The NHL’s regular season officially dropped the puck on Friday and Saturday in Prague, where the New Jersey Devils swept two games from the Buffalo Sabres in the annual Global Series. The rest of the league starts on Tuesday night, beginning the six-month journey to the Stanley Cup playoffs in April. Along with the perennial reshuffling of the league’s deck—with new faces in different places—the 2024–25 campaign marks the debut season for the Utah Hockey Club, which rose out of the smoldering ashes of the Arizona Coyotes franchise. Utah essentially bought the Coyotes’ hockey assets (including players and coaches) and relocated them to the Delta Center in Salt Lake City. Just add ice and ... presto! Instant NHL.
There’s much more to this season, though, than professional hockey in the high desert, including the monumental pursuit of the game’s most hallowed record by one of its greatest stars. Here are five things to watch as another year unfolds.
Alex Ovechkin’s drive to break the league’s all-time goals record
The Great 8 is just 41 goals shy of the 894 scored by none other than the Great One, Wayne Gretzky, and there is a chance Ovechkin, who turned 39 on Sept. 17, could surpass the mark this season. In his 19 NHL campaigns, he’s scored at least 42 goals in a season in 13 of them. The winger has never, in fact, scored fewer than 31 goals in an 82-game season—though the low-water mark was last year, when Ovechkin scored only eight goals through Jan. 24, before finishing with 23 in his final 36 games. Is the Russian Machine finally breaking down? The signals are mixed.
There’s little question that the graying Washington Capitals captain, who was a rookie at 20, is a worthy successor to Gretzky, who made his NHL debut as an 18-year-old. Ovi’s never come close to Gretzky’s 92-goal season in 1981–82, but he’s matched the Great One by scoring at least 50 nine times. Barring injury, Ovechkin has a good chance this year to get close to 894—and maybe even exceed it.
Steven Stamkos playing for the Predators
After 16 seasons and two Stanley Cups with the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Hammer departed in July and signed a four-year, $32 million free-agent deal with the Nashville Predators. The 34-year-old Stamkos still has the wicked one-timer that’s helped him score at least 40 goals five times in his career, including last year, when his 19 power-play goals were third-best in the league. It’s with good reason that the left face-off circle is known as Stamkos’s office.
The acquisition of the veteran center is part of the Predators’ all-out push to win a Stanley Cup this year. The team also signed Vegas Golden Knights center Jonathan Marchessault (winner of the 2023 Conn Smythe Trophy) Carolina Hurricanes defenseman Brady Skjei, and Dallas Stars backup goalie Scott Wedgewood—all, like Stamkos, on the first day of free-agency. “It’s huge because it’s a statement, I think, for the rest of the league that these players will come to Nashville,” Preds general manager Barry Trotz said after the signings. “These players see what we’re doing with our franchise. We have lots to offer, and we’re very determined to win. We’re committed to that. That’s what players want.”
The Oilers’ quest for a championship
No team from Canada has won the Stanley Cup since the Montreal Canadiens in 1992–93. But after pushing the Florida Panthers to seven games in last year’s Cup finals, the Edmonton Oilers are the favorite—of most hockey pundits and sportsbook punters—to win it all in 2024–25. The club is led by the superstar tandem of centers Connor McDavid (who scored 32 goals and added 100 assists last season) and Leon Draisaitl (41, 65). The 27-year-old McDavid, who is widely regarded as the top player in the game, was so good last spring that he won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP even though his team came up short of a championship. With the off-season signings of Sabres sniper Jeff Skinner and Los Angeles Kings winger Viktor Arvidsson in free agency, the Oilers figure to have the league’s top offense.
They’re likely to need it, because the back end—beyond the top defensive pairing of Evan Bouchard and Mattias Ekholm—is shaky, starting with 25-year-old goaltender Stuart Skinner. The runner-up for the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s top rookie two years ago, he needs to prove that his sparkling run through the postseason last years was no fluke.
The last shot for the Maple Leafs’ core four
After falling in seven games to the Boston Bruins in the first round of the playoffs last season, the Toronto Maple Leafs have decided to get tough. That began with the hiring of coach Craig Berube in May. Berube, who guided the St. Louis Blues to the Stanley Cup in 2018–19, is best-known for his teams’ physical forecheck. After the Leafs’ first on-ice session last month, winger Ryan Reaves said he thought the coach’s smashmouth approach sent a message to the team “about what our identity is going to be.”
Toronto is desperate to make a playoff run—the team has made it out of the first round only once in the last eight seasons—while its core four of forwards Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and John Tavares are still together. The Leafs were second in the league in scoring last season, with 298 goals, and the foursome accounted for more than half of them (164). Matthews won the Maurice Richard Trophy as the top scorer in the game, with 69. But the nucleus is regarded as soft, and tension is high. (Witness the chirping on the bench between Marner, Nylander and Matthews during Game 4 against Boston last spring.) The team came close to trading Marner during the offseason. He has only one year left on his contract, as does Tavares, and the conventional wisdom is that it will be time to move on if this season ends early.
A bumper crop of rookies
Philadelphia Flyers winger Matvei Michkov is the preseason favorite to win the Calder Trophy as the NHL rookie of the year. The 19-year-old is a marvelously skilled playmaker who should help Philadelphia improve on last season’s average of 2.82 goals per game, which was good for just 27th in the league. The only question mark for Michkov seems to be how he will mesh with John Tortorella, his prickly coach, who’s never been hesitant to bench someone who he feels isn’t playing “the right way.”
But Michkov will have plenty of company in the Calder race, especially from diminutive Stars winger Logan Stankoven, who scored 14 points (six goals, eight assists) in 24 games last season. Out West, the San Jose Sharks have the 2024 No. 1 pick, center Macklin Celebrini, who’s an exciting two-way player. Also ready to shine are Anaheim Ducks winger Cutter Gauthier, Calgary Flames goalie Dustin Wolf, and San Jose center Will Smith.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as 5 Storylines to Watch for the 2024–25 NHL Season.
