5 NHL Teams That Could Look Completely Different in the 2025-26 Season
With one month remaining in the 2024-25 NHL season, every team in the league is still writing its story for the season.
Even with that being the case, it is not hard to look around the league and already get a sense of which teams could be about to make some big changes this offseason and come back for the 2025-26 season with a significantly different roster.
We are going to look at five of those teams today.
In some cases, it is contract issues, pending free agency and the salary cap that could force some changes.
In other cases, it might simply be the case of an ongoing rebuild.
In others, it might just be a team that needs to make some changes to its core.
Let’s talk about them.
Toronto Maple Leafs
1 of 5
The Toronto Maple Leafs core could be facing a make-or-break postseason.
That sentence has been said many times over the past eight years, but this time it might be true.
If they lose in the first round again or fail to make a significant playoff run, management might be looking to finally make significant changes to their roster and core group. After all, how many years can you keep seeing the same thing before you make a change?
But even if the Maple Leafs do make a run there is a very good chance the core looks different just based on the current contract situations.
Forwards Mitch Marner and John Tavares are both set to become unrestricted free agents this summer and there is no guarantee either returns no matter what happens in the playoffs.
For Marner, this will be his one big opportunity to test his value on the open market when he is still in the prime of his career and get top dollar. For Tavares, it is probably his last opportunity to get a significant deal on the open market. Even though he'll be 35 years old next season he is still scoring at a point-per-game pace and should be able to help somebody next season, whether it is Toronto or somebody else.
New York Rangers
2 of 5
The 2024-25 season is not even over yet and the New York Rangers roster looks completely different than the one that opened it.
Jacob Trouba, Kaapo Kakko, Ryan Lindgren, Reilly Smith and Jimmy Vesey are all gone.
J.T. Miller, Arthur Kaliyev, Juuso Parsinen, Will Borgen, Carson Soucy, and Urko Vaakanainen are all in.
There could be more changes coming over the summer, especially if they do not get things straightened out over the next month and fix what has been a mostly disappointing and underwhelming season.
Even though the Rangers won the Presidents’ Trophy during the 2023-24 season, there should have been some healthy skepticism about whether or not that team was actually that good. Elite goaltending and a dominant power play masked a lot of flaws, and there was a lot of reason to expect a regression this season.
But did anybody expect them to regress to the point that they would be sellers at the trade deadline and potentially miss the playoffs entirely?
That was probably not the expectation. But it is the situation they are facing.
No matter what happens the rest of this season, there is no way the Rangers can run this team back again next season, right? There is no way nobody in the front office believes that defense is good enough?
There can’t be. Not if they are serious about trying to win.
The biggest change, however, might involve veteran forward Chris Kreider who is currently the longest-tenured Ranger. He has been the subject of trade rumors all season, and given the way things have devolved this season it seems possible he could be playing elsewhere next season.
They also have to figure out what to do with center Mika Zibanejad whose game has rapidly deteriorated this season and has been a major cause for concern in the middle of the lineup.
There not only could be big changes here, but there should be. There has to be. Because this core is not where it needs to be.
Chicago Blackhawks
3 of 5
It is time for this rebuild to start moving in a meaningful direction.
Rapidly.
They have a young franchise player in Connor Bedard, some good young prospects ready to join him, and a ton of salary cap space to work with this offseason, especially as veterans like Ryan Donato and Pat Maroon likely head to free agency.. They have to put it to good use because they have spent too many years at the bottom of the NHL.
Whether it is being a major player in free agency and going after an established star (like Mitch Marner) with a huge offer, or trying to dip into the trade market, they need more impact players around Bedard.
You get the sense management is aware of that as well. Or at least they should be. If they are not, something is wrong.
They have a real opportunity to be major players this offseason.
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Pittsburgh Penguins
4 of 5
We know this much about the Pittsburgh Penguins right now – they are rebuilding. We just do not know the extent of what this rebuild will look like. There is little to indicate that they are going to go with a complete teardown, as several core players are likely to remain in Pittsburgh. Specifically Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.
The question is what that means for players like Erik Karlsson, Rickard Rakell, Bryan Rust and perhaps even Kris Letang.
Karlsson and Rakell would seem to be the most likely to move this summer, but even if they do not there are still going to be plenty of new faces in Pittsburgh.
It could be more short-term stop-gaps that they try to flip at the trade deadline (as they did with Anthony Beauvillier this season).
They have more than $26 million in salary cap space to work with this offseason and 30 draft picks over the next three years (more than any other team in the NHL over that stretch), including multiple first-rounders in either 2025 or 2026 (they have a conditional first-round pick belonging to the Rangers that will be in one of those two years). That creates a lot of flexibility for roster movement, and perhaps significant roster movement.
They also have, for the first time in years, some legitimate NHL prospects in Rutger McGroarty, Ville Koivunen and Owen Pickering who could be regulars in the NHL lineup next season.
There are going to be a lot of new faces on this roster for the 2025-26 season one way or another.
Vancouver Canucks
5 of 5
Something has been very off with the Vancouver Canucks this season. The team has underachieved across the board, there was such a rift between Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller that both players were on the trade block for most of the season until Miller was finally moved, and they held on to Brock Boeser at the trade deadline despite not having a new long-term contract with him secured.
The vibes here are not good, and it would not be a surprise if there were some big changes here this offseason.
Boeser seems likely to leave in free agency, and while trading Pettersson would be a huge risk at this point it still seems like something that could at least be a possibility.
The bigger change might be behind the bench. How safe should Rick Tocchet feel given the way this season has gone? If the team itself is underachieving if almost every player on the team outside of defenseman Quinn Hughes is failing to play to expectations, and if there was a major locker room rift that resulted in a top player getting traded, shouldn’t the coach have to take some of the responsibility for that?
Whether it is the coach, the players, or some combination of the two this is a team that needs to look different next season.
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