Weekend NHL rankings: A top 16, Gold Plan results and oddly specific predictions (2024)

We made it. We’re done.

Well, not all of you have made it, assuming “we” is referring to the teams, players and fans. We haven’t made it, because there are still a few days left in the regular season. Depending on which team you’re focused on, those days range in importance from ho-hum to already in playoff mode. Nobody’s done until the last whistle blows on Thursday night.

But this column, the weekend rankings? We’re done. We made it to the finish line of another season.

After all, this is the last Monday of the season, and a week from now, we’ll already be arguing about something that happened in a Game 1. It’s only a few days, but it might as well be forever in hockey-fan terms.

To go out on top, let’s bring back the format that you seemed to like last year: Five bonus predictions that will be way too specific, a full top 16 to replace the usual top 5 and a Gold Plan update in place of the bottom 5.

Just for the record, last year’s top prediction was “Boston loses in the first round” because I’m just really good at this. No, you don’t need to click and actually read it, just trust me, that’s what it said.

Bonus five: Oddly specific first-round predictions

5. Mark Stone scores the Golden Knights’ first goal — Bonus prediction: You’ll be really mad about it.

4. Auston Matthews will have a hat trick in Game 4 — He has just 22 goals to show for 50 career playoff games, although nine of those have come in the last 18 games. Still, that’s not enough for a multi-time Rocket Richard winner, so let’s say he breaks out in the Leafs’ second home game.

3. A goalie who has a shutout in Game 1 will lose his starting job by the end of the playoff run — This one might not be going out on a limb quite as far as it looks. Teams switching goalies during the playoffs has become more common, peaking with last year’s Golden Knights. Still, a shutout usually buys you some rope, so I think this one works.

2. The Oilers will score seven goals in the opener — Last year, I said they’d get shut out and that didn’t work, so let’s steer into the skid.

1. One of the Islanders or Predators is winning a Game 7 — Which one? I’m not sure. Maybe both? Probably both, but even I don’t have the guts to go that far, so we’ll settle for one and claim extra credit if it’s two. And no, this prediction will not remotely be reflected in the rankings below, thanks for noticing.

Road to the Cup

You know the drill: All 16 playoff teams, in order from least to most likely to win the Cup. Two sentences each, no more no less.

16. Whoever gets the last wild-card spot in the East — We don’t know who they’ll be yet, but we know that they can absolutely win a round or two, because this is the NHL and upsets are expected. It’s not likely, though, and as an added bonus, I can put them last without any specific fan base being mad at me.

15. Los Angeles Kings — They spent December in the top 5, peaking as high as the No. 2 spot, before fading. They’ve been better lately, but I can’t pick them in a likely matchup against an Oilers team they beat just once in four tries this year.

14. Nashville Predators — They’ve been a great story, and they could absolutely beat the Canucks if that’s who they draw. But they can’t go deep unless Juuse Saros stands on his head … which he absolutely could, come to think of it.

13. Whoever gets third place in the Metro, which will probably be the Islanders — They haven’t clinched, but they’re close enough that I’m kind of assuming they get it. They’ll finish about 20 points back of the Hurricanes or Rangers and will go into the series as underdogs, but the Ilya Sorokin/Patrick Roy combo makes an upset feel plausible.

12. Tampa Bay Lightning — Nobody should doubt the recent two-time champs, and Nikita Kucherov is going super-nova as the playoffs approach. Still, this has looked like a flawed team for most of the season, which makes it hard to put them in the top 10 unless you believe they have been playing possum.

11. Toronto Maple Leafs — At this point, I think they’re probably a little bit underrated, and their record over the last few months has been strong. But the goaltending and blue line are question marks, their path out of the East will be very tough, and when push comes to shove with these guys … well, you know.

10. Winnipeg Jets — The path out of the Central is brutal, and I don’t put as much stock in their late-season momentum as you might. Still, beating the Stars and Avalanche by a combined score of 10-0 has to be a confidence-booster, and it might also mean home ice.

9. Vancouver Canucks — “Nobody believes in us,” the fans all shouted, and honestly they kind of had a point. Now’s the chance to prove us all wrong, and the Predators wouldn’t be a bad first matchup.

8. Florida Panthers — They’ve recovered somewhat from a late-season wobble, but those weeks back in March, when they looked like the best team in the league, now feel like an outlier. Getting Tampa Bay instead of the Leafs is still on the table, and would be a slight upgrade to their chances, but either way, Dom’s model likes them more than I do.

7. Vegas Golden Knights — They barely snuck in, but that’s all the defending champs needed to do to make the regular season a success. Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational roster.

6. Boston Bruins — I’m fascinated to see how they play the goaltending this time around, especially after last year’s disaster, and whether it will be enough for a team that may only have one player hit 30 goals or 70 points. It has been, for most of the season, somewhat surprising.

5. Colorado Avalanche — I’m really not sure what to make of all those goals they’ve given up to the Jets, Stars and Oilers recently. But the idea of Nathan MacKinnon going full beast mode in a series means I can’t drop them out of my year-end top 5.

4. Edmonton Oilers — I’ve been on and off the bandwagon, and I’d move them down a spot or two if they end up drawing the Golden Knights instead of the Kings. But this is the best Oilers team of the Connor McDavid era by a mile, and I think this might finally be the year it clicks.

3. New York Rangers — Saturday’s shootout win over the Islanders was the worst possible result for those of us hoping for the first Battle of New York in 30 years. That’s bad news for entertainment value, but probably a positive for a Rangers team that’s spent most of the season looking like the team to beat in the conference.

2. Carolina Hurricanes — Rangers fans will be mad, and I might be, too, if the goaltending doesn’t hold. But the Jake Guentzel trade really is looking like the rare transformative deadline dunk, which is just enough to nudge them into being my Eastern pick.

1. Dallas Stars — They were my pick when the season began and they’ve been great all year, but their reward could be a healthy Vegas in the first round. They also lost the guy who was going to score the Cup-winning goal, which should make me pick against them, but forget it, we ride.

The bottom five

This section has spent all year trying to guess what the bottom of the standings would look like at the end of the year, and while we’re not quite there yet, we’re close enough that I’d just be cutting and pasting the lottery odds at you. The bottom four spots are already locked in — Sharks, Blackhawks, Ducks and Blue Jackets — and the only one still up for grabs is the last one. I’m going to award it to the Arizona Coyotes, if only because it might be my last chance to ever mention them in this column. Which stinks, by the way, whether it’s the right call or not.

Absolutely psychotic how the NHL sat on this sinking ship for two decades and now in a blink are rugpulling the same fan base that put up with this nonsense .. in mere days.

— Travis Yost (@travisyost) April 13, 2024

Instead, we like to use our year-end bottom 5 to give you the Gold Plan standings. That’s the system in which the teams start earning points toward a better draft pick once they’re eliminated from postseason contention. It’s far better than what we have now, since we make it harder to tank and end with fans of bad teams cheering them on instead of the miserable experience of hoping for losses. (Yes, you have concerns about the plan. No, you’re not right about any of them, as I explain here.)

Last year, we had a thrilling race to the wire, one that overlapped with the real-world “race” with one key game: Penguins at Blue Jackets, on April 13. The Blue Jackets won, tying the game late in the regulation and then going on to win in overtime on a goal by franchise player Johnny Gaudreau. In a Gold Plan world, that was the game in which the Blue Jackets clinched the top pick and Connor Bedard, in what would probably have stood as the greatest moment in team history. In the real world, the win actually ended up costing them that franchise-altering pick, and their fans were mad about it. But sure, great system we have now, no need to consider a change.

I’m guessing there won’t be as much suspense this year, as one team got hot and actually earned that top pick, and you won’t like who it was. To be clear, we can’t ever actually say what the standings would look like under the Gold Plan, because everyone’s incentives would change and the results down the stretch would be different. But just for fun, here’s what they’d look like, using official elimination dates from the NHL.

(And of course, if you’re not a fan of the Gold Plan, there’s an even better — and wackier — idea out there for the taking.)

And that’s the final buzzer on another season of the weekend rankings. Congratulations to the six teams that held down the No. 1 spot in the top 5 (Stars, Golden Knights, Rangers, Avalanche, Bruins and Panthers), and the two that were honored with the one-spot in the bottom 5 (take a guess), plus the eight teams that made it all through the season without showing up on either list (Penguins, Capitals, Flyers, Islanders, Maple Leafs, Lightning, Blues and Red Wings).

And a thank you, to you, for reading all season long. Yes, even those of you who didn’t agree that each and every week’s lists were 100 percent correct. Let’s plan to do it all again next season.

You can buy tickets to every NHL gamehere.

(Top photos of Connor McDavid, Auston Matthews and Mark Stone: Curtis Comeau / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images, Dan Hamilton / USA Today and Jeff Bottari / NHLI via Getty Images)