The NHL’s most disappointing teams in 2023-24
With Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli in Toronto for the All-Star Weekend, they had local Daily Faceoff writers Matt Larkin and Steven Ellis join Daily Faceoff Live for lots of hockey talk, including their most disappointing teams of the 2023-24 season.
Steven Ellis: I really wanted the Buffalo Sabres to be so much better this year. For me I was looking at it and I thought Devon Levi at the start of the year should be in the AHL. I thought that you look at the record of goalies going from college to the NHL, it pretty much never happens right away, so I thought “okay let’s see what they can do elsewise”. I didn’t expect Zach Benson to make the team out and when he did, I’m like “okay this is good”.
But you know Jack Quinn being injured as often as he had, this team just continuously throwing away wins against weaker teams in this league. I want them to be a playoff team so badly, so to see them not even be a threat at this point it’s just… they’ve got too much talent
Tyler Yaremchuk: I know, it makes you wonder if it hasn’t happened now, when’s it going to happen for this Buffalo team?
Steven Ellis: They’ve got a lot of good young guys coming up still so like it’s still early days. Maybe I was just way too premature on this thinking they would make the playoffs this year, but I thought the skill and fun level of this team was going to be enough that they were just going to ride the High and they haven’t.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Yeah, it has not gone the way they intended. Matt, your pick for all-disappointment.
Matt Larkin: Well my pal Frank here, he knows the pain of making a Stnaley Cup pick and watching that team miss the playoffs. It happened with the Jets a couple years ago. I’m reliving this experience! The New Jersey Devils were my Stanley Cup pick and their playoff odds are 20.1% last I checked.
This team was absolutely stacked going into the season. You can blame some of the problems on injuries but the goaltending’s been an absolute disaster with Vitek Vanecek and Akira Schmid, who really popped in the playoffs and now he’s literally in the AHL.
To me within that, Timo Meier in particular has been really disappointing. It’s a player I love, a real power forward, kind of a throwback, does so many things well, is physical, and it just isn’t there. I don’t know if he’s playing through whatever injuries he’s come back from, but he’s not the same player, and he’s getting paid a lot of money. I’m not worried about the Devils long-term, especially if they get a goaltender (*coughes*) Juuse Saros, but I think just this year, it might not be happening.
Frank Seravalli: One of the best pure evaluators of talent I know, he’s an assistant GM. I always call around the league and before the season starts and I do my 32 bold predictions, I always try and field some, like give me your craziest take of the year. And this guy was like “the Devils miss the playoffs” and I was like “no seriously, let me know when you come back to reality, like what?” And so, the fact that they’re in that space, I don’t think we properly evaluated Ryan Graves and Damon Severson leaving that that’s left them in a hole that’s compounded the goaltending problem.
My all-disappointment team is the Ottawa Senators. I thought they’d be a playoff team. They’ve got all the core pieces you would think to be a successful team. They waited way too long to make a coaching change. The Shane Pinto suspension didn’t help, but that I don’t think that changes their season. And something’s off, I don’t know what it is, but they need a major shake-up for a group that I thought was ready to be a solid playoff team for the next number of years. And now I just don’t know what the future looks like because it’s pretty murky.
Matt Larkin: Yeah it’s funny. They remind me a little bit of the pre-Connor McDavid Edmonton Oilers, a team that had those high picks and people were constantly projecting success and did maybe a country club mentality sort of seep in when you had Jordan Eberle and Taylor Hall, all those guys were signed long-term without any success. Is that what’s happening in Ottawa right now?
Frank Seravalli: Feels like it. How many guys on $8 million deals do you need on one team that have proven their good players but haven’t proven anything as a team.