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Neil Paine
Hockey is a notoriously chaotic sport in which you need a large sample of games to know what’s real versus what’s just noise. For instance, it is estimated that it takes the entire 82-game NHL season to give us as much information about team quality as just 32 NBA games — or less than half the regular season — do.
So it’s always risky to draw grand conclusions from what we see over the first month of play on the ice. But that can’t stop us from finding interesting trends emerging from the early portion of the schedule.
Here are seven initial developments that have taken us by surprise in 2024-25 so far:
1. Ovechkin’s comeback against Father Time
One of the biggest storylines heading into the season was Alex Ovechkin‘s pursuit of Wayne Gretzky’s goal-scoring record, with the Great 8 starting the season trailing The Great One by 41 scores.
If the Washington Capitals star scored at his career rate of 0.60 goals per game, it would have taken him 69 games to catch Gretzky — well within the realm of possibility this season — but as I noted in the preseason, that production didn’t look realistic for the 39-year-old Ovechkin coming off the lowest-scoring full season of his 20-year career (31 goals). If Ovi kept declining or missed time, it was no sure thing he would reach Gretzky’s mark.
But instead of fading further with age, Ovechkin has made a huge comeback over Father Time.
Ovi already has 10 goals in his first 15 games of the season, the ninth time he has scored that many goals in that span of games to begin a season in his career. At his current pace, he will reach Gretzky within the next 47 games — setting the potential record-breaking date for early March. And while that’s still probably not realistic (he’s shooting at a 19% clip, well beyond his career rate of 12.9%), Ovechkin will challenge the record by early April if he scores at his combined rate from the past three seasons the rest of the way.
However the chase plays out, Ovechkin has rebounded from what was probably the worst season of his career with one of his best performances in many years at the start of 2024-25, a testament to both his enduring talent and his drive to become the game’s greatest scorer.
2. The Jets are on full burn
Teamwise, one of the most stunning developments of the young season has been the Winnipeg Jets‘ rise — not just to the top of the 2024-25 standings but to the best 16-game start in NHL history by win-loss record (15-1).
Winnipeg was far from a bad team last season, ranking fourth in both standings points and schedule-adjusted goals-per-game differential. The Jets boasted the Vezina Trophy winner in the league’s top goalie (Connor Hellebuyck) and had a trio of 25-goal scorers in Mark Scheifele, Nikolaj Ehlers and Kyle Connor. But they also continued their habit of falling off in the second half of the schedule, culminating in a five-game playoff defeat to the Colorado Avalanche, and then were one of the teams that lost the most value over the 2024 offseason.
Up against all of that, it would not have been surprising if the Jets got off to a slow start in 2024-25. But instead, Winnipeg has lost only once (against the Maple Leafs on Oct. 28) behind its customary top-ranked defense — Hellebuyck is once again playing like the best goalie in the game — and one of the league’s most improved offensive attacks. At that end of the ice, the Jets have risen from 15th in goals per game to first, with the league’s No. 1-ranked power play (42.2% success rate) and Ehlers, Connor and Scheifele all on pace for at least 103 points.
As mentioned previously, the Jets have a history of starting hot and cooling off down the stretch, so it remains a question how much we can expect this team to maintain its sudden league-best form. That’s especially true considering the Jets have a roster that hasn’t changed much from last season — but for now, coach Scott Arniel’s team is off to a stellar start.
3. Older teams are flourishing early on
What do Ovechkin’s ageless performance in Washington and the Jets’ surprising resurgence have in common? They both involve teams that rank among the NHL’s oldest and are enjoying strong starts in 2024-25.
And they’re not alone.
Of the league’s top 13 teams by goal differential, only two (the Dallas Stars and Ottawa Senators, tied with an average roster age of 28.2) rank among the top 10 youngest rosters, while 10 rank 15th or lower, and six — the Jets, Maple Leafs, Lightning, Devils, Hurricanes and Capitals — sit 20th or lower in the youth rankings, with a combined average age of 29.2.
Among the graybeards on pace for more than 20 adjusted goals above replacement are Ovechkin (age 39), goalies Jonathan Quick (39) and Cam Talbot (37), and forwards Matt Duchene (34), Artemi Panarin (33) and Mark Stone (32). Even Hellebuyck, the reigning top goalie in the sport, is 31 this season.
Not every older team is excelling: See the Penguins and Predators, the NHL’s two oldest rosters (who are a combined 11-18-5), and to a lesser extent the Oilers, Islanders and Red Wings. But the blueprint for building a winning team this season involves, more often than not, assembling a bunch of veterans rather than a group of young, inexperienced talent.
4. Big names with a small impact — so far
It’s been about a month, but we’re still waiting for some of the league’s most prominent players and teams to make their presence known this season.
Take, for instance, Auston Matthews of the Leafs and Steven Stamkos of the Predators, two of the league’s biggest stars from the past half decade-plus. In 2024-25 so far, both are producing surprisingly ordinary numbers: Matthews has never had fewer than the 50 adjusted points he’s currently on pace for, while Stamkos has checked in below his current pace of 40 adjusted points only once (the 2016-17 season, which he missed most of with a torn knee ligament).
Matthews has been hurt this season — he hasn’t played since Nov. 3 — so he will likely pick things up once he gets back to 100%, while Stamkos is a veteran still adjusting to joining a new team. But it’s jarring anytime we see those two look mortal. The same goes for a handful of other players off to slow starts by their lofty standards, including Boston’s David Pastrnak and Charlie Coyle, Edmonton’s Zach Hyman and Connor McDavid, K’Andre Miller and Mika Zibanejad of the Rangers, Devon Toews of Colorado, and Dallas’ Jason Robertson.
Some of these disappointing performances are spilling over into their teams’ performance as well. Nashville, Boston, Colorado and Edmonton are all among the teams who have lost the most Stanley Cup odds since the preseason. The latter three still have better than a coin flip’s chance to make the playoffs after their slow starts, but the Preds are already down to just a 21% playoff probability despite adding a handful of big names last offseason.
5. Goalies are starting off slow
Leaguewide, scoring is slightly up from last season, rising from 3.11 goals per game (GPG) to 3.12 — which is on pace to be the third-highest scoring NHL season in the past 30 years. That’s exciting news for those of us who grew up in the dead puck era (and have no interest in going back), but the reason why scoring remains high is just as intriguing.
Power-play output is roughly in line with the previous few seasons, all of which make up the league’s recent scoring renaissance. But shots per game are down to 29.0, a mark that would be tied for the lowest in an NHL season since 2003-04, before the post-lockout rule changes that officially ended the low-scoring era of the late 1990s and early 2000s. At regular shooting percentages, this would have led to the league GPG dipping to its second-lowest level since 2016-17 — not exactly a return to dead puck numbers but a noticeable downturn nonetheless.
The one thing keeping scoring high in spite of fewer shots is that goalies are stopping the puck less than they have in nearly three decades. If it holds up, their current save percentage of .901 would be tied for the lowest mark in a season since 1995-96. (Not coincidentally, 1995-96 was the last truly high-scoring season before the dead puck era set in for the next decade or more.) As part of this trend, 13 of the 35 goalies with at least eight starts this season have a SV% below .900, as Colorado’s Alexandar Georgiev brings up the rear with a dreadful .863 mark.
Goalies are also a lot less successful at stopping the tough shots that often make or break a team’s chances of winning: According to Natural Stat Trick, save percentages on “high-danger” chances at 5-on-5 have dropped from .825 over the previous three seasons to just .814 this season — a much larger drop than we see even in the leaguewide data across all situations and chances.
While things might change slightly over the rest of the season, there’s actually a very strong correlation (0.967) between the league’s save percentage over the first 15 games per team of the season and the eventual full-season leaguewide save percentage. So the trend of reduced goaltending effectiveness will likely be a theme all season long.
6. We’re (still) telling Canada there’s a chance
One of last season’s big narratives was the very real possibility that a Canadian team would win the Stanley Cup for the first time in over 30 years. Four playoff teams from north of the border ranked among the top 11 in the Elo power ratings heading into the postseason, the Oilers and Canucks advanced out of Round 1, and McDavid and Edmonton went all the way to Game 7 of the Cup Final before running out of gas against the Florida Panthers.
When I crunched the numbers on the eve of the playoffs, Canadian teams collectively had a 27% chance to win the Cup, which was their highest pre-playoff probability in any season since 1993-94. Things haven’t changed all that much if we check on the situation now. Four Canadian teams are currently running among the top 12 in the Elo ratings, and as a whole, the league’s northern-based contingent has an Elo-based Stanley Cup probability of 27%.
Chief among those are the Jets (14%), with the Oilers (6%), Leafs (3%), Canucks (3%) and Senators (1%) spaced back behind Winnipeg. (The betting odds disagree — ESPN BET lists Edmonton as the favorite, despite its weak start, with Toronto next over Winnipeg and Vancouver.) Either way, we should see that group keep the battle going this season, and those teams might even be joined in that fight by the Flames (42% to make the playoffs).
In other words, Canada’s Cup hopes are far from extinguished.
7. Makar’s Bobby Orr season
We mentioned above that the Avalanche were among the preseason contenders who have lost the most from their Cup odds since opening night, and that’s true even after the Avs picked up a few recent wins (including a multigoal comeback over the mighty Hurricanes on Saturday). But we can’t really hold that against Cale Makar, who is off to one of the most spectacular starts to a season by a defenseman in league history.
As of Thursday, Makar led all NHL D-men in points — 25 in 17 games — and was tied for third in the league overall. (Josh Morrissey and Neal Pionk of the Jets are second among defensemen, all the way down at a tie for 29th with 17 points.) But that’s only scratching the surface of the impressiveness of Makar’s season so far. If we prorate Makar’s numbers to a full season and adjust for the league’s scoring environment, he is tracking for the third-most adjusted points by any full-time defenseman in a single season in NHL history:
Each of the five seasons sandwiched around Makar belongs to Boston Bruins legend Bobby Orr, who is widely regarded as the greatest to play the position, which should give us a sense of how special Makar’s 2024-25 season might be.