM Tom Fitzgerald ran it back with Vitek Vanecek and MacKenzie Blackwood. To express how that turned out, all you need to know is that by the end of the season, both of those netminders had been replaced.

Jake Allen is under contract for one more season and, after finishing stronger in New Jersey, he’s at least a credible backup for them, if not a tandem netminder who can play a good number of games. But after posting 112 points in 2022-23, the Stanley Cup window was supposed to be open for this group. Injuries were a factor in them missing, sure, but the East was wide open in the wild-card spots and this team should have been one of the better bets to get in. Surely another summer won’t go past without trying to solidify the crease once and for all, and so we wonder what Fitzgerald might be willing to give up for someone like Jacob Markstrom, who the Devils were tied to in rumours around the deadline.

Calgary Flames: What becomes of Jacob Markstrom?

As GM Craig Conroy attempts a rebuild on the fly, there are several storylines following the team into this summer, but none is bigger than what the future holds for the goalie Markstrom.

The way both the netminder and GM talked about the situation at their year-end avails only fuelled speculation that Markstrom has played his last game as a Flame. With two years left on his contract, he’ll bring more value than a straight rental.

“I don’t know,” is what Markstrom said when asked where he saw himself playing next season. “Time will tell,” is how Conroy framed it. The question, simply, will be if the Flames are able to get their asking price for the goalie, something they weren’t able to close as trade speculation heated up around the deadline.

Seattle Kraken: Is Dave Hakstol the coach to keep leading them?

Last week, GM Ron Francis said he and his staff were still reviewing the season and how to react to it, including the future of the head coach. Dave Hakstol led the Kraken through their inaugural season, got them into the playoffs and even earned a series win in Year 2, and then the team stepped back in Year 3, tied with a Flames team that was trading out players all season.

This team is still growing and, as far as the GM’s work on the roster goes, more offence needs to be found for the group. But is Hakstol the guy to keep leading them at the helm, or will they look for another option? There is no shortage of experienced NHL head coaches who are looking for work on the market this summer, though Elliotte Friedman threw out the name Dan Bylsma as a possibility for Seattle, as he currently coaches its AHL affiliate in Coachella Valley. They are set to face the Calgary Wranglers in the second round of the Calder Cup Playoffs.

Ottawa Senators: What becomes of Jakob Chychrun?

There are a lot of interesting questions around the Senators. What progress will be made on the arena project? Who will the next head coach be? But the one that might have the most direct impact on the roster is how the clutter of veteran left-handed defencemen is handled.

As the team departed for the summer, Chychrun seemed uncertain about his future with the team. A Pierre Dorion trade acquisition just over a year ago (for the 12th overall pick and two seconds), Chychrun is still finding his fit. There’s also the matter of Jake Sanderson and Thomas Chabot, two players drafted by the organization with long-term, big-money deals in place. All three defencemen are left shots, but Chychrun has just one season remaining on his contract.

“It’s a tough question. I mean I … I … I dunno,” Chychrun said during the team’s end-of-season player availability. “I mean, I haven’t thought about … I honestly have not thought about that. I know I have one more year left and, like I said, there hasn’t even been talks of an extension or anything. So, I haven’t really gotten my head wrapped around that idea.

“So, it’s tough for me to sit here and act like I have.”

Utah: What are the first steps for the new organization?

The former Coyotes players are facing the biggest change of all and there’s been some question if any player may communicate a preference to move somewhere else. At the very least, only six players have contracts that extend beyond the first season in Utah.

Already there have been murmurs that owner Ryan Smith and the Utah team intends to be aggressive in going after players with the goal of turning competitive fast. And in that pursuit, they have a few things going for them. First, the Coyotes made 22 picks in the past two drafts that have filled Utah’s pipeline, plus they are still loaded in future draft capital. That alone will give the team options moving ahead. And, second, the fact so few players are signed beyond 2024-25 gives Utah enormous amounts of flexibility with the salary cap also climbing.

In time, we’ll see what the buy-in is like from the Coyotes players — early indications are promising! — and if Utah is an attractive destination to others in the league. But it already feels like the way the franchise will operate in Utah will be much different from how it finished in the desert.

Montreal Canadiens: Is it just a matter of patience?

There aren’t any massive looming questions about a core player, a coach or anyone on the hot seat here yet. The fact is, the Canadiens are going through the motions of a rebuilding team that has a lot of promise on paper, but was still seen as being a year or two behind the likes of Detroit or Ottawa or Buffalo. They didn’t finish all that far back of two of those teams, and will add another top draft pick to the pipeline at the draft.

The potential here is clear and you have to be excited about the way Juraj Slafkovsky finished the season, as the No. 1 overall pick from 2022 became a 20-goal scorer for the first time. Lane Hutson arrived late after his NCAA career ended and will be given every look to be an addition to next year’s squad. GM Kent Hughes has been bold before, moving draft picks around to trade for Kirby Dach in 2022, so perhaps something like that could be on the table. Or, will this be more of a process off-season, where internal growth is the name of the game?

Columbus Blue Jackets: Who will be the next GM and what will their vision be?

The Blue Jackets were another team that envisioned itself turning a corner out of the rebuild to be a more competitive roster this season — maybe not to reach the playoffs, but at least to have competitive games late into the year. However, after a tumultuous season that was disrupted before training camp even opened, it’s clear there’s lots of work still to be done here.

GM Jarmo Kekalainen was let go just before the trade deadline, which kicked any of the biggest roster decisions until the summer, when a replacement will be hired. Until then, president of hockey operations John Davidson didn’t want to chart out a new path.

Whoever the next GM is will have to decide if Pascal Vincent is the guy to move forward with behind the bench, after he was promoted from his assistant job when Mike Babcock was let go in September. From there, the GM will have to make choices on the player personnel, who is part of the solution and who can perhaps move to reconfigure the makeup of the group. Finishing last in the East and whiffing on the playoffs by 25 points again cannot be an option.

Anaheim Ducks: What becomes of Trevor Zegras?

The trade rumours just won’t go away, making the future of Trevor Zegras the most interesting off-season scenario facing the Anaheim Ducks and GM Pat Verbeek. After a mid-season injury, Zegras returned in late March and finished with eight points in his last eight games. His skill is undeniable, but is he and his style the right fit with the Ducks?

In his most recent 32 Thoughts column, Elliotte Friedman noted “there’s a nagging sense not everyone’s comfortable with each other here” in regards to Zegras, Verbeek and the Ducks. Zegras has two seasons left on a contract paying $5.75 million against the cap, after which he’ll be an arbitration-eligible RFA, so there’s no time crunch here. But, as the off-season opens and the whole league looks to shake things up when the salary cap is also on the rise, perhaps the market conditions could be just right for a move.

Chicago Blackhawks: With a little lottery luck, how far ahead will their rebuild be pushed if they get Macklin Celebrini?

It’s a scorched-earth rebuild in Chicago, where beyond Connor Bedard (and, sure, Kevin Korchinski) there wasn’t much to get excited about on this year’s roster. Next year figures to be another wasteland season before the Blackhawks really try to build it up to be competitive again. But, we wonder, how much the dynamic of everything might change if they get a little lottery luck on May 7.

With the second-best odds of getting the first-overall pick, the Hawks have a 13.5 per cent chance of moving into the draft position they’ll need to get Celebrini. Now, ending up with the second-overall pick would still net them a great prospect (think, perhaps, Ivan Demidov) but Celebrini has been the start-to-finish top prospect a step above the rest of this class. No one outside Chicago would like this result, but Celebrini with Bedard would at least start the Blackhawks on a path back out of the wilderness.

San Jose Sharks: What does ‘starting again’ mean for the last overall team?

We knew — and they knew — the Sharks were a rebuilding outfit this season, but by shockingly trading Tomas Hertl to rival Vegas at the deadline, GM Mike Grier indicated the idea that this would be a “rebuild on the fly” was over. All UFAs could walk and, perhaps, more trades could occur, though San Jose isn’t exactly swimming in assets other organizations will seek out.

So, what does it mean for a team like this to take a further step back to start again? And, if they are the ones who wind up with Celebrini — who was formerly with the Junior Sharks program — how much would that change any plans? For example, Mikael Granlund is still a productive centre who led the team in scoring this season, and you might want someone like him to play alongside Celebrini. But Granlund is also 32 and entering the final year of his contract. Is there a balance to strike for Grier, or is it about to get a whole lot uglier to go deeper into a rebuild?

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