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NHL Power Rankings See Islanders Rising While Oilers and Rangers Still Struggling
It wasn't inconceivable for fans of the Edmonton Oilers and New York Rangers to make plans for a meeting during the Stanley Cup Final next spring.
The Oilers, after all, have been to the championship round in each of the last two seasons, while the Rangers are just one season removed from a Presidents' Trophy run and brought in a multiple-Cup-winning coach in Mike Sullivan to get things back on track after a tumble off the top of the regular-season mountain in 2024-25.
These days, though, it seems more likely to be a draft lottery get-together.
Both Edmonton and New York are grinding through difficult early seasons, and their performances are reflected by 26th- and 25th-place standings, respectively, in this week's edition of B/R's NHL Power Rankings.
The Oilers and Rangers each fell a spot from last week's voting, while the Rangers' biggest rivals, the New York Islanders, made a six-spot jump from No. 17 to No. 11.
Teams were awarded 32 points for a first-place vote and a single point for a No. 32 slot in the balloting, which reflects results and statistics through games played on Tuesday, Nov. 18. Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought of your own in the app comments.
32. Calgary Flames
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Previous Ranking: 32
Overall Record: 6-13-3
The bar for success seems to drop every week for the Flames, whose 1-4-1 run through Tuesday—and just five wins in 21 games overall—comes courtesy of the league's worst offense (2.10 goals per game) and worst power play (12.7 percent).
Calgary scored just nine goals in those six games, was shut out twice, and has already been held to one or fewer goals in regulation seven times this season.
A win over the also-struggling Sabres on Wednesday night relieves some pressure, but there's much work to be done here.
31. Nashville Predators
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Previous Ranking: 31
Overall Record: 6-10-4
It was a tale of two performances for the Predators in their two-game series with Pittsburgh in Sweden, with the confidence gained by an OT win in the opener lost to a poor first period in a 4-0 loss on Sunday.
"The traction that we gained, we just let slip away," coach Andrew Brunette said. "Especially the first period, I thought all the things that we talked about, that we did on Friday, we did not do."
30. St. Louis Blues
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Previous Ranking: 30
Overall Record: 6-9-5
The Blues have gone from the hottest team in hockey in the back half of last season to one of the NHL's coldest through the early portion of 2025-26, falling to 0-1-2 in their last three games and 30th overall after a Tuesday loss in Toronto.
"We did play with much more intention," coach Jim Montgomery said. "We were much more physical, and those things are good, but we need to start winning games."
29. Buffalo Sabres
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Previous Ranking: 29
Overall Record: 7-9-4
After a brief reprieve with a couple of wins over Detroit and Edmonton, the Sabres came crashing down Wednesday night with a loss to the Flames at home.
Buffalo continues to struggle with its netminding, no matter who is in goal, with Alex Lyon, Colton Ellis, and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen all delivering below-average play.
28. Vancouver Canucks
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Previous Ranking: 28
Overall Record: 9-10-2
An eight-goal deluge by the Panthers on Monday in Florida was the latest in a recent run of defensive struggles for the Canucks, who've lost four of five games and allowed 22 regulation goals while doing so.
Czech-born goalie Jiri Patera allowed seven goals on 40 shots in his debut with the team after he'd made eight appearances for Vegas across parts of two seasons.
Vancouver's collective 3.67 goals-against average was 30th in the league entering Tuesday, and its 31 shots allowed per game was 27th.
27. Toronto Maple Leafs
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Previous Ranking: 27
Overall Record: 9-9-2
A William Nylander goal on Tuesday night in Toronto served a dual purpose, allowing the right winger to extend a point streak of 14 games and sealing a defeat of St. Louis after the Maple Leafs had gone 0-4-1 in their previous five games.
Nylander has produced eight goals and 23 points across the 14-game stretch to improve to nine goals and 27 points for the season. Both his point total and assist total (18) had him tied for fifth in the league heading into Wednesday's games.
26. Edmonton Oilers
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Previous Ranking: 25
Overall Record: 9-9-4
Their season has passed the quarter pole, and the Oilers are still searching for any sign of the consistency and production that have made them two-time defending Western champions, particularly after a disheartening 5-1 loss in Buffalo and a 7-4 defeat in Washington.
"It's just been spurts of where we're playing what we want to play, like, and it's just not enough," defenseman Brett Kulak said. "We've got to put in a full 60-minute effort. Just got to keep working away at it right now. Everyone's got to find some chemistry with their linemates."
25. New York Rangers
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Previous Ranking: 24
Overall Record: 10-9-2
The home performances have been historically bad, but the Rangers can take some solace from the fact that they've been lights-out on the road to the tune of a league-best 9-2-1 record through Tuesday's games.
In fact, a loss in Vegas finally ended a six-game win streak away from Madison Square Garden during which New York had won in Vancouver, Edmonton, Seattle, Detroit, Tampa Bay, and Columbus while holding a 22-10 scoring edge.
24. Washington Capitals
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Previous Ranking: 20
Overall Record: 10-8-2
If you score 900-plus goals in the NHL, many of them are bound to be significant by one measure or another, which means another day at the office for Alex Ovechkin.
The 40-year-old winger's 903rd career goal came in a Monday defeat of visiting Los Angeles and proved to be not just the game-winner, but also his 442nd goal at Capital One Arena.
That passed Gordie Howe's 441 at the Olympia in Detroit as the most at a regular-season venue in league history.
23. San Jose Sharks
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Previous Ranking: 19
Overall Record: 9-8-3
Leave it to Macklin Celebrini to rescue what had started to look like a bad week for the Sharks, scoring his second hat trick of the season and third of his career in San Jose's Tuesday night win against visiting Utah.
The 19-year-old has 30 points in 20 games in 2025-26, becoming just the fourth teenager to get 30 in 20 after Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, and Sidney Crosby. His point total in 20 games is nearly halfway to the 63 he produced across 70 games as a rookie in 2024-25.
22. Columbus Blue Jackets
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Previous Ranking: 23
Overall Record: 10-8-2
The second half of a back-to-back set of games bedeviled the Blue Jackets on Tuesday, when they dropped a 5-2 decision in Winnipeg after working extra time to get a shootout victory against visiting Montreal on Monday.
"It just seemed like every time we had a little push, then it sagged again on us a little bit," coach Dean Evason said. "We'll have a look at the tape and figure that out."
21. Minnesota Wild
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Previous Ranking: 26
Overall Record: 10-7-4
Winger Kirill Kaprizov is many things to many people, but he's consistently been clutch since arriving to the NHL from Russia in 2020.
Now 28, he scored in OT to beat Vegas on Monday, extending the Wild's point streak to five games (4-0-1) and tying him with Leon Draisaitl and Cole Caufield for second in the league (11) among OT goal scorers since 2020-21.
20. Florida Panthers
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Previous Ranking: 22
Overall Record: 10-8-1
The Panthers have been uneven for the season as a whole, but they've discovered their goal-scoring touch recently, netting eight for the 15th time in franchise history in a Monday win over visiting Vancouver.
A franchise-record 16 players, including goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, registered at least a point against the Canucks. The deluge came four days after Florida scored six times in a win over Washington. It's 3.75 goals per game in November, which was fourth-best in the league entering Tuesday.
19. Utah Mammoth
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Previous Ranking: 18
Overall Record: 10-7-3
The positivity of the early season for the rebranded Mammoth has begun to wane—particularly in the goal crease—thanks to a desultory seven-game stretch in which the team has won just once (1-3-3).
Utah's 3.71 goals-against average is 26th in a 32-team league since Nov. 5, though it's allowed an average of just 22.1 shots, the second-fewest in the league.
18. Ottawa Senators
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Previous Ranking: 15
Overall Record: 9-6-4
Ottawa's seven-game point streak (4-0-3) ended thanks to a familiar face against Los Angeles, which got 17 saves from former Senator Anton Forsberg in a 1-0 win.
Forsberg made 142 appearances and won 62 games for Ottawa in parts of five seasons from 2021 to 2025 before signing with the Kings. His former crease-mate, Linus Ullmark, made 17 saves in the same game and recorded his second-best save percentage of the season (.944).
17. Philadelphia Flyers
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Previous Ranking: 13
Overall Record: 9-6-1
The legs may have finally caught up to the Flyers in Dallas, where they surrendered the game's first four goals in what wound up as a 5-1 loss to cap a busy 96-hour stretch in which they'd lost in OT to Edmonton and won a shootout in St. Louis.
"Our starts haven't been good," captain Sean Couturier said. "It just makes it harder on us to climb back in every game. There's no quit, but we just had a third game in four nights, just makes it tougher on us to get back in it."
16. Boston Bruins
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Previous Ranking: 8
Overall Record: 12-10-0
A Monday loss to visiting Carolina ended both a six-game win streak at TD Garden and a seven-game heater overall for the Bruins, who'd not lost since a 7-2 drubbing at Ottawa four days before Halloween. They began a Western road swing Wednesday night with a narrow 4-3 loss in Anaheim.
It was also the first set of games for Boston without defenseman Charlie McAvoy, who was hit in the face with a puck against Montreal on Saturday and may need surgery. He had 14 points in his first 19 games after producing 23 points in 50 games last season.
15. Montreal Canadiens
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Previous Ranking: 6
Overall Record: 10-6-3
A 9-3-0 start continues to fade into the distance for the Canadiens, who've followed it up with just one win in their last seven games (1-3-3) and losses in four straight after coming up short in a shootout in Columbus on Monday.
Czech-born goalie Jakub Dobes was one of the league's biggest stories during a personal 6-0-0 start in which he allowed just 12 goals. But he's 0-1-2 in three straight starts and has allowed 12 goals in those games, as his season-long save percentage has dipped to .898.
14. Tampa Bay Lightning
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Previous Ranking: 10
Overall Record: 10-7-2
Prolific forward Jake Guentzel was the goal-scoring difference for the Lightning in a battle of early-season titans with New Jersey, during which he netted three in a 5-1 win that bumped Tampa Bay to 9-3-0 in its last 12 games since a 1-4-2 start.
Guentzel has 11 goals in 19 games to begin his second season on Florida's Gulf Coast, putting him on a pace for what would be a career-high 46 across 82 games. He scored 41 in 80 games last season and had 40 with Pittsburgh in both 2018-19 and 2021-22.
13. Los Angeles Kings
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Previous Ranking: 14
Overall Record: 10-6-4
A Monday loss in Washington wasn't particularly pleasant for the Kings, but the blow was softened by the fact that it came after they'd opened a six-game road trip with wins in Pittsburgh, Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa.
Los Angeles, which is 9-2-2 in 13 road games, heads back to the West Coast to end the swing in San Jose before returning home to face visiting Boston on Friday.
12. Seattle Kraken
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Previous Ranking: 16
Overall Record: 9-5-5
The 4-2 loss wasn't ideal, but it was a pleasant sight for Kraken fans when No. 1 goalie Joey Daccord returned to the crease on Tuesday night in Detroit after missing five games with an upper-body injury.
Daccord hadn't appeared since playing just more than two periods of Seattle's loss to San Jose on Nov. 5. He stopped 23 of 26 shots against the Red Wings and has allowed three goals or fewer in eight of 12 appearances this season.
11. New York Islanders
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Previous Ranking: 17
Overall Record: 11-7-2
The Islanders may love their home facilities at UBS Arena, but they're certainly liking it away from Long Island, too, as shown by a seven-game road trip they've started with five wins in the first six.
They'll wrap up the trip with a Thursday visit to Detroit before playing seven straight at home through Dec. 4. The team has won seven of 12 games on the road so far this season after winning just 16 times in 41 road games in 2024-25.
10. Detroit Red Wings
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Previous Ranking: 21
Overall Record: 12-7-1
He's just five games into an NHL career, but 21-year-old center Nate Danielson, picked ninth overall in the 2023 draft, is showing signs of belonging after netting his first goal and adding an assist as Detroit extended a point streak to four games.
"I'm getting used to playing at this level, just like I had to get used to my first season of pro hockey last year," he said. "I'm definitely starting to feel comfortable and confident."
9. Vegas Golden Knights
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Previous Ranking: 11
Overall Record: 9-4-6
The November record isn't exactly glittering (3-3-2), but the Golden Knights are taking the positives from Tuesday's win over the visiting Rangers and hoping they'll be the catalyst for a season-transforming win streak.
"We've had a couple of tough bounces over the last five or six games," defenseman Shea Theodore said. "Some unfortunate goals again, but we keep fighting our way through right down to the end. ... Hopefully this gets the ball rolling and we can take some momentum from it."
8. Pittsburgh Penguins
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Previous Ranking: 9
Overall Record: 10-5-4
Rookie Sergei Murashov picked up his first NHL win on a particularly memorable stage, stopping 21 shots in the Penguins' 4-0 defeat of Nashville in the back half of the two-game global series with Nashville in Stockholm, Sweden.
The 21-year-old had made one prior start, a week earlier, for Pittsburgh and allowed three goals on 27 shots against Los Angeles. He was a fourth-round pick in the 2022 draft and split last season between the team's affiliates in the ECHL and AHL.
7. Chicago Blackhawks
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Previous Ranking: 12
Overall Record: 10-5-4
Another week, another hat trick for emerging superstar Connor Bedard, who racked up his first three-goal game on Oct. 28 and added another on Tuesday night in Chicago's 5-2 defeat of visiting Calgary.
The win extended the Blackhawks' recent point streak to six games (5-0-1) and stretched a masterful run by the 20-year-old center, who has 11 goals and 11 assists in his last 11 games. His 13 goals through 19 games are already just 10 away from his career high of 23, established last season across 82 games.
6. Winnipeg Jets
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Previous Ranking: 7
Overall Record: 12-7-0
Center Mark Scheifele has scored 20-plus goals in each of the last 10 seasons, and his durability and consistency became the stuff of records on Tuesday when he played 898th career game, surpassing Blake Wheeler for most in franchise history.
Now 32, Scheifele was picked by the Jets as the seventh overall selection in the 2011 draft and appeared in 11 games over parts of his first two seasons. He became a full-time player in 2013-14 and scored 29 goals in 2015-16 to begin the decade-long run. He's on pace this season to end with a career-high 48.
5. Dallas Stars
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Previous Ranking: 5
Overall Record: 12-5-3
Jason Robertson has reached whatever it's called when a player surges past a hit streak into almost lethally prolific territory.
The 26-year-old winger scored twice in a Tuesday game against the Islanders to raise his total over the last five games to eight goals, not to mention four assists.
"Just give him the puck. He's shooting everything and a lot's going in," forward Tyler Seguin said. "You kind of expected it to come and happy to see it."
4. New Jersey Devils
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Previous Ranking: 3
Overall Record: 13-5-1
A recent run of living on the edge was snuffed out for the Devils on Tuesday at Tampa Bay, where they fell, 5-1, after a five-game point streak (4-0-1) in which every game was decided in OT or by a shootout.
Positively speaking, New Jersey got both defenseman Dougie Hamilton and forward Connor Brown back after extended absences. The former had 19:53 of ice time after missing four games, and the latter played 15:21 after missing seven games.
3. Anaheim Ducks
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Previous Ranking: 2
Overall Record: 13-6-1
The good news is that a stretch of nine home games out of 10 overall began with an OT defeat of Utah on Monday, and ended a brief two-game skid in which the Ducks had been outscored 10-4 by Colorado and Detroit.
The bad news is that the 3-2 win over the Mammoth was the fourth straight game in which Anaheim scored fewer than four goals after the team had met or exceeded that number 10 times in its first 15 games.
2. Carolina Hurricanes
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Previous Ranking: 4
Overall Record: 13-5-2
A seven-game homestand beckons from Nov. 26 through Dec. 9, but first the Hurricanes need to conquer the back half of a road trip that'll continue in Winnipeg on Friday and Buffalo on Sunday before they're back to Raleigh.
The trip began with a 3-1 win at Boston that was backstopped by goalie Pyotr Kochetkov's 29 saves. The 26-year-old Russian missed the team's first 11 games with a preseason injury, but the defeat of the Bruins was his fourth straight since returning, and dipped his goals-against average to a stingy 1.70.
While Wednesday's shootout loss to Minnesota is a bump in the road, things continue to trend upward for Carolina.
1. Colorado Avalanche
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Previous Ranking: 1
Overall Record: 13-1-5
Maybe getting the Avalanche away from home will help the rest of the league slow them down because not much else has been working for opponents amid Colorado's six-game win streak and a 10-game point streak (8-0-2).
Coach Jared Bednar's team will play seven of its next 11 games on the road, but it may not be a deterrent given its 6-0-3 mark outside of Denver and the prolific play of Nathan MacKinnon, who had points in 11 straight games before Sunday and entered Tuesday's games with a three-point lead in the league scoring race.
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