The NHL’s biggest midway shockers are the Sabres, Rangers and Predators

The NHL is halfway through the 2024-25 regular season. That means it’s a good time to focus on the league’s biggest shock yet.

The teams below have all stumbled horribly, more or less sinking their Stanley Cup playoff chances and letting down their respective passionate fan bases.

New York Rangers

Full disclosure – we thought the Rangers would be one of the more dominant NHL teams this season. They have one of the best goaltenders on the planet in Igor Shesterkin, a Norris Trophy winner in Adam Fox and a forward in Artemi Panarin.

But somehow the Rangers have been less than the sum of their parts, falling to 14th in the Eastern Conference and 26th in the NHL, with a horrendous 18-20-2 record.

When the Rangers get a lead, they seem to do a decent job of holding onto it. They are 12-2-1 when leading after the first period and 16-1-0 when leading after the second. But when they lag, they haven’t had it in them to catch up. They are 1-13-0 when trailing in the first and are one of four teams not to win a game when trailing in the second, going 0-17-1. Their five comeback wins are only when trailing by a goal, and that’s tied for fourth-most in the NHL.

In summary, they are a giant letdown. Unless they have a miraculous turnaround, they will go from winning the President’s Trophy last year to failing to make the postseason this year. It’s as astonishing and shocking as anything we’ve seen in recent memory, and some people (namely GM Chris Drury and coach Peter Laviolette) should be held responsible for it—if not by Rangers ownership, so determined by Rangers fans and media types.

The bitter taste in the mouths of their fans will not disappear anytime soon. The Rangers need an overhaul, and even if they aren’t going to trade Fox, Shesterkin and Panarin, almost everyone else on the roster should be on the table as a potential trade piece. They cannot allow this performance to be excusable and that means big changes should be made.

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Buffalo Sabres

As we’ve said before, the Sabers entered this season in full “show, don’t tell” mode, having disappointed their customers by missing the playoffs every year since 2011-12. And what Buffalo has shown us through 41 games this season is that they are the worst team in the Atlantic Division, the worst team in the Eastern Conference and the fourth worst team in the NHL at 15-21-5. To say it is unacceptable is a massive understatement.

Buffalo tends to start games well and has a plus-12 goal difference in the first period. But they fall apart after that. They are minus-14 in the second picture and minus-11 in the third.

Sabers ownership recently came out and told Buffalo’s players that the solution to the team’s problems must come from within the locker room. That may sound noble to some people, but the reality is that if the players had an answer to what is ailing them, they would have already pulled themselves out of this horrible tail. That hasn’t happened, and their roster needs a significant shake-up. Even then, too much of the season has passed for Buffalo to bounce back and get back into the playoff mix.

This season has been an absolute disappointment and whoever is running things next season needs to get out a scalpel and get to work upgrading the roster for the 2025-26 campaign. The Sabers have many pieces worth continuing to build around, but something big needs to happen to change the chemistry and mentality in the room.

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Nashville Predators

The Predators were another team many pundits thought would do very well this season. Instead, what the Preds have delivered is a 13-21-7 record — only the hapless San Jose Sharks and Chicago Blackhawks have been worse.

Despite making many veteran additions on offense last summer, Nashville posted an NHL-worst 2.44 goals-against-per-game. match. Every time you thought the Preds couldn’t get any worse with the puck in their possession, they proved you wrong.

The gambles Predators GM Barry Trotz has made with his lineup have not paid off. Calls for a layoff aren’t realistic since many, if not most, of their veterans have some sort of no-trade or no-move clause in their contracts. Nashville is stuck with their current roster at least through this season.

If there is a silver lining in the many gray clouds over the Predators at the moment, they may finally end up with a decent shot at landing a generational player in the next NHL draft. It’s something the Preds have lacked in their history, but to get to that point, Nashville will have to grit their teeth and carry it through the rest of the regular season.

Too much damage has been done to their playoff hopes through the first half of the year to repair them in the second half and aim for a playoff spot. Now, it’s about saving what they can this season and focus on next season as the place where they can pretend this horrible year never happened and try to make the playoffs again.

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