Which NHL Teams Are Outperforming Preseason Expectations? ...Middle East

With the season roughly at the 20-game mark, this seems the perfect time to look around the NHL and see which teams are the biggest surprises.

When you haven’t made the playoffs in seven seasons and have been mostly an afterthought in Southern California, there’s nowhere to go but up.

Sure, there’s no better way to accumulate high-end talent than to get high draft picks consistently, but even that doesn’t guarantee anything. (Hello Buffalo!)

The Anaheim Ducks have put together quite a collection of talent with draft picks Leo Carlsson, Mason McTavish, Bennett Sennecke, Jackson LaCombe, Pavel Mintyukov and Lukas Dostal, to name a few. But it’s more than just drafting that has spurred Anaheim to its surprising perch atop the Pacific Division.

With the season roughly at the 20-game mark, this seems the perfect time to look around the league and see which teams are outperforming preseason expectations. And the Ducks have made the biggest jump so far.

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Anaheim Ducks

General manager Pat Verbeek made what has turned out to be a brilliant move in January 2024 when he traded defenseman Jamie Drysdale to Philadelphia for forward Cutter Gauthier, the fifth overall pick in the 2022 draft who refused to sign with the Flyers. 

Gauthier has taken a huge step forward this season in his second full NHL season with 12 goals and 22 points in 19 games. The 1-2 punch of Carlsson and Gauthier is among the league’s most lethal right now (23 goals, 48 points) and the two have a combined age of 42 or just slightly more than Brent Burns and Corey Perry (both 40).

Carlsson leads the team with 26 points and deserves to be mentioned with the game’s brightest young stars. Since Feb. 22, Carlsson ranks 13th in the NHL in points and leads all players 25 or younger, ahead of Connor Bedard.  

They are just the sixth pair of 21-and-under teammates with 20 points in their first 15 games of the season. A list that includes Wayne Gretzky, Paul Coffey, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. 

The Anaheim tandem spearheads a deep offensive attack that is tied for second in the NHL with 3.63 goals per game after the Ducks were 30th last season (2.65). 

The Ducks, who lead the Pacific Division with 25 points, weren’t content to just draft and throw a bunch of 20-somethings into the fire, so they traded for defenseman Jacob Trouba in December 2024 and acquired his Rangers teammate Chris Kreider in June. Trouba has been a steady influence on the blueline with 12 points and Kreider, a former 52-goal scorer, has fit in perfectly with 10 goals in 15 games. 

Kreider’s net front presence has been felt particularly on the power play, helping improve Anaheim’s league-worst 11.8% power-play conversion rate last season to 15th this season (20.9%). He’s been responsible for five of the Ducks’ 14 goals with the man-advantage. 

But it’s not just a collection of talent that has been responsible for Anaheim’s turnaround. Joel Quenneville was hired as coach in May after almost four years out of the game for his role in the Chicago Blackhawks’ sexual assault scandal. While hiring Quenneville was seen as a risky move because of his baggage and time away, there was no doubting his coaching credentials as the second-winningest head coach in NHL history with three Stanley Cups on his resume.

Quenneville offered instant credibility and is clearly a superior bench boss to his predecessors with the Ducks (Greg Cronin and Dallas Eakins).

Whether a team that relies so heavily on offense (fourth in offensive TRACR/23rd in defensive TRACR) can continue this success remains in question, but the playoffs seem very possible for that other Southern California team.

The Opta supercomputer gives them the fifth-highest probability of making the playoffs at 90.9%.

Chicago Blackhawks

It’s been rough for hockey fans in the Windy City since the glory days of Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews when Stanley Cups were the norm. 

Since the start of the 2020-21 season, the Blackhawks rank 30th in points with 319, better than only San Jose and the Arizona/Utah franchise. To make matters worse, Blackhawks fans have had to watch lackluster hockey with their team second-to-last in the league with 2.58 goals per game during that span.

With a 9-5-4 record, Chicago is off to its best start since 2016 under new coach Jeff Blashill. While Anaheim’s resurgence can be traced to a larger group, Chicago’s improvement rests mainly with two players: superstar Connor Bedard and goaltender Spencer Knight.

Bedard, just 20 years old, has been as good or even better than expected since he was selected first overall in 2023 with 61 points as a rookie and 67 last season. He seems poised to blow past those totals this season with 13 goals and 29 points in 19 games after Tuesday night’s hat trick. He’s also tied for the NHL lead with 13 primary assists (excludes secondary assists). 

Perhaps no player has been more instrumental to his team’s success than Bedard, who isn’t surrounded by elite offensive talent.

Bedard has received help from veterans Tyler Bertuzzi (nine goals) and Andre Burakovsky (seven goals) and the emergence of Frank Nazar (12 points), but a case can easily be made that he’s elevating their play and everyone else around him.

The Blackhawks cycled through several goalies during the lean years with the likes of Malcom Subban, Marc-Andre Fleury and Alex Stalock. Petr Mrazek and Arvid Soderblom handled things in front of the net last year before Knight arrived from Florida in the Seth Jones trade in March.

Knight was selected 13th overall by the Panthers in 2019, so the talent has always been there, but he seems to have truly found his game this season. His .924 save percentage ranks second in the league and his elite athleticism and lateral quickness have prevented mistakes by a mostly young defense from costing the Blackhawks.

The Blackhawks will need Bedard and Knight to continue their stellar play to have any chance at their first playoff appearance since 2020, but advanced data doesn’t see them as a fluke.

They’re third in the league in TRACR behind only the Dallas Stars and league-best Colorado Avalanche and the Opta supercomputer even gives them the fourth-highest probability of winning the Stanley Cup.

Boston Bruins

Can a team with a six-game losing streak in the season’s first month be considered a positive surprise? Well, in the case of the Boston Bruins, the answer is a resounding yes.

Expected to struggle again this season after finishing with an Eastern Conference-worst 76 points last season (tied with Philadelphia), the Bruins hired former player Marco Sturm as coach and figured to see some growing pains again in 2025-26.

Sturm’s tenure started with three straight wins, but all those good feelings were erased by six consecutive losses that followed. That slide ended with a win over Colorado of all teams, and after an ugly loss to Ottawa, Boston rebounded with an 8-2 stretch. The Bruins are now just one point behind the Atlantic-leading Detroit Red Wings.

An improved offense is the biggest reason for the Bruins’ success, going from 2.71 goals per game last season to 3.24 this season. That plus 0.53 differential is the league’s sixth-biggest improvement. 

The power play has been far more potent under Sturm. Boston ranks sixth in the NHL with a 25.4% (18 for 71) power play conversion rate after it was 29th last season (15.2%).

In their first full season without Brad Marchand to rely on, the Bruins’ best players have carried their fair share of the load – and none more so than David Pastrnak, who is on pace for his fifth straight 40-goal season. 

Pastrnak shows no signs of slowing in his 12th season. He leads the Bruins with 26 points and ranks second on the team to Morgan Geekie (12) with 11 goals, including the 400th of his career in a win over Toronto on Nov. 11. 

No player has scored more goals in the NHL than Pastrnak since the start of the 2022-23 season.

Pastrnak and Geekie don’t quickly come to mind when the league’s most dangerous scoring duos are mentioned, but with 23 goals and 44 points already, they should. Geekie came into his own last season with a career-high 33 goals after never scoring more than 17 previously and he’s on track to surpass that total this season. 

Charlie McAvoy remains one of the league’s best defensemen after struggling through an injury-plagued 2024-25 season when he was limited to 23 points in 50 games. He already has 14 assists this season but could be stuck on that total for a while after he took a puck to the face against Montreal on Nov. 15. 

Without Marchand, the Bruins have less margin for error and missing McAvoy for a lengthy period would surely hurt. Still, Boston’s early rise among the best teams in the Eastern Conference is one of the league’s biggest surprises. 

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Which NHL Teams Are Outperforming Preseason Expectations? Opta Analyst.

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