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Buy or Sell Struggling NHL Teams Most Likely to Turn Their 2025-26 Season Around
If the Oilers and the Panthers of October's past have taught us anything, it's that the best time to go through a rough patch is at the beginning of the NHL season. The teams that have made it to back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals have famously struggled to rev their engines through the first month of the season before eventually getting it together.
Sometimes you need to take an injury or two into account; sometimes the offseason free-agent market can't address a team's needs, and the front office has to wait for the trade deadline. However, sometimes when a team underperforms early, it's just showing us their true colors.
Which NHL teams struggling right now are worth buying into, and which could be doomed to miss this postseason?
Buffalo Sabres
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The bad news? After a few encouraging early games, the Sabres have found themselves in last place at the bottom of the Atlantic Division. They are 5-7-4, and their latest attempt at climbing out of a four-game skid was Wednesday's 5-2 loss to the Mammoth.
The good news? The Atlantic is such a mess that a heroic turnaround effort could actually make an impact for the Sabres this year. Does this team have that in them? On one hand, this team is seriously banged up and missing key players: Rasmus Dahlin, Jiri Kulich, Jason Zucker, Zach Benson, Josh Norris, and Justin Danforth are all out right now. If even half of these guys come back and stay healthy, we're going to see a better performance from the Sabres than what we've seen on this losing streak.
On the other hand, it's alarming that the healthy guys haven't shown much life through this spurt. Against the Mammoth, Tage Thompson, Alex Tuch, and Ryan McLeod combined for 0 shots on net as an early 2-0 lead fell to a 5-2 loss. That's unacceptable from a first line on a struggling team, no matter what else is going on.
Every team and every player in the NHL is going to have an off night, but this Sabres team has a knack for turning an off night into a losing streak, and that gives me more than enough pause.
Buy or Sell?: Sell
Edmonton Oilers
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You don't want to rely too much on reputation when it comes to evaluating an NHL team -- things change quickly in a league with all this parity. When it comes to the Oilers, though, you really do want to wink and nod every time they have a bad October.
We've seen this play out time and time again, and part of the luxury of having the best player in the world in Connor McDavid and arguably the most high-end offensive talent in the league around him is that you can have a slow start to the season, then turn it on.
This time around, the Oilers' depth looks particularly depleted, as they sit third in the Pacific Division with an 8-6-4 record. They'll have to make some deadline moves to bolster that up. But McDavid has turned around a slow start to the season, and Zach Hyman is set to return within the week. Knowing this team, that the squad's health is trending up, and how weak the Pacific Division is, the Oilers will be fine.
Buy or Sell?: Buy
Florida Panthers
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The Panthers are no strangers to a rough October; The back-to-back Champions and their cerebral head coach, Paul Maurice, are deliberate about conserving energy in the regular season.
Still, the start to the 2025-26 campaign has been particularly rough on the scoreboard, and they gave themselves a hole to climb out of. They initiated the climb with a gutsy 3-2 win over the Golden Knights on Tuesday, leaving them with an 8-7-1 record and a -5 goal differential.
The win over Vegas featured a palpable improvement on Florida's biggest early struggle: special teams. Can you blame them? Matthew Tkachuk and Aleksander Barkov, two of their most effective power-play pieces, have been out the entire season. Meanwhile, Barkov arguably plays an even more crucial role on the penalty kill, which has missed both him and Dmitry Kulikov.
The Panthers have about a month at home without taxing travel to keep climbing out of this hole. Come playoff time, they'll be fine.
Buy or Sell?: Buy
Minnesota Wild
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What will it take for the Wild to develop that transcendent, tough to play against, clutch factor? It's tough to identify exactly what's missing to take this team to the next level, but the lack of clutch performances is at the heart of it.
They won the even-strength battle against the Golden Knights in round one of the playoffs, but an overturned goal and a few subpar special teams performances later, they lost the series. They've returned for the 2025-26 season, unable to finish off decent games; they're 1-4 in overtime, playing scared, and 7-7-4 with a negative-8 goal differential.
Maybe they're stuck in an awkward phase where the kids aren't quite ready to take the reins, or maybe coach John Hynes isn't quite ready to fully hand them over. Either way, the Wild are the trickiest "will-they-won't-they" case of the bunch. Just four more goals would equal four more wins. Is this encouraging, given that they are right there and play well most nights, or is the team's inability to find that extra goal indicative of a fundamental flaw?
Given how weak the bottom of the Western Conference is, I have faith the Wild will squeeze into a wild-card spot and once again grace us with a first-round exit. The question is really: What's it going to take for this team to put it all together and make a meaningful run?
Shopping a few veterans should be on the trade deadline agenda at the very least.
Buy or Sell?: Buying highly discounted on Black Friday
New York Rangers
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The curious case of the New York Rangers has captivated us all for a season and a half now, as the team made major changes to shake up a roster that just wasn't working. The beginning of this season was a little bleak as New York broke a franchise record for longest losing streak at home to open a season.
When watching the team, though, things actually looked promising in some ways. The five-on-five play under Mike Sullivan had drastically improved, Igor Shesterkin has looked incredible in net, and glue guy Vincent Trocheck had missed significant time, which caused ramifications all over the roster.
Trocheck is back, the Rangers finally broke their Madison Square Garden Curse, and suddenly they're scoring and winning. Sometimes, when you make a ton of changes -- especially with a new head coach who has a particular, storied coaching method -- it takes a while to gel. The underlying metrics were always there, and now it's on the Rangers' to keep the results coming.
Buy or Sell?: Buy
Toronto Maple Leafs
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Could this really be it for the Leafs?
It's not just the loss of Mitch Marner that has resulted in an 8-8-1 record, good for second-to-last in the Atlantic.
Auston Matthews had a slow start by his goal-scoring standards, and when he started to pick it up in November, he's now out at least a week after taking a hit from Boston's Nikita Zadorov on Tuesday. Anthony Stolarz has struggled in the net to start the season, and although Joseph Woll's return from a leave of absence might fix some problems in the net, Stolarz is now nursing an upper-body injury.
The power play has been a mess, Nicolas Roy hasn't quite lived up to the depth contributions he provided in Vegas, and now the team is out a first-line center and a goaltender for at least some time.
We'll have to see how Woll fares when he makes his much-anticipated return to the net. We'll also have to see what is cooking on the trade front later in the season. But the Atlantic has been chaotic to start the season, and just as easily as the Leafs could turn it around if everything goes right, this could be the year we have to admit this core couldn't get it done.
Buy or Sell?: Sell
Vancouver Canucks
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There's not many more unfortunate situations in the NHL than the health of Thatcher Demko. He's unequivocally one of the best goaltenders in the NHL when healthy, with the ability to neutralize whichever blunder is popping up that day for this unpredictable Canucks team.
He's injured again after another strong start, and it's tough to watch considering the team around him's start was inconsistent. The Canucks clawed their way back up to .500 this week, but they lost Demko and now we have to wonder if Quinn Hughes is 100 percent.
It's rarely this simple, but when it comes to the Canucks it really feels like this is a playoff team when Demko is healthy, and it's not a playoff team when Demko is hurt.
Buy or Sell?: Sell
