October 26, 2025 | 12:00pm ET
By Mike Cranwell, TheFourthPeriod.com
2025-26 BURNING QUESTIONS: PART 2
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Mitch Marner, forward
And we’re back!
On Thursday, I dropped Part 1 of my burning questions. It’s time for Part 2, Sunday Funday edition. Enjoy:
NY Rangers: Once in awhile, you get a team where on paper, it should be good. On paper, they should be able to do some damage. And then once the blades hit the ice, it doesn’t happen, as three wins in their first nine games is not what this management group expects of this team.
As much as the Rangers feel like they should be a contender, something feels... off. It’s got a new Head Coach – one of the best, a winner, in Mike Sullivan – arguably the best goalie in the world in Igor Shesterkin, one of the best defensemen in the league in former Norris Trophy winner Adam Fox, and several big-name forwards. And yet... something doesn’t feel right.
It may be on forward, where the big names are all aging, where newer acquisition J.T. Miller is now the Captain (and boy was he asleep against Toronto last Thursday), where Mika Zibanejad last season gave a sneak preview into what his aging curve looks like and now everyone’s wondering when the wheels will fall off, or how the LTIR status of Vincent Trocheck will effect the team, as his effort level has never been in question.
It may be on defense, where after Adam Fox and big-time acquisition Vlad Gavrikov, the Rangers have two Seattle castoffs (isn’t Seattle too new to have castoffs? That’s ominous) who the Rangers hope can be their second pair, a RHD whose shoulder has limited him for so long that now that it's healed, they aren’t sure what Brayden Schneider can do, and, well, hope, on the left side of that third pair, that someone will be serviceable (early respect to Matthew Robertson).
Watching the Rangers face off against the Leafs last Thursday, my eye kept going to Alexis Lafreniere. In his draft season, he was a beast. This led to him being the first overall pick in the Covid draft, which if you go back and look at it, that's a pretty messy draft. The other night, watching a player who should be at the very least entering his peak, it felt like watching someone who was drafted in the middle of the first round. He plays a good offensive game, he's around the puck (not always easy for a winger), good shot, good release, and knows how to use defenders as a screen. He can play positional defense, even if his body language screams "Do I have to?" as he goes lower in his own zone. But, at least that night, there's no gamebreaker there. He's not Bread, who's dancing on his toes all night long, controlling the puck, making high-danger cross ice wrist shot passes that get deflected into the crowd because...he took a wrist shot as a pass into the slot, but at least he's trying. Lafreniere has this one-and-done sniper energy. Honestly, he looks like a better version of Toronto's Nick Robertson. Lafreniere looks like a top-six winger who will peak in the 70-point range if he has forwards who are consistently looking for him, and the fact that he hasn’t gotten 70 points yet speaks to the fact that he hasn’t been top priority on any line he’s played on. He won't drive play on his own, though once he has the puck he can create opportunities. But, first overall-level impact, it's simply not there.
This team is aging, players are miscast, Shesterkin can only do so much, and the sum of the parts do not add up to a true contender.
Ottawa: Boy did this look different before Brady Tkachuk took a cheap shot from Roman Josi and broke his wrist. By the way, is Josi always like this? He was a bit of a jerk in the Toronto game too. Dirty play has always bothered me. If you're good enough to play at that level, then play. If you need to be dirty to play, then you're putting someone else's dream/career/livelihood at risk, and you shouldn't be there.
*Steps off soapbox*
The question for Ottawa is now a simple one. Can they stay afloat long enough without Tkachuk to make a run to the playoffs once he returns in around eight weeks?
Philadelphia: Might be leaning too heavily on logic for this, but if you put NHL-average goaltending on last year's team, are they not in the playoffs?
Dan Vladar, for my money, is one of those goalies that has loads of potential, tons of talent, but has never been given the ball enough to become The Guy. He provides insulation to battery mate Samuel Ersson (awesome name), who should now feel like he doesn't have to be the hero each game he plays. If Vladar comes close to maintaining his ridiculous early-season stats, if Trevor Zegras continues to impress Head Coach Rick Tocchet, if key defensemen like Cam York and Jamie Drysdale can grow without former coach John Tortorella's wet blanket weighing them down, and if Matvei Michkov can at least have the body language of not wanting to play a 200-foot game while playing a 200-foot game, this team could be a sleeper.
Pittsburgh: Geno Malkin's starting the year with his annual early season hot start. This guy should clearly train NHL players in the off-season, because no matter how old he gets, or how many ACLs he goes through, you can set your clock to Malkin starting the regular season on fire.
When I was writing about Pittsburgh, I was strong on the idea of Malkin moving to the wing. If memory serves, on the wing he'd skate about 40% as much as he does at center. This would protect those rebuilt knees and literally put less miles on his body, thus keeping him fresh much longer into, if not throughout the entire season.
Malkin and Sidney Crosby have played together so much over the years that they do have chemistry. Even at their advanced ages, a Malkin-Crosby-Rust trio (Rust brings that 200-foot game, speed, and the ability to win 50/50 puck battles along the wall along with a near point-per-game skillset) is dangerous night-in and night-out. I do think that Crosby would have had at least one more 100-point season had Sullivan done this two years ago, and Malkin would have more in the tank and been more productive. Yes, the trade off is "Who centers the second line?" But a name-only Malkin who's cooked is no better than a 3rd liner moving up a level (like Boston does with Pavel Zacha). Why not take a playmaking, defensively strong center like Alex Wennberg (currently mentoring the youth in San Jose), trade a 2nd round pick for him, plug Malkin onto the wing, and GO?
San Jose: Depending on who you are, this may or may not be a hot take. Macklin Celebrini should be on Team Canada's Olympic team this year, and should play at least two games during the Olympics. Can barely drive, can't legally drink or gamble yet, should absolutely be on a team with Connor McDavid, Crosby, Mackinnon, etc.
Give this team two year, and oh boy do they have something here.
Seattle: It felt so obvious at the time that then-GM Ron Francis, someone who many in hockey circles feel is perhaps the smartest person in hockey, was making a massive mistake with how he handled the 2021 Expansion Draft. Seeing that team now, yeah, it could've gone better.
Jeff Marek is fond of saying that it feels like there were many people in Seattle's front office making roster decisions. It makes sense to me, as this is still a very piecemeal, Nashville in 2004-looking team. Perhaps Jason Botterill, who got his GM baptism by fire in Buffalo, has learned from those experiences and can guide the team in the right direction. For now, Seattle has to hope that their young forwards keep developing, that Vince Dunn and Brandon Montour, both excellent defensemen, show up strong this year (so far so good on that front), and that Joey Daccord is the real deal. Enough good years from their best people, and if players like Jamie Oleksiak and Adam Larsson can continue to be top-four D for another year, then like those pesky early Nashville teams, Seattle could surprise.
Can't believe I just wrote that.
St. Louis: They have as good of a Head Coach as there is in the NHL in Jim Montgomery. Their top goalie can flip a switch and go into WIN MODE whenever he wants, and their backup should be one of the best in the league. Their defense is solid, as is their top-9 forwards, where they've got some real depth as Jake Neighbours, Jimmy Snuggerud, and the STOLEN Dylan Holloway step onto the team and/or into bigger roles. This team should do well, and may be a contender if fellow STOLEN Philip Broberg takes another step forward in his development, allowing other D to not have to play as high on the depth chart.
Tampa Bay: Such a strong team during the pandemic, the pundits can not let them go. In fairness, they have good reasons for this. The Jake Guentzel replacement of Steven Stamkos last summer was an upgrade and would add some freshness to the room. Reacquiring Ryan McDonough from Nashville was the single-most underrated move of the summer of 2024, as it led to Andrei Vasilevskiy's best regular season since 2020-21, solidified a D-corps that had not been the same since McDonough was originally dealt, and not for nothing, was a major reason why Nashville fell on it's face last season.
That all being said, it’s easier to pick teams and players who have been successful in the past than it is to project a team such as Montreal and its top young players who haven’t done it yet to get there now.
If – and it's a big IF – Tampa can stay healthy this year (roster is aging, has a lot of miles on it, many players going to the Olympics), then yes, it could be a team you see in at least the Conference Finals.
Beyond the health issues though, you also have Nikita Kucherov, who can win an Art Ross Trophy anytime McDavid or MacKinnon take their foot off the gas, but can't score in the playoffs anymore. You have an aging Victor Hedman, who is not the same as he was in those 2020 and 2021 Cup runs. And you have Vasilevskiy, who has all of four wins in his last three playoff series combined, and seemingly can't rise up to the big game anymore. So yeah, it's a big IF here, as reputation will only take you so far.
Toronto: "I can't believe they let Marner walk for nothing."
"Letting one player go isn't a 'culture change'"
"Toronto isn't going to score enough goals this year"
"We lost one of the best players in the league and didn't properly replace him. How can this team possibly be better than last year's team?"
These are many of the key talking points floating around the Maple Leafs this past summer. So, let's talk about them, as nothing has changed early into the season.
Mitch Marner didn't walk for nothing. Nicolas Roy and his big-bodied right-handed Center with a Stanley Cup ring came back for Marner. For the past four years, Roy has been around the 15 goal, 0.5 ppg range, which should be a lovely addition to Toronto's bottom-six. If you watched Roy dominate bottom-six minutes in Vegas, especially during their Stanley Cup run in 2023, you know that Roy can be the third line Center on a winning team (even if he was VKG's 4th line Center during that run).
Letting one player go took some very real negative energy out of the Leafs' dressing room. No matter what kind of point production he brought, or who he was friends with, Springtime Marner was a net-negative for Toronto, full stop. Adding in people like Dakota Joshua (seriously, let go of last year and early days this year, the guy came back from cancer treatments and got back in shape to play in the best hockey league in the world during the season, he'll be fine), who should mesh well with Roy, a (nearly) full season of the awesome human being that is Scott Laughton, and more of Matthew Knies' fearless energy being omni-present in the dressing room, and you'll see the culture shift happen in real time.
The remaining talking points go hand-in-hand, as of course you need to score more goals than the other team to win. No fancy stats, let’s simply talk about goals.
Removed from last year's team: Marner, Max Pacioretty, David Kampf, Pontus Holmberg, and for fun, let's add Nick Robertson to the list as it’s clear to me at least that he’s playing every game as an audition for a trade. Those five players played a combined 314 games, and accounted for 59 goals and 110 assists, for a total of 169 points. That's 0.53 points-per-game. Now, Toronto has added Roy, Joshua, Matias Maccelli, a (nearly) full season of Scott Laughton, a bit of Easton Cowan and Sammy Blais, along with an improving Matthew Knies, and a healthy Calle Jarnkrok (contract year alert) plus...oh yes, a healthy Auston Matthews. What can we project from this group? Let's assume 75-80 games for everyone listed below (unless otherwise noted), look at both their scoring history and place in the lineup, and project the following:
Returning players
Matthews: 55-55-110 (last year: 33-45-78 in 67 GP)
Knies: 35-35-70 (last year: 29-29-58 in 78 GP)
Jarnkrok: 15-19-34 (last year: 1-6-7 in 19 GP)
New/First full season Players
Maccelli: 16-36-52
Roy: 15-27-42
Joshua: 15-20-35
Laughton: 12-18-30
Cowan/Blais: 7-10-17 (50 GP)
From the returning players, that adds 43 goals, 29 assists, and 72 points in 76 games played by those three players instead of replacement players (0.95 ppg).
From the newer players, that's 65 goals, 111 assists, and 176 points in 370 GP (0.48 ppg).
Marner's lost point production is around 71% replaced by full, healthy seasons from Matthews, Knies, and Jarnkrok. Maccelli getting around half of Marner's points, along with strong positional production/improvement from Roy, Joshua, Laughton, and the Cowan/Blais combo (that's pretty much all Cowan, by the way), and it's easy to see how this balanced lineup should ultimately produce at around the level that last year's lineup did. Having this production come from all four lines as opposed to only the first two means that opposing teams need to keep on their toes and be careful regardless of what line is out there.
None of this projection accounts for likely improved seasons from Bobby McMann (the longer he plays in the top-six, the more he'll produce) and Morgan Rielly, who is in better shape than last year, is only in his age-32 season, and who was Toronto's best player to start the season.
In short, health of course notwithstanding, Toronto will score this year, it will simply look different than it has in years past. And regardless of the success that Marner may find in Vegas, his moving on was the move necessary for Toronto to keep moving forward.
Utah: I am a huge fan of Jack McBain. Ridiculously so. Big, fast, grindy, has mitts, there's so much potential here. Watching McBain though is a microcosm of everything good and everything bad with Utah.
Some shifts, McBain will use his size and speed to do good things. Other times, he gets put out for a penalty kill, gets lost cheating while the puck is being moved around, blows his assignment, and it leads to a goal – in this case, Calgary's first goal on Wednesday night.
That's Utah, in a nutshell. They've got a lot of good pieces, and a great Head Coach (Andre Tourigny is one of the best in the game and is absolutely underrated). They do not, however, have a true #1 D (Mikhail Sergachev is more of a Morgan Rielly #1 D, which is to say that in a good game or good season, he can play the role, but not consistently year-after-year), and that limits the team overall. Some forwards are at their peak; others are still developing. The defense cannot produce enough offense, especially with Sean Durzi out for the next several weeks with an upper-body injury.
Utah is currently a borderline team. Will they make a trade to fill a hole on defense? Can they make the playoffs? If they do, what kind of noise will they make, and if they can't... what do they do next?
Vancouver: Does the magic man get his magic back? Does Elias Pettersson have the wingers he needs to get his magic back? 1-3-4 in eight games is not a good start.
Can Thatcher Demko stay healthy on a wonky knee while playing a style of goaltending that demands a lot from his knees (he needed that surgery for a reason).
Will Adam Foote be an effective NHL Head Coach?
Vegas: As we've seen time and time again, high-end depth wins Stanley Cups. High-end depth isn't simply having two of the best players in the world, it’s having players playing a rung lower on the depth chart than they would be on other teams (like Nicolas Roy used to). A Cup-winning 3rd liner is a 2nd liner on another team; their 5th D playing 17-18 minutes a night is playing 21 minutes in the top-4 on another team, etc.
The Vegas team that won the Stanley Cup had this level of depth across the roster. This version absolutely still has it across the forward lines. The defense, that's where the questions now lie. Shea Theodore is a legit #1 D, so that’s a start. Losing Alex Pietrangelo, however, means that not only does Vegas no longer have two legit #1 D, it also means that everyone has to step up a rung. Below Theodore and (the currently injured) Noah Hanifin, you have Brayden McNabb, who regularly plays 18-19 minutes a night and still is, but now those minutes have to be damn-near perfect. Below these three are Zach Whitecloud moving from the bottom pair into the top-four, Kaedan Korczak moving from the #7 spot into a regular third-pair role, Jeremy Lauzon coming over from last year's awful Nashville team, and Ben Hutton, who's been with the team for several years now but has never had an everyday role and likely will continue not to once Hanifin returns from injury. This looks like a #1D, a #2D, and then five 5-7D, two of whom will be asked at any given time to play far above their level.
Like all winning teams, Vegas has a sound defensive structure. Yes, the right structure can elevate defensemen (Florida is a perfect example), though it's one thing to ask former top defensemen to play a lesser role in a structure set to let them succeed (Florida); it's another thing entirely to ask depth defensemen to step into a structure and be top-4 players when it's not in their skillset to begin with. Everyone is focused on the shiny new bauble Vegas has and how much offensive ability this team has, when they should be asking how Vegas will be able to defend, and not end up in a bunch of 5-4 hockey games, because those teams are not Cup-winning teams, and Vegas expects to win more Stanley Cups.
And all of this was before the latest Mark Stone injury.
Washington: Oh, this team confuses the pundits. And for good reason. NHL teams are built in cookie-cutter ways. Draft well, trade well enough, win, start losing, tank, draft well, win again. And yet Washington, once they started to lose, successfully rebuilt on-the-fly through shrewd free agent signings (Matt Roy) and trades (Jacob Chyrchrun, Logan Thompson, and lest we forget Pierre-Luc Dubois). With over $3.6M in cap space and no one on LTIR (*knocks wood*), Washington is projected to have more than $15.3M in trade deadline cap space, and $19M in playoff cap space, and as such is a team to not sleep on as a serious contender come spring time.
Winnipeg: Some obvious questions here. How will Jonathan Toews’ return to the NHL go? Can he be a legit second-line center, or will he have to play a lesser role?
How will the loss of Nik Ehlers affect the team?
Can Connor Hellebuyck continue his domination of the league?
Can this team again be the best team in the league?
Yet the one question I’ve seen more than once is, will they make the playoffs? Frankly, it’s a ridiculous question, one that early returns (five wins in their first seven games) have shown is ridiculous. They lost a second-line left winger, and replaced him with a heart-and-soul, ultra high-IQ, center legendary for his ability to flat-out win. They’ll make the playoffs, and likely without much issue.
To me, the question should be, can Winnipeg make an in-season acquisition that gives the team a legitimate chance to win the Western Conference and make the Stanley Cup Final?
Whew, that was a lot. Now that we've gotten through this early season missive together, I'd like thank you, the person reading this (especially if you made it all the way from start to finish), for reading. Whether you've read my previous work or this is your first time, we – from this website to hockey itself – do not exist without you. So, thank you for being here.
I look forward to you quietly agreeing with some of what I write, and loudly disagreeing with much of it. All I ask is that you either be respectful with your disagreement, or as ridiculous as possible with your disagreement, so that we can both take a second, laugh, and then I'll tell you why your favourite hockey team won't win the Stanley Cup in your lifetime – oh, wait, that's my team. Go Leafs Go!