Leafs, Canes and Oilers under immense playoff pressure

If pressure is a privilege, consider the Carolina Hurricanes, Edmonton Oilers, and Toronto Maple Leafs the luckiest of the National Hockey League lot. Just days away from the start of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, all three organizations know they will be under immense scrutiny going forward.

Every playoff qualifier knows the stakes rise once the postseason begins, but organizational expectations and historical outcomes have a unique way of dialling up the heat. All three teams have relatively short Stanley Cup odds and are expected to push deep into the postseason at a minimum. That means a first-round exit for any of the three could lead to an off-season of considerable organizational overhaul.

It’s hard to say which of the three is under the most pressure heading into the fray, but I wanted to talk through each club’s situation and what lies before them in round one.

Let’s start in the East.

Toronto Maple Leafs (First place in the Atlantic Division)

I don’t think we need to rehash the litany of playoff failures in this space. Since superstar Auston Matthews joined the Maple Leafs back in 2016-17, Toronto has a +331 goal differential – a staggering number and third best in the NHL, only trailing Tampa Bay (+423) and Boston (+367).

The problem is the Leafs, unlike their division rivals, not only have no hardware to show for it, but they also barely have any playoff success to point to. Other than their six-game victory over the Bolts in 2022-23, Toronto’s star-powered teams have been routine first-round exits.

Those exits have already created several organizational disruptions. The team is on their third head coach and general manager at this point, and eventually the barrel of the proverbial gun is going to point towards the players.

Unlike Edmonton and Carolina, Toronto’s playoff roadmap isn’t perfectly clear. We know they will have home ice in round one, and clinching the Atlantic Division would secure home ice until the Eastern Conference final. As for a likely round-one opponent, the odds of a Battle of Ontario have skyrocketed.

Toronto will be a considerable favourite in the series, but it should be acknowledged Ottawa has looked comfortable against Craig Berube’s club this year. The Senators are 3-0-0 against the Maple Leafs, with a six-goal advantage over those three games.

The tale of the tape points in Toronto’s direction, but discount Ottawa at your own peril. The dramatic turnaround in the goaltending department backstopping a scary forward group makes them a credible threat to engineer an upset:

Carolina Hurricanes (second place in the Metropolitan Division)

If Toronto has been the epicenter of postseason disappointment, Carolina isn’t far behind.

We are talking about one of the winningest teams of the past decade, a staple of excellence in the Eastern Conference for years now. And while the Canes do have many playoff victories over the years, they still haven’t won the Eastern Conference since 2005-06. Always on the precipice, yes, but never crossing it.

The Hurricanes are positioned uniquely this season. It’s been another dominant year, but this one hallmarked by several major trades — within a calendar year, the team moved on from Mikko Rantanen, Jack Drury, and Martin Necas, brought in and said goodbye to short-term rental Jake Guentzel, and acquired a longer-term piece in Logan Stankoven. That’s a heavy dosage of top-of-the-lineup changes for a genuine title contender.

If Carolina does have one thing working in their favour, it may be their round-one draw against New Jersey. The Devils are down superstar Jack Hughes have been hot and cold all year; additionally, the Hurricanes have home-ice advantage in a season where they have steamrolled teams (31-9-1) at the Lenovo Center.

Head to head, it’s a downright fascinating matchup. Carolina is one of the league’s most productive teams at even strength and is likely going to take the play to a relatively undermanned New Jersey team who has struggled there of late.

But special teams might be the entire story. The Devils may have one of the most productive combination of high-end power play and penalty-kill units you can find in the league; when the Devils are on the power play it’ll be strength on strength too, as no team has been better killing penalties than the Hurricanes this season.

The numbers tell the story well here:

Edmonton Oilers (Third in the Pacific Division)

For as long as the Oilers have the two-headed monster of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, they are title contenders. And Edmonton’s more like Carolina than Toronto, one would posit — they have appeared in the Western Conference Finals in two of the past three seasons and fell short of winning the Stanley Cup by a single game in 2023-24. This team has shown it can be a force when it matters most.

But the Oilers have done themselves no favours with their play this season. A late-season injury bug has not helped, but neither did the early-season goaltending woes. For all of the firepower, this is a team statistically identical to the Utah Hockey Club at even strength. That’s a huge problem.

With the slog through the regular season, Edmonton has a bit of a gauntlet to run to get out of the West. They are locked into a two-versus-three series with the Los Angeles Kings and likely will be the road team in that series. Should they get through, matchups against the vaunted Vegas Golden Knights and the Winnipeg Jets are on deck.

I want to argue Edmonton has the personnel to beat all three, because they do. But not the way they’ve played this year. And looking past this Kings team would be foolish — Los Angeles has looked comfortable in every game head to head with them this year, they dominate at Staples Center (31-5-4), and, statistically speaking, there is very little daylight between the two sides:

Enjoy the final week of the regular season!

Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey, Hockey Reference