A friend of mine offered an interesting question, mostly just to chat about for a little and move on but it’s been sticking in my mind for a while now. The question was who will be in last place in the Eastern Conference next season?
It’s been an interesting point to ponder on in the dead of summer. Not all the teams are particularly good, but no one is currently trying to be bad by punting the season through a long-term rebuilding strategy these days that has made themselves a poor team either. There are no Chicago’s or Calgary’s in the East these days that will drop far behind the pack and await what they hope will be a brighter future. All 16 teams in the East, to varying degrees, have the goal, desire and something of an expectation to make the playoffs next season.
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That shapes up to mean chaos and fun. Take a look at last season – the three worst teams in the Eastern Conference ended up being Florida (the 2x defending Stanley Cup champions), Toronto (the team that finished second in points for the conference the year prior in 2024-25) and the New York Rangers (who were first in the East as recently as 2023-24).
That’s probably three teams that this time 12 months ago almost no one would have guessed would be at the bottom of the conference, although there were some warning signs with NYR and Aleksander Barkov’s preseason injury did impact the Panthers in a predictable way before the year started. If anything in the modern NHL, you might as well throw out the results of the prior year when attempting to forecast the future. The base of what has happened isn’t going to be a roadmap for what is to come, by and large for many teams.
Going off my preseason predictions, I would have had Philadelphia, Boston and Pittsburgh as the bottom-three teams in 2025-26, all of which you might notice made the playoffs. That’s pretty humbling to undertake the projection of who could be the worst in 2026-27.
So who is going to end up 16th out of 16 teams? Let’s see how it could happen with some candidates, in no specific order.
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Detroit Red Wings – There are a lot of pieces of strife here: the captain wants a trade, the franchise legend GM got kicked upstairs, one of their best players in Alex Debrincat is an impending free agent with an uncertain future, their defense is mostly a collection of trash besides one great player and their goaltending is borderline shaky. Maybe the Red Wings pull the nose up on this thing, but isn’t a challenge to imagine that things get worse before they get better.
New York Rangers – We liked their offseason in terms of immediate upgrades to the team, but last year’s last place team still has a lot consternation hanging over it like a black fog. This team looks like they’re one Igor Shesterkin injury away from disaster. Of course, that could be said of many if their best player was out, but I think the Rangers this year have a low ceiling and an even lower floor that puts them in the conversation of being a low-end team.
Pittsburgh Penguins – The top five returning scorers range in age of 33-40, eventually the core that was strong enough to power the Pens to the playoffs last season is going to lose strength. Several supporting players all had career seasons last year and could be difficult to duplicate. The top-three goaltenders in the organization have combined for 78 career NHL games entering the season, the defensive numbers were among the worst in the league without much in the way of upgrades.
New York Islanders – The Islanders strategy seems to be ‘let’s hope Peter DeBoer can make some magic’, because they’ve done almost nothing this off-season to improve. They’ve lost multiple captain-type of players recently (first Brock Nelson in 2025, then Anders Lee this summer). Matthew Schaefer and Ilya Sorokin (plus Bo Horvat and Mat Barzal) might given them enough talent to escape last place, but this also looks like a situation where a new GM needs some burdensome contracts to tick away while replenishing the system with young talent, a process that sometimes means enduring pain along the way.
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Columbus Blue Jackets – Their top six players from last season: Zach Werenski (might not sign with them again, was almost traded before situation smoothed out), Kirill Marchenko (reportedly doesn’t want to re-sign), Adam Fantilli (RFA, still unsigned), Charlie Coyle (re-signed as an overpayment), Boone Jenner and Mason Marchment (both left as free agents). Looks very unsettled right now for an organization known to take one step forward followed by shuffling towards the back.
Buffalo Sabres – They lost their second-highest scoring forward (Alex Tuch) and second-highest scoring defenseman (Bowen Byram) with no replacement, save Olen Zellweger. The highest paid forward (Josh Norris) has missed more time with injury than he’s played in the last four seasons. Their current goalies (Alex Lyon and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen) don’t inspire a lot of confidence, though rumors of a Connor Hellebuyck trade would surely elevate Buffalo into a strong position – if it materializes. It would be shocking if the Sabres ended up all the way at the bottom, and they showed they have a very high ceiling if their young core takes another step, but I don’t know, can’t shake the feeling that they have elements of coming back to the pack after a tremendous season.
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We just blurbed on six teams, not far off from half the conference. The options added up quickly, even though the cases for all could be stretches and dependent on worst case scenarios happening. Maybe one of these teams finish last, but then again it wouldn’t be a shocker if several of them end up making the playoffs next season either. That’s the NHL these days, filled with parity and unexpected outcomes. About all we can know for sure is that some team out there is going to finish at the bottom, and much like last season’s lower-end teams, they probably will be wondering just how it ended up that way.
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