Ranking the eight first-round losers on their likelihood of bouncing back next season

Credit: Bob DeChiara-USA TODAY Sports

A first round loss is never fun to deal with: a whole season spent working towards building your team up for a playoff run, only for it to end just as it was beginning. If you’re a team consistently contending for championships, it’s disappointing to see the season end well short of your goal. If you’re a team struggling to get over that first round hump and win a series, it’s agonizing knowing you have to wait another year before you get another shot at it.

That was especially true this year. The first round saw the defending Stanley Cup champs in the Colorado Avalanche, their previous Cup Final opponent in the Tampa Bay Lightning, and the record-setting Presidents’ Trophy winning Boston Bruins all ousted in the first round well short of expectations, while teams like the New York Rangers and New York Islanders made big moves at the trade deadline only to not get to utilize them for lengthy runs.

It’s definitely not the result these teams wanted, but the good news is that, sometimes, that’s sports. You can try your best and you just don’t get the bounces for a playoff series. But if you have the right pieces and management that’s smart and patient, you can run it back and take a shot at it next season. Some of our first round losers this year are certainly poised to do that, while others face a lot more uncertainty, so let’s rank just how likely it is that these eight franchises can bounce back next year, from teams that have a shot at the Cup to teams that look destined for mediocrity.

1. Colorado Avalanche

This is likely the easiest one. The Avs are one of two teams on this list that still have their championship core intact, and unlike the other one, that group is much, much younger. Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar are both arguably top five players in the NHL and any season where they’re both at the top of their game, Colorado will contend for a Stanley Cup.

Another reason why they’re easily in the best spot out of this group is that they were dealing with a lot of injuries this season. Only four players played all 82 games last season, and captain Gabriel Landeskog missed the entire season, so having an extended offseason to rehabilitate may be a blessing in disguise for the Avs’ early playoff exit. They still may come across depth problems as they look to navigate the salary cap after MacKinnon’s cap hit doubles, but as long as the likes of MacKinnon, Makar, Landeskog, and Mikko Rantanen are around, this team is poised to make a run.

2. Tampa Bay Lightning

Even though the Lightning didn’t make it to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since 2019, there’s little doubt that they could make it back in the next few seasons. It’s still tough to bet against the group that’s consistently been one of the best in the league for the past nine seasons. Nikita Kucherov, Victor Hedman, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Steven Stamkos, and Brayden Point are all extremely talented and poised players and still have a few years left of their primes. And after playing the most playoff games in a condensed timeframe between 2020 and 2022, you can bet that an extended summer off will help them recharge for another run or two.

But, it’s not going to be easy, especially as the salary cap will continue to pose a challenge for them. Extensions to Mikhail Sergachev, Anthony Cirelli, and Erik Cernak will take up an additional $7.4 million in cap space, and this is on a team whose depth has already been stripped to the bone after losing big complementary pieces like Ryan McDonagh and Ondrej Palat. There’s no doubt they will still be a playoff team, but in a division getting tougher and tougher with the likes of the Buffalo Sabres, Ottawa Senators, and Detroit Red Wings poised to rise up, it’s going to be challenging to even get through the first two rounds going forward, just like it was this season against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

3. New York Rangers

The Rangers were one of the many Cup contenders ousted in the first round, but they look to be in slightly better favor because of the high-end talent up front, on the blueline, and in net. That said, their top six from this year’s playoff run will all be 30 years or older, and that’s assuming that they are able to retain Vladimir Tarasenko and Patrick Kane, which is in doubt considering the lack of success that they had after bringing them in. That’s a lot of pieces starting to age out already just as your Cup window is opening up.

They still have some younger pieces like Adam Fox, K’Andre Miller, and Igor Shesterkin who will be staples for several more years, and the likes of Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad have a few good years left in them at least, so regardless, they will be back and be similarly strong next season, even if the depth will need a bit of work. But they’ll need a lot of development from their disappointing top two picks in Kaapo Kakko and Alexis Lafreniere if they really want to take a big step as the salary cap gets tight for them, otherwise the rebuild will be all for naught.

4. Los Angeles Kings

The Kings never jump off the page as a big name contender, but they gave a strong Edmonton Oilers team fits in the first round, and even had several stretches this season where they looked like the best team in the West. Add to the fact that they have a loaded prospect pool that they haven’t really needed to touch to bring in some assets (which means they can either add to their roster using those players or insert those prospects into their lineup), and it’s hard to see them going anywhere but up.

The only reason they aren’t higher up on this list is that they lack that true game-breaking player on their roster. There’s a lot of good pieces, especially Kevin Fiala, but no one you can really point to as being “the guy” on their roster. Sure, Anze Kopitar and Drew Doughty were that for them in their 2012 and 2014 Cup runs, but their best days are behind them. When the three teams above them have multiple pieces like that, it puts them at a slight disadvantage, but not enough to truly damage the bright future they have ahead of them.

5. Minnesota Wild

There’s no doubt that the Wild are a talented team, and even if they can’t retain everybody from this 2022-23 squad, they’ll find the pieces to fill out their depth and surround their best players. But, like it was last offseason, the big problem will be those looming buyout penalties for Zach Parise and Ryan Suter. It took up almost $13 million of their salary cap last year, and another $2 million will be added to that this season, along with Matt Boldy’s $7 million extension kicking in and the extension needed for goaltender Filip Gustavsson.

They also lack a true elite No. 1 center to complement Boldy or Kirill Kaprizov, and it’s made offense harder to come by even with those two talented players. It’s a good group that’s found a way to work around it with a defense-heavy system, and they will certainly compete for the playoffs, but it’s hard to see them contending for Cups like the teams above them until after 2024-25 when the worst of Parise and Suter’s buyout penalties are done.

6. Boston Bruins

You would think that the team coming off the best regular season in NHL history would be higher on this list, even after a disappointing first round exit, but as long as Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci’s futures are up in the air, it leaves the Bruins with a massive hole down the middle. That leaves Pavel Zacha and Charlie Coyle as their best potential options in the organization, and even with David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand on their wings, it might not be a strong enough group, at least as far as Cup contention goes. Add in that the best UFA center options will either be past-their-prime options like Ryan O’Reilly and Jordan Staal or centers better suited for middle-six roles like Max Domi and J.T. Compher, and they’re either going to be looking at a weak center group for their team next year or they’ll be going to the trade market with depleted draft and prospect capital.

If Bergeron or Krejci returns, especially Bergeron, this team can at least be something close to what it was in 2022-23. But without them, the state of this team is in flux, especially with their bonus overages and Pastrnak’s extensions meaning that most of their UFAs won’t be coming back. A few other players will likely have to be dealt to make the space. The Bruins were counted out last season with their early season injuries and proved everybody wrong, so don’t write them off just yet, but their future is definitely a lot more uncertain than the those of the other first-round exits.

7. Winnipeg Jets

As long as Connor Hellebuyck is playing for the Jets, they’ll have a chance at making the playoffs and being competitive. But with four members of their core set for unrestricted free agency next season (assuming Pierre-Luc Dubois signs another one-year deal, though he’s a strong trade candidate), and one of them being Hellebuyck, I think fans can be forgiven for feeling a bit uncertain of this team’s future. GM Kevin Cheveldayoff made it seem like they don’t plan on blowing up the team just yet, but with all the criticisms this core has been given, it’s hard to see them sticking together for much longer.

The indecisiveness is what partially drops them so low on this list, but it’s also the fact that either option is not one built for immediate success with this group. If they blow it up, they obviously won’t be good next year as they look to rebuild, and it might be particularly ugly because the time to really rebuild was this year with a player like Connor Bedard on the table. If they keep the group together, then there hasn’t really been anything they’ve shown in recent seasons that indicates they’ll be a Cup contender next season, and then it just kicks the rebuild can a bit further down the road. In fact, it possibly gets worse because so many of their core players can just walk to free agency next season, while this offseason they could potentially be dealt for good hauls with a year left on their deals. Maybe they finally take a step to be as good as the 2017-18 team that went to the Western Conference Final, but there’s a lot more evidence to suggest that it’ll be another year of mediocrity if they don’t blow it up this offseason.

8. New York Islanders

Much like the Jets, the Islanders could still be competitive next season because of the Ilya Sorokin factor, but there isn’t a lot else going for this middling squad that has some aging players locked up long term. Nothing big is expiring this offseason, and only Josh Bailey’s $5 million cap hit will be off the books next offseason. That’s not a lot of cap room to make moves to add some scoring talent to a team that is in desperate need of some.

It doesn’t help that Bo Horvat proved to not be the right move for this group, as he went from being a lock for 40 goals and flirting with 50 when he was dealt from the Vancouver Canucks to only scoring seven goals in 30 games in the regular season and one in the playoffs. And he’ll be making $8.5 million for the next eight seasons when they could have tried to improve this group with a bigger piece.

That’s been par for the course under Lou Lamoriello though. Even with those playoff runs to the conference finals in 2020 and 2021, a lot of that has been due to the strong systems coached by Barry Trotz, and in spite of the players Lamoriello has brought in. They aren’t bad by any means, but their lineup has a lot of average pieces at best, and in an era where you either need talent or strategy, Lamoriello’s recent moves have left them without either.

If he continues to be at the helm, they’re destined for mediocrity and even if he leaves in the next season or two, the next GM has a massive cap hole to get out of before this team becomes a true contender again. If teams like the Bruins and Jets decide to blow it up, they at least have an easy path to that and some solid pieces to move and establish a strong prospect pool, but the Islanders won’t find too many of those in their system. They dealt their best forward prospect, Aatu Raty, in the Horvat trade. Maybe they make the playoffs again next season, but that will rest solely on Sorokin, and a goalie can only carry a team so far on his own.

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