NHL Panic Meter for Every Team That Missed the Playoffs

While the 16 Stanley Cup playoff teams and their fanbases enjoy the next couple of months in their quest for a championship, there are 16 other teams and fanbases around the NHL already thinking ahead to next season.

In some cases, there should be reason for real optimism going into next season and the hope the team can turn things around quickly. NHL history suggests at least one, and most likely more than one, of these teams will make the playoffs next season. 

In other cases, there is probably some legitimate pessimism and panic about the direction of their franchise.

So with that said, it's time to take a look at the Panic Rating for the 16 teams that did not make the playoffs this season. 

Each team gets a rating on a scale of 1-10, with one being "absolutely no reason to panic about the state of the franchise," and 10 being "complete and total panic."

Some factors that should be taken into account are the team's performance this season, the quality of their management, their farm system, their salary-cap situation and how easily the NHL roster can be turned around over the next few weeks and months. 

Let’s go team-by-team and assess the level of panic for each of the NHL's 16 non-playoff teams this season.

It is not hard to see progress being made here with the Ducks. The 2024-25 season was their best finish in over six years, they have a lot of young talent, and quite a few of those players took big steps this season and are on their way to becoming big-time contributors.

They also seem to understand the urgency of the situation, with general manager Pat Verbeek already talking about how he is going to be aggressive this offseason in an effort to get into the playoffs.

The problem: Going from bad to average is a lot easier than going from average to bad. 

There is hope. But there is also still some work to do.

Panic rating: 5

For a few years we kept asking if this was going to be the year when the Bruins were going to take a step backwards. 

If we ask the question enough times, we were eventually going to be right. This year was that year. They were one of the worst teams in the NHL this season and do not really have a great outlook in the immediate future despite having David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy on the roster.

They are still lacking top-line centers, the defense is not what it once was, they have some big contracts on the roster and nobody knows if goalie Jeremy Swayman can bounce back, or if his disappointing 2024-25 season is a sign of things to come. 

They also don't appear to be in any hurry to make any changes to a front office that has not done a particularly good job over the past couple of years.

The Bruins could be in for some tough years in the near future.

Panic rating: 7

Do not be fooled by the Sabres' better play down the stretch. That is fool's gold in another lost season as their playoff drought extends to a 14th season. 

After this many years, this many coaching changes, this many general manager changes and this many rebuilds why should anybody have any confidence in ownership and management to get this right? Especially after a season where they entered with more than $6 million in unused salary-cap space.

Tage Thompson is great. Rasmus Dahlin is great. There are some good young players here. But the culture is just filled with losing, and that stink is hard to erase.

Panic rating: 9

The Flames entered the 2024-25 season looking like a team starting a significant rebuild. Or at least a re-tooling. They missed the playoffs in 2023-24 and had traded off several veteran players over a full calendar year. Expectations were low.

The Flames ended up exceeding all of them and remained in the playoff race until the very end of the season, improving by 15 points in the standings. 

It is entirely possible they can repeat that, and maybe even improve enough to get back into the playoffs next season. The question is whether they have enough high-end talent, and young high-end talent, to start making some noise as a contender.

Right now they look like a middle-of-the-pack team that could steal a playoff berth. 

That's not terrible. But it's also not particularly great. 

Panic Meter: 5

The Blackhawks have their franchise player in Connor Bedard and a wave of recent first-round picks just starting to hit the NHL. There is reason for optimism there because of that young talent, but that alone is not going to be enough. 

For one, not all of those prospects are going to develop the way the Blackhawks hope. Some of them are going to miss, just because that's how prospects work.

Second, you can't just throw a team of 18-22 year olds out on the ice and expect them to compete. They will be overmatched, they will struggle and probably lose. 

The Blackhawks have to complement them with strong pieces, and so far this front office has not demonstrated it can totally do that.

Keep something in mind here: The Blackhawks won fewer games in year two of Bedard's career than they did in the season in which they tore down their roster and tanked to try to position themselves for him. 

They need a lot of work. But they do have the most important piece to acquire (the young franchise player).

Panic Rating: 5

Of all the teams that missed the playoffs this season, I'm not sure there are any that should feel better about it than the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Nobody expected them to do anything this season, and they were not only right there in the race the entire season, but they are also as well-positioned as any team in the NHL going into next season.

They are loaded with young talent, including rising star center Adam Fantilli, have multiple first-round draft picks, a good collection of veterans (including defenseman Zach Werenski) and more salary-cap space than almost anybody else in the NHL going into the offseason. 

The playoffs should be a realistic expectation next season. This is a team going in the right direction.

Panic rating: 2

The Yzerplan is starting to run out of time. It has to be.

The 2024-25 season extended the Red Wings' playoff drought to nine consecutive seasons, with six of them coming during Steve Yzerman's time as general manager.

Even worse, they are not really getting closer.

Even worse than that, there seems to be some frustration creeping into the locker room.

Captain Dylan Larkin spoke this week about how the Red Wings' handling of the trade deadline was not well-received within the locker room as management did not really do anything to address the team's shortcomings. 

There was a brief surge at one point this season shortly after Todd McLellan took over as head coach, but it was not sustainable and the wins quickly dried up again. That surge was almost entirely power play-driven. The same defensive and 5-on-5 flaws that have existed for years were still lurking. 

If the Red Wings fail to make the playoffs again next season, it will extend their drought to a full decade. That is no longer acceptable. 

There is a lot of young talent reaching the NHL, but it is not going to be enough. They need more. 

Panic rating: 7

The Predators were a playoff team a year ago, went wild in the offseason by signing Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault and Brady Skjei in free agency, while also extending goalie Jusse Saros and trending their goalie of the future (Yaroslav Askarov).

Instead of building on last year's playoff appearance and taking a step back toward contention, they not only missed the playoffs but also had one of the worst records in the league. 

It's an older team with big contracts and not a great farm system to help quickly dig themselves out of this hole.

That hole only gets deeper if Saros does not play better next season.

Panic Rating: 8

The New York Islanders were not the worst team in the NHL this season, but they might have one of the worst long-term outlooks of any team in the league.

They have an older roster that is locked into long-term contracts, have a thin farm system and do not have any sort of serious offensive talent anywhere on the roster.

Former general manager Lou Lamoriello has left behind a mess that the next general manager is going to need a lot of time to fix.

Their only real chance for a big bounce-back season next year is if starting goalie Ilya Sorokin takes over and single-handedly changes the campaign.

Panic rating: 8

The New York Rangers' 2024-25 season was an absolute mess from the very beginning.

There were locker room issues, several players publicly angry about their playing time and role, and a sudden drop in wins that saw them go from winning the Presidents' Trophy a year ago to missing the playoffs entirely this season.

Head coach Peter Laviolette took the fall for a lot of that, but general manager Chris Drury was given a new long-term contract extension.

While a head coaching change may have been necessary, the Rangers probably needed a new direction and vision in both areas.

Drury has put together a brutal defensive team, while most of his defense is now locked into long-term contracts.

They lack a No. 1 center, are still a bad 5-on-5 team and have already spent most of the salary-cap space they created for themselves by getting rid of players like Barclay Goodrow and Jacob Trouba.

Bounce-back years from Igor Shesterkin and the power play would help get the Rangers back closer to the playoffs, but they are still missing a lot when it comes to a potential championship.

Panic rating: 8

The 2024-25 Flyers took a big step backwards in the standings and ended up firing head coach John Tortorella late in the season.

On the surface, that sort of year would probably be a cause for concern for most teams.

But it might not be for the Flyers.

They did a lot of things well this season as a team defensively, and they had some of the best underlying defensive metrics in hockey when it came to suppressing shots and scoring chances.

What cost them was the fact that their goaltending was the worst in the NHL and completely sabotaged any potential progress they had made.

If they can fix that, there is a chance for a pretty quick turnaround here. Especially now Matvei Michkov has arrived and already started to make an impact.

The Flyers still need to keep building around him and add more talent, but this team could turn around quickly with the right roster moves. 

Panic rating: 4

Even though nobody in the organization has really come out and said the word "rebuild," it's pretty clear the Pittsburgh Penguins are in a rebuilding phase.

Pretty much every move they have made over the past calendar year has been with an eye toward the future. They have improved their farm system, have more draft picks (30) over the next three years than any team in hockey and have not really shown much urgency in improving the NHL roster in the short term.

The only question that remains here is whether they rebuild even further and get rid of more veteran players.

Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are not going anywhere, but pretty much everybody else could be had for the right price.

There is a lot to like about the improvements made to the farm system, as well as the assets they have collected, but now they need some draft lottery luck and smart front-office decisions to get this team back closer to contention.

It just might take another year or two for that to happen.

Panic rating: 7

The San Jose Sharks are in pretty much the exact same situation as the Chicago Blackhawks.

They have their young, franchise-cornerstone (Macklin Celebrini), some good young prospects starting to arrive in the NHL and then a lot of other problems elsewhere on the NHL roster. 

The good news is they have a ton of salary-cap space and a lot of trade assets to pull from, and they could be in the market for just about any player they want this offseason in both free agency or the trade market. 

There is some hope here in the long term.

But the NHL roster is so bad beyond Celebrini and some of their other young players that it's hard to see the short-term future being much better. This team is still several years away.

Their front office seems to have a better grasp on asset management than Chicago's does. So that helps.

Panic rating: 4

The Seattle Kraken have not been able to duplicate the expansion success of the Vegas Golden Knights and are instead playing like ... a traditional expansion franchise. 

They have made some mistakes, they have made some bad investments and now they are going to be on to their third different head coach in three seasons. None of that is encouraging. Even the changes in the front office are nothing more than them promoting from within. Maybe there is a chance that Matty Beniers and Shane Wright take off in the coming seasons, become stars, and dramatically change the ceiling. But if they do not? This seems like a team that is still pretty far away from being a serious contender without much direction in the front office to help get them there.

Panic Rating: 7

Things are finally looking better for this franchise, and it only took one year in Utah for that to happen. They have an enthusiastic fanbase, real ownership, a settled arena situation and some emerging young NHL talent.

They also seem to have some real urgency to try to win, especially after rebuilding their defense this past offseason with the trades for Mikhail Sergachev and John Marino.

They need to do the same this offseason for their offense and bring in another impact player or two to help complement the returning core of Clayton Keller, Logan Cooley and Dylan Guenther. 

There should be high expectations and optimism here because the playoffs should be within reach with a good offseason. 

Panic rating: 3

What a mess this season turned out to be.

Elias Pettersson suddenly forgot how to be an impact player; J.T. Miller got traded after an unfixable rift with Pettersson; and Jim Rutherford kicked off the offseason by making it sound like the team's best player, Quinn Hughes, might want to one day leave the organization so he can play alongside his brothers (New Jersey Devils teammates Jack and Luke). 

Sure, the Vancouver president of hockey operations also said the team has to do whatever it takes to keep Hughes, but he opened that can for everybody to think about.

Hughes' future, as well as the struggles of Pettersson, are two gigantic issues that are going to be looming in the seasons ahead. The way the Canucks handle both of them will play a significant role in determining how good this team can and will be. 

That does not even get into the other issues that are still lurking below the surface, including the potential departure of Brock Boeser in free agency and the fact that the team simply has a lot of flaws when it comes to its depth. 

This is a team that could get really bad, really quickly if it's not careful.

Panic rating: 8