1 Key Challenge Facing Every NHL Team as They Prepare for the 2024-25 Season .Giang

At long last, NHL training camps are open, and the preseason schedule is underway. The regular season is coming soon, and with it, we will begin to understand which teams have got it all together…and which don’t.

That said, no NHL team is perfect. Some are more flawed than others, but make no mistake, all of them have at least one big problem—not that most would want to admit it or dwell on it. Who wants to open a season talking about flaws anyway, right?

Well…we do, and we’re going to go over each team in the league and address one big issue they’ll need to solve to achieve their relative vision of success. Even if you think a team doesn’t have any problems, we guarantee there’s one you didn’t think of or blocked out because you couldn’t stand to think about it. We understand, but we also need to point it out anyway.

Whether you agree or disagree, we want to hear from you in the comments to let us know your thoughts.

Growing Pains

The Ducks have a lot of young players on the way up, and while they’ve got veterans surrounding them like Alex Killorn, Frank Vatrano, Cam Fowler and Ryan Strome it’s Leo Carlsson, Trevor Zegras, Cutter Gauthier and Pavel Mintyukov who will take Anaheim out of the pit they’ve been in over the past few years.

They’ve gotten a good idea of what their young guys can do, but they’re going to need those same guys to stay on the ice. Zegras, Carlsson and Mintyukov all missed significant time last season and Mintyukov is already banged up at the start of training camp this year.

Good health is every team’s wish every season, but the Ducks need their young future stars on the ice to grow together and win more games. May the magic of new jerseys and the color orange help make it happen.

Re-sign Jeremy Swayman already!

Goaltending has been a major strength of the Boston Bruins over the past, uh, roughly 15 years, and more recently, Jeremy Swayman and Linus Ullmark helped them win a lot of games. Swayman was so good (and a bit younger than Ullmark) that they traded Ullmark to Ottawa and were confident they could bring back Swayman on an extension.

Yet here we are at the opening of training camp and Swayman hasn’t re-signed. Boston GM Don Sweeney said he was hopeful they’d be able to reach a deal before December 1—the cut-off date for restricted free agents to be signed and able to play for their team that season.

We all had an idea that this contract would be tricky since Boston is tight to the cap and Swayman hasn’t played more than 44 games in a season in the NHL. But Boston is in a brutally competitive division, and even though they’re really good at staving off mediocrity, an extended stalemate would test the limits.

Find balance

It would be easy enough to say the Buffalo Sabres should just play better and it would solve everything, but each of the past few years there have been parts of their game that have been actually good.

A couple years ago, it was their power play that excelled, but the goaltending and penalty killing crushed them. Last season, their penalty killing and goaltending were strong, and they even scored well enough at 5-on-5 to compete, but their power play was abysmal and sunk their total offense.

Now with Lindy Ruff in charge, it’ll be up to him to help them put it all together and make everything click simultaneously. They have a ton of talent and skill and now they have a healthy amount of grit and speed to go with the goaltending. Getting it all put together would help them surprise a lot of teams in the East.

How to make it work with Jonathan Huberdeau (part 3)

It’s so difficult to watch the way Calgary has struggled to keep players in the fold. It’s been even harder to see the superstar they brought in to help steady the ship, Jonathan Huberdeau, struggle so terribly since becoming a Flame.

In his first two seasons with the Flames, Huberdeau has 107 points. When you compare that to the 115-point season he had in his last year with Florida, it’s enough to make your head spin and be left with a lot of questions for Calgary management.

Going from Daryl Sutter to Ryan Huska as coaches and the very different systems they had, as well as the number of key players who have left the team, finding chemistry has been challenging for Huberdeau. But he has seven more years left on his contract with a cap hit of $10.5 million.

Come hell or high water, the Flames have to find a way to get Huberdeau on track for more than 50 points in a season. The hardest part of that is they’re a team that’s been staving off a rebuild—one they could sorely use.

Stop sweating the regular season

The Hurricanes are a fascinating team because they’ve been one of the best in the NHL for the past four years, but they’ve found themselves in ferocious battles atop the division with the likes of Florida, New Jersey and the New York Rangers in an attempt to lock up the top spot.

Those battles, while necessary to get some amount of home ice in the postseason, have left Carolina worn out once the playoffs kicked into high gear.

They’ve made the Eastern Conference Final once in the past four years and managed to bow out in the second round the other three times. While that could be a sign of a team that just needs one good push to get back to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since 2006, what we’ve seen is a really good team going out meekly far too early on.

At some point, putting up 100 or more points in a season and falling well short of expectations is going to bring about more pressing questions regarding whether or not they’ve got enough to get it done.

Impatience

The big thing about rebuilds is that any team that’s conducting one, particularly a team that lands a generational player like Chicago did with Connor Bedard, is that they can’t cheat the process.

Yes, having Bedard puts the ‘Hawks much further ahead than where most teams are in similar stages of their rebuild, but it doesn’t mean Bedard alone can carry them back to the playoffs and onto a Stanley Cup.

Chicago’s drafted plenty of high-end prospects and many of them will continue to roll into the lineup this year and in the seasons to come, but if they get too antsy and try to speed things along by sacrificing some of the long-term prospects for short-term gains to just go to the playoffs, that’s a quick way to short circuit the entire thing.

Am I speaking from experience from covering the Buffalo Sabres for the past 10 years? MAYBE. But seeing Chicago add some veterans to the group this year was a logical move to help the young guys learn more from them and they, more than anyone else, should know that slow and steady will indeed lead to glory.

Learn who to trust on defense

The good thing the Colorado Avalanche have going for them is they have Cale Makar and Devon Toews on defense and that helps solve a lot of problems for roughly 25-to-30 minutes per game. Beyond that, they’ve got Samuel Girard and Josh Manson which make a really strong second wave, but after that, they’ve got a lot of questions.

To the Avs’ credit, they addressed their defense this summer and signed free agents Calvin de Haan, Erik Brännström and Oliver Kylington to round out their defense corps. Three veterans, two of whom are relatively young, and an excellent team surround them to help them along. It should all work out fine!

But with the puck-moving abilities of both Brännström and Kylington and the smarts of de Haan, finding the right balance and the best way to deploy them will make a difference in the battle they’ll have atop the Central Division against Dallas, Nashville and Winnipeg. It’s really a first-world problem in the hockey world to have, but the margins are tight in what will be a volatile and competitive race.

Own being young and talented

For years, the Blue Jackets have almost wanted to avoid being a very young team. Between leaving some prospects in juniors or the AHL while pressing some into action right away regardless, Columbus management never seemed to understand where they stood and what to do.

Now the Jackets have even more young players on the rise, and their talent level is increasing as time rolls on. If ever there was a time to just go with it, it’s now. Between Adam Fantilli, Kent Johnson, David Jiricek, Cole Sillinger and Yegor Chinakhov in the NHL now and upcoming top prospects like Denton Mateychuk, Gavin Brindley, Luca Del Bel Belluz and Corson Ceulemans (not to mention 2024 first-round pick Cayden Lindstrom further down the road), if the Jackets are going to take some lumps, let some of the best of the young guys get more of a taste of what it’ll take to play in the NHL.

We realize that runs a little counter-intuitive to how teams do things, but if any of these guys show they’re ready for a look, go for it already. The fans want to see wins, certainly, but with all kinds of hopeful talent on the near horizon, they’d like to see them, too.

Go for broke

The Dallas Stars are ready to win the Stanley Cup right now, and you could argue what cost them a shot at winning it last year was the gauntlet they had to go through just to get to the Western Conference Final. Dealing with Vegas in seven games and Colorado in six before facing Edmonton and bowing out in six games was a brutal path.

Even though there’s no real way to pick who you get to go through in the playoffs, the lesson the Stars could take away from last year was to use any and all player resources at your disposal to keep the tanks filled up.

Dallas will get youngsters Logan Stankoven and Mavrik Bourque more into the mix in the NHL this season and we’re already getting a peek at Swiss prospect defenseman Lian Bischel in preseason now. The Stars roster is stacked and going with the guys that got you there is always a solid plan, but with the kind of depth they have, making use of it throughout the season and playoffs can ensure that everyone is more than ready to go all the way.

Win…Or else

Is it a cop-out to say that the one problem the Detroit Red Wings have to address is just winning? Perhaps, but that’s what all of it boils down to for GM Steve Yzerman now.

The team he’s put together is his project and this is the vision he’s set forth and they’ve got a lot of excellent players to make it work. Dylan Larkin, Patrick Kane, Lucas Raymond, Moritz Seider…they’re all outstanding. Their depth of veterans has all been there, seen and done it elsewhere to varying levels of success, and their younger players have grown into this setting.

We could highlight how their possession numbers or scoring chance quality has to be better and the goaltending in general must improve. But they showed for a good part of last season that they can perform at a playoff-caliber level and get back to the postseason for the first time since 2016, but their inconsistency later in the year crushed them and despite a valiant attempt to get back into it late in the year, they fell short again.

The Red Wings have to adopt the old Al Davis saying: Just win, baby. Because if they don’t, the offseason could get really uncomfortable.

Team Defense

For the first few seasons of Connor McDavid’s career in Edmonton, the Oilers were able to generate plenty of goals and along with Leon Draisaitl they put fear into opponents that on any given night they could get a bucket of goals dumped on their heads. Then again, those teams also didn’t totally sweat it because they knew they could get it back with a pile of their own goals.

Last season, the Oilers got much better at defending as a whole. Mattias Ekholm led the way on the back end with Evan Bouchard and forwards Adam Henrique, Ryan McLeod and Warren Foegele were able to push teams back in their own end effectively.

But the Oilers traded McLeod to Buffalo and lost Foegele to Los Angeles in free agency and replaced them with Jeff Skinner, Viktor Arvidsson and prospect Matt Savoie. Those three players aren’t renowned for their defensive capabilities, but if coach Kris Knoblauch can get them to help commit to it a bit more, it’ll go a long way to making sure the not-so-old days of the on-ice track meet don’t return.

Team Chemistry

Even though the Panthers will have the Stanley Cup hangover to fight off, they’re also going to need to wear name tags in training camp given how many players from last year’s championship team went elsewhere this summer.

Florida’s core remains and with Aleksander Barkov, Sam Reinhart, Matthew Tkachuk, Carter Verhaeghe and Aaron Ekblad leading the way, they’re in very good hands. But they lost seven players from their Game 7 Cup-winning lineup, and while many of their key depth players remain, as well as goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, the Panthers were so good because they played incredible team hockey.

Playing all together as one can take time and, fortunately, there’s an entire regular season to develop new bonds. But losing guys like Brandon Montour and Oliver Ekman-Larsson among many others is tough and will take time to figure out how best to replace their minutes and production and match their roles.

Repeating is hard enough to begin with, but the Panthers will attempt to do so with a higher level of difficulty.

Avoid Edmonton at all costs

The Kings were one of the sneakier strong teams in the NHL last season—albeit a dramatic one. Their special teams were outstanding, they allowed very few goals, their offense put up good numbers, and for awhile they were near the top of the Pacific Division. But they also fired coach Todd McLellan midseason during a terrible slide, brought in Jim Hiller and ultimately finished third in the division. That meant drawing the Edmonton Oilers in the first round of the playoffs for the third consecutive season—a series they lost.

L.A. made some big moves over the summer when they traded Pierre-Luc Dubois to Washington for goalie Darcy Kuemper and signed forward Warren Foegele. They also lost defenseman Matt Roy, forward Viktor Arvidsson and goalie Cam Talbot in free agency as well, but they’re returning most of the same roster who performed so well and have young players like Quinton Byfield growing up and becoming stars before our eyes.

Battling Vegas, Vancouver and Edmonton in the division is hard enough, but the Oilers are their kryptonite. Everything the Kings do well is undone by them. They should correct those issues, obviously, but really, they should make sure they steer as clear of Edmonton as they can in the postseason. Good luck.

The impending goaltending conundrum

Marc-André Fleury is entering his final season in the NHL as he announced he’s going to retire following this season. Fleury’s tandem partner last season, Filip Gustavsson, had a down year compared to his rookie season and the two of them combined weren’t able to steady the Wild to make the postseason. Entering the discussion this season is top prospect, 21-year-old Jesper Wallstedt who was Minnesota’s first-round pick in 2021 and, ideally, their goalie of the future.

There’s a possibility that all three of them will be on the roster this season and a three-goalie setup usually turns into a situation where a team has three goalies that are generally unhappy.

Minnesota wants to get back to the playoffs after missing out last season but both Gustavsson and Fleury had down seasons last year which makes the situation ripe for Wallstedt to stake a claim with a strong camp. They know Fleury is retiring and they know Wallstedt is a guy they’ve liked for a long time, but Gustavsson was brilliant two years ago. Good luck to GM Bill Guerin on finding the right move to make so everyone can be happy.

Growing up

The Canadiens are officially a team to keep a close eye on.

After they added Patrik Laine this summer to a lineup that features Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield along with 2022 No. 1 pick Juraj Slafkovský as well as a newly healthy Kirby Dach and defensemen Kaiden Guhle and rookie Lane Hutson, there are a few reasons to think the Habs could be one of those teams that ruins a contender’s night by giving them all they can handle.

There’s a lot of experience with this group, and veterans Brendan Gallagher, Josh Anderson and David Savard will be asked to provide guidance for everyone. But after a few seasons of being stuck at the bottom of the Atlantic, their hope is they can climb out of the basement. That means the newer guys will have to get more mature to be able to win those close games inexperience may have cost them in recent years. Coach Martin St. Louis has pushed a lot of the right buttons with his team, but even he will need to know how to help them take another step forward despite being relatively new to coaching.

Hype

The Predators were the offseason’s big winners. Adding free agents Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault and Brady Skjei and signing goalie Juuse Saros to an eight-year extension got everyone’s attention around the league. With that kind of notice served, it also means the expectations for Nashville jumped up exponentially.

Nashville is going to need to find a way to minimize the noise from the outside and get right to the business of not just going back to the playoffs but going beyond the first round. The hype for the Preds is immense and having that cast of star characters join Filip Forsberg, Roman Josi and Ryan O’Reilly rightfully means they should improve upon last season despite being in a difficult division.

It’s been rare to have a Predators team go into a season with high hopes, but to keep the high of the offseason going, they’re going to need to live up to it and be one of the best in the West.

Yes, it’s still goaltending

For two years, the Devils had goaltending issues of some variety. Two years ago, it wasn’t hide-your-eyes bad because Vitek Vanecek and Akira Schmid were able to make it work until they ran up against Carolina in the second round of the playoffs.

Last season, it was well-known goalie was a weak position for them, but it wasn’t addressed until the trade deadline and by then, it was way too late for the Devils to recover. This year, GM Tom Fitzgerald made sure the same criticisms wouldn’t happen, and he acquired Jacob Markström from Calgary to be their No. 1 goalie.

At 34, Markström is a proven player and was a Vezina Trophy finalist in 2021-2022. His rebound last season after a shaky 2022-2023 season was noticeable even despite the problems Calgary had. He must repeat or improve upon that with New Jersey and with veteran Jake Allen backing him up, the Devils have no reason to think goaltending will be a problem.

Consistency

Last season was a roller coaster ride for the New York Islanders. They rode the highs and lows of extended winning and losing streaks that had the feeling around them vacillating between believing they could be contenders to wondering if making a run at the lottery would be better for them in the long run.

The Isles got great seasons from Mathew Barzal, Noah Dobson and Brock Nelson while Bo Horvat and Kyle Palmieri were vital offensive players. Adding Anthony Duclair to the mix this year will only deepen their attack. With coach Patrick Roy running the show now and with goalies Ilya Sorokin and Semyon Varlamov, Long Island should be primed for a strong team that can win in the postseason.

However, if the Isles fall back into old ways and habits and go from winning six in a row to losing six in a row (something they did in March down the stretch last season) it’s the sort of thing that could force them into hoping the ping pong balls bounce their way in the draft lottery, especially with the improvements division foes New Jersey and Washington made this summer.

Forget about last year

The Rangers were the latest in a long line of teams who won the Presidents’ Trophy for the NHL’s best record but ultimately didn’t win the Stanley Cup. The Rangers ousting in the Eastern Conference Final by Florida was difficult for them, and the fact it was the second time in three years they were bounced in the East final would be enough to stick in anyone’s craw.

But if the Rangers are going to best take advantage of the impressive array of talent they have, they need to remember the lessons learned from those losses and play them forward to make them a stronger team both on the ice and in their own heads.

They have elite players like Igor Shesterkin, Artemi Panarin, Adam Fox, Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider. They’ve got Alexis Lafrenière living up to the hype of being the top draft pick in 2020 at long last and poised to become a major offensive player for them after a breakout season. Everything is set up for them to not just get back to the Eastern Conference Final but to go all the way back to the Stanley Cup Final and potentially win it again for the first time since 1994.

Depth on defense

When the Ottawa Senators forwards are healthy, they’ve got a group that’s equally talented and deeply frustrating to play against and it’s something their defense corps wishes they could be.

Ottawa has Thomas Chabot, Jake Sanderson and Artem Zub leading the way on the blue line and newly acquired Nick Jensen is good for depth, but the rest of their group has serious questions.

Travis Hamonic is a strong, physical veteran but injuries kept him out for roughly half of last season. Youngsters Tyler Kleven and Jacob Bernard-Docker are in their early 20s with somewhat limited NHL experience. Kleven has played 17 games while Bernard-Docker is over 100 after he played in 72 games last season. The Sens could use help on defense badly because without it they might be staring at another season out of the playoffs even if Linus Ullmark plays out of his mind in goal.

Keep drama to a minimum

Asking the Philadelphia Flyers to not be dramatic is a tall ask. They’re never a boring team regardless of who or how they play, and they won’t be dull this year with rookie Matvei Michkov coming over from the KHL.

But after an offseason in which the Flyers did next to nothing to add to the roster, John Tortorella’s fiery presence behind the bench, and the memory of fading down the stretch to ultimately miss the playoffs fresh in mind, the story lines surrounding Philly are incredible.

But if the Flyers are to build upon last season and ensure they don’t crumble late in the season, they’re going to need to stick to Tortorella’s design as much as possible while also hoping no other problems arise.

Fat chance there considering that it is Philly, but for a younger team that got a heavy dose of a playoff race a year ago, keeping any unnecessary noise to an absolute minimum might be the kind of thing that helps get them back to the playoffs.

Give Sid some help

Last season, Sidney Crosby showed again why he’s one of the greatest players of all time. He scored 42 goals and had 94 points to lead the Penguins in both categories. His 94 points were 27 more than Evgeni Malkin who was second on the team with 67. Only three other players on the team had 20-or-more goals and no one else cracked 30.

For the Penguins to get back to the playoffs, having 37-year-old Crosby try to carry them there virtually by himself is asking a lot of a living legend. Even though he’s proven he is still an incredible weapon on offense and a ferocious competitor, he needs his teammates to step up in a big way.

Pittsburgh’s roster is very experienced and a bit advanced in age. It’s not as if Crosby is trying to teach and rally a roster full of young players. His elite veteran peers like Malkin, Kris Letang and Erik Karlsson have to step up and get support players like Anthony Beauvillier, Rickard Rakell, Michael Bunting and Kevin Hayes to help fill the offensive void.

Protect the kids

The Sharks are going to take their lumps again this season, but they’re going to start punching back offensively on opponents with 2024 No. 1 pick Macklin Celebrini and 2023 No. 4 pick Will Smith graduating from college hockey to the pro ranks. Add in newly acquired Yaroslav Askarov acquired from Nashville as the probable No. 1 goalie and it’s a really interesting setup for the Sharks rebuild that’s at last taken hold.

But with these young guys taking over, along with 2021 No. 7 pick William Eklund in the fold as well, San Jose’s veterans have to make sure they can support their young teammates both in how they play and standing up for them when veterans around the league look to impose their will.

It’s no secret why the Sharks signed guys like Tyler Toffoli and Alex Wennberg and claimed Barclay Goodrow off waivers. While the Sharks aren’t in a place in the rebuild to start thinking about playoffs yet, the first steps for Celebrini and Smith are vitally important to get right.

Recapture that winning feeling

Something that was lost for the Seattle Kraken last season was the success they had in doing a lot of the little things right.

Two years ago, when they reached the NHL postseason for the first time, they were able to do well in advanced stat categories like puck possession and expected goals. It drove their offense and allowed them to take advantage of areas opponents weren’t expecting them to stress. That all changed last season and much of the puck luck they had also evaporated.

Now with Dan Bylsma in charge behind the bench, the Kraken need to re-establish the ways that made them a 100-point team and they have to do it with threats coming from all four lines and all three defense pairs. If that leads to 2022 No. 4 pick Shane Wright cracking the NHL and becoming a fixture down in the lineup, then that’s a good thing.

They’ve got Matty Beniers and Jared McCann with Vince Dunn to lead the way, but adding another potential threat in Wright can make the Kraken a difficult and deep team to deal with and winning battles lower in the lineup can help them turn the tide of more games and potentially help them return to the playoffs.

Make special teams actually special

The Blues made last season a lot more interesting than expected when they surprised a lot of us (all of us?) by making an honest-to-goodness push to make the playoffs and finishing the season with 92 points. But if there was a particular area of the game they needed to continue to improve upon it was special teams.

Although they improved their penalty kill by nearly seven percent last season, their power play percentage fell slightly from 19 to 18 percent. What’s wild is three seasons ago, the Blues had one of the best power plays in the NHL but crumbled after that. The penalty kill being so poor was certainly a sore spot, but you could chalk up some of that improvement to improved play from Jordan Binnington in goal.

Still, getting shooters like Pavel Buchnevich, Robert Thomas and Jordan Kyrou time and space to score with the man advantage would help the Blues attempt to crack through into the wild card race in the West.

Leave the past behind them

The Tampa Bay Lightning are going to be fascinating to watch this year. After Steven Stamkos’ departure to Nashville, the addition of Jake Guentzel and the trade of Mikhail Sergachev to Utah, they’re headed in a different direction.

Although they still have a lot of the players that helped them win back-to-back Stanley Cups (Victor Hedman, Brayden Point, Andrei Vasilevskiy for example), losing former captain Stamkos and blue line star Sergachev, even with replacements like Guentzel and JJ Moser, they’re huge shoes to fill on a team that adored both of those players and leaders.

The on-ice component of the Lightning potentially being affected so directly by off-ice hurt feelings from Stamkos about not being brought back and a staggering trade will test the mettle of a veteran group. You’d have to think if there was any team that could weather such drastic changes it would be Tampa Bay given their makeup, but it cannot be understated how important Stamkos was to that group and to the city in general.

It’s a massive vibe check for the Bolts and one they’ll have to move on from as quickly as they can in order to go for another Stanley Cup.

Forget everything that’s not about hockey

Given the massive amount of talent the Toronto Maple Leafs have with Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, John Tavares and Morgan Rielly, it’s staggering they haven’t been able to advance beyond the second round of the playoffs at all since they emerged as annual contenders.

Disappointment, drama, speculation and rumors run rampant the second the Leafs are eliminated, and questions buzz around constantly about how they’re going to fix it and who will be traded to best make that happen. And yet, here we are, with none of the key players getting moved out and they’re running it back again, only this time with Stanley Cup winning coach Craig Berube running the show.

The best thing for the Leafs to take that next step is to listen to what Berube tells them and to just let all the outside noise stay on the outside. That’ll be tough to do considering Marner and Tavares are in the final year of their contracts, but rallying together to push ahead would do them wonders.

Scoring depth

We’re big fans of what Utah Hockey Club GM Bill Armstrong has done this offseason with a bigger budget and a new market to win over in Salt Lake City. Adding Mikhail Sergachev and John Marino to their blue line were great trades, and extending Dylan Guenther for eight years and big money is a bold vote of confidence.

And while they’ve got guys like Guenther, Clayton Keller, Nick Schmaltz, Mattias Maccelli and Logan Cooley to generate offense, you can’t help but think they’re going to need a little bit more up front if they’re going to try and stun everyone and get to the playoffs.

Utah has a lot of hard workers at forward with Barrett Hayton, Alex Kerfoot and Lawson Crouse, but this group is going to need more goals to keep up with the teams vying for the wild card, never mind those atop the division races. They’ve got the cap space to make a move if there’s one to be had and if they’re really in the race, they can use that to their advantage. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Oh yeah, it’s goaltending

The Vancouver Canucks explosion last season to become one of the best teams in the NHL was an incredible surprise, but with Rick Tocchet in charge and elite stars like Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes, Brock Boeser and J.T. Miller running the show, they were able to light up the scoreboard.

But it was in goal where things got locked down to make the Canucks an impossible team to get an edge on thanks to the play of Thatcher Demko. It was his injury during the playoffs last year that really put a dent in the Canucks’ dreams of getting back to the Stanley Cup Final and it’s his continued struggle to get back to action that has everyone on edge.

Last year’s playoff pinch hitter in goal, Arturs Silovs, is back and they just added Kevin Lankinen recently to buoy the position while Demko’s status remains up in the air. And while Silovs played well and Lankinen is solid backup help, getting Demko back healthy is what will determine how far Vancouver can go and that’s a question which, from the outside, seems difficult to figure out.

Forward help

Every year, the Vegas Golden Knights are one of the toughest and best teams in the league and their elite talent always shines through. But after not re-signing Jonathan Marchessault and also losing forwards Michael Amadio, William Carrier and Anthony Mantha to free agency and Paul Cotter via trade, they were fighting to find help up front this summer and with limited cap space, it was difficult to get it done.

They signed Victor Olofsson from Buffalo and acquired Alexander Holtz from New Jersey in a trade to help boost the offense from the wing. With Jack Eichel, Mark Stone and Tomas Hertl in place, Vegas isn’t exactly hurting for goals. However, they are hurting for offense from the rest of the lineup on paper.

Vegas GM Kelly McCrimmon will need to do his best salary cap gymnastics to find help for his team later in the year and even though that’s almost never hard for Vegas to figure out, it does make them a wild card in trade situations, because they’ve pulled stunners repeatedly and seem to know best on how to make things happen.

Scoring enough

Any team with Alexander Ovechkin has at least one answer for who will score goals. But for Washington, the question is more about who else will score them.

The Caps will be without T.J. Oshie for quite some time and as it is they only had three players score 20-or-more goals last season (Ovechkin, Dylan Strome, Anthony Mantha). Tom Wilson can always push for close to 20 goals as long as he stays on the ice, and they’ve brought in Pierre-Luc Dubois (16 goals) and Andrew Mangiapane (14 goals) via trade to give them more scoring depth. They’ll hope younger players like Connor McMichael and Hendrix Lapierre can take another step forward in their growth, too, but the Caps struggled to keep up offensively for good chunk of last season despite making the playoffs.

If for whatever reason Ovechkin struggles out of the gate the way he did last season and guys like Strome, Wilson, Dubois and Mangiapane can’t get it going, it’s hard to see where or how they’ll be able to address it even with the amount of money they can have on LTIR with Oshie and Nicklas Backstrom.

Depth all around

The Jets are a very good team with an elite goalie in Connor Hellebuyck and their top talent is outstanding. From forwards Mark Scheifele, Kyle Connor, Gabe Vilardi, Nikolaj Ehlers and recently re-signed Cole Perfetti to defenseman Josh Morrissey, those are all guys that can help produce a ton of offense.

The worry with Winnipeg, however, is do they have enough help all-around to stay in the fight for the Central Division title and fend off the likes of Dallas, Colorado and Nashville?

Just on defense, Morrissey has Neal Pionk, Dylan DeMelo, Dylan Samberg, Logan Stanley and Colin Miller to help out and even though that’s a solid blue-collar crew, it’s up to Morrissey to really drive the bulk of their offense from the blue line.

Even at forward, there’s questions of how well Winnipeg would be able to withstand injuries right now, because their top prospects are still developing. Guys like Brayden Yager, Colby Barlow, Chaz Lucius and Brad Lambert will be good players in the near future, but pressing them into duty now might not be the play the Jets need to make if it’s necessary to bring someone up. That future is bright, but it’ll be fascinating to see how they’re used when it’s their time.