4 NHL Teams Destined to Be Worse During the 2026-27 Season
You might not be able to win the Stanley Cup or make the playoffs in the summer, but you can hurt your chances if you don't make the appropriate improvements or make the right moves.
While the offseason is still very young, a lot of the big moves have already been made and rosters are starting to take shape.
So let's take a look at a handful of teams that have maybe taken a step backwards going into the 2026-27 season.
There is still time for these teams to change their path over the next couple of months. This is just a snapshot in time as things stand in early July.
This is also not necessarily a list of the teams that are going to be the worst teams in the NHL, or even teams that are going to be bad.
It is simply teams that are looking like they will take a step backwards from where they were a year ago.
Ottawa Senators
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Given the circumstances, the Ottawa Senators did about as well as they could have in the Brady Tkachuk trade.
He wanted out. He only wanted to go to one team (the Florida Panthers, where his brother, Matthew Tkachuk, already plays).
They knew they were likely to lose him in two years, and every day he got closer to that, his trade value was likely to keep decreasing due to how much less time his current contract would have on it.
Getting three first-round picks, including one they were able to flip for William Eklund, is fine. It's an acceptable return given the circumstances. You're probably not going to get more than that.
The Senators need to hit on at least one of those picks.
They need Eklund to take a big step forward in the coming seasons and go from being, "very good young NHLer" to "bonafide top-line player."
They need to take the future salary cap space his trade opened up and put it to good use.
It's all possible to do. It's just not easy. It also might not be very likely if we look at the history of trades like this. The team that gets the best player usually (but not always) wins the deal in the short-term and long-term.
But the harsh reality in the short-term, for this season, is that Tkachuk IS a big loss, and they haven't really done enough just yet to make up for that.
Adding Eklund was a good start, but blowing $5.5 million of that newfound salary-cap space on Andre Burakovsky's remaining contract doesn't seem ideal.
How can the Senators avoid being worse?
At this point a lot of it is going to have to come from within.
Better goaltending would go a long way toward fixing a lot of their problems from 2025-26 whether Tkachuk was on the roster or not. The defensive structure and puck-possession metrics were all strong for the Senators, only to have subpar goaltending undo a lot of it for most of the season. If Ullmark can get back to his 2024-25 level, a lot of the Senators problems will be solved. That's a big wild card.
They really need Eklund to take another step in his development and become more of a 20-30-goal winger instead of a 15-20-goal winger. Does he have that in him?
They also need Tim Stutzle to unlock a different level of offense and be more of a 90-100 point guy, instead of a 70-80 point player. We have seen that level from him before, and he was close to that player this season; the Senators could really use a massive year from him.
Anaheim Ducks
2 of 4
This offseason has been a mess for the Ducks.
Imagine watching them take a huge step forward in 2025-26, looking at their roster of young star forwards, and then thinking they might be looking at a massive step backwards in 2026-27. It would have seemed preposterous. Unthinkable. Insane.
But that is the reality the Ducks are facing given the offseason, and the degree to which they could be looking at a step backwards largely hinges on what they do with Leo Carlsson.
If they do not match the five-year, $90 million offer sheet the Philadelphia Flyers signed him to, they are going to lose their No. 1 center and best young player.
That would be devastating to their progress.
Even if they do bring Carlsson back, they have put themselves in a difficult cap position, with his $18 million AAV creating a major squeeze and Pavel Mintyukov's new deal (over $7 million per season) further tightening their flexibility after they moved aggressively to keep him from another offer sheet.
None of this takes into account the contract fellow restricted free agent Cutter Gauthier is going to need and how that will eat up the remainder of their salary cap space for this season, while also dramatically impacting their salary cap situation in future seasons.
There is also the significant issue of a blue line that already ranked among the weakest of last season's playoff teams and has since been thinned out in free agency without comparable reinforcements coming in.
The entire offseason has been about subtraction and spending more money than they originally hoped.
How can the Ducks avoid being worse?
They have to match the Carlsson offer sheet. You can't let a player that young, and that good, walk for nothing but draft picks, even if it is four of them. That will set the franchise back years.
They not only need Carlsson back, they also need him to take another big leap forward (which seems likely given his current trajectory) and find a way to add somebody else on defense.
Maybe you have to trade a Troy Terry to do it. Maybe you have to move out cap space some other way. But somebody else has to come in.
Buffalo Sabres
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This is a tough one because the Buffalo Sabres have done a lot of things right so far this offseason. They have made a lot of objectively good value moves.
Trading defenseman Bowen Byram and capitalizing on his value to get the No. 4 overall pick and No. 45 pick in the 2026 NHL Draft was a great piece of asset management. It may have also given them a future star in defenseman Daxon Rudolph (the No. 4 overall pick).
Trading that No. 45 pick for Olen Zellweger, a cheaper, Bowen Byram-lite defenseman, was a really solid move.
Not overpaying a 30-year-old Alex Tuch for $10.5 million per year over the next eight years was a very defensible and understandable decision.
There is nothing wrong with any of that. Absolutely nothing.
That is still a lot of talent leaving the organization, with nowhere near as much coming back in right now. Maybe it pays off down the line and makes a later version of this Sabres team better, but that doesn't help the current group that finally has a long‑frustrated fanbase believing again.
A lot of things went right on their push to the playoffs in 2025-26, and there is no guarantee that all happens again. Especially with less talent on the roster. It should be a legitimate concern, even if the young core still looks promising and the team itself is still good.
The playoffs are still within reach, and still a real possibility.
But is it going to be a 109-point, Atlantic Division champion team? Probably not as currently constructed.
How do the Sabres avoid being worse?
Put that $8 million in salary-cap space they have remaining to good use and make another blockbuster move.
The most obvious solution here: Connor Hellebuyck.
If this team has a big question mark and a big potential Achilles' heel, goaltending would have to be high on the list.
The Sabres have been connected to Hellebuyck all offseason, and the goalie's future with Winnipeg remains uncertain.
It would be an obvious win-now move for a team that is trying to finally build something meaningful. It might help them stay among the league's top Stanley Cup contenders.
Vegas Golden Knights
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Vegas is an interesting team.
It clearly underachieved during the 2025-26 regular season, at least based on preseason expectations.
Then, once the playoffs began, and especially after John Tortorella took over as the interim head coach, everything started to click into place and they played up to expectation, reaching the Stanley Cup Final where they lost to the Carolina Hurricanes.
A very real outcome with this team in 2026-27 is they maybe finish with more points in the regular season, but may not actually be a better team or go anywhere near as far in the playoffs.
There is also a possibility that they simply end up with fewer points than the 95 they had this past season.
It's an older team with a lot of veterans who have a tendency to miss time each season. On top of that, they just lost one of their best young forwards when they traded restricted free agent Pavel Dorofeyev on draft night.
There are some questions and concerns here, and that includes a goaltending situation that was very inconsistent in 2025-26. Can Carter Hart play the way he did for parts of the playoffs over a full season? Does Adin Hill still have something left to offer as a potential starter?
At some point, those questions in goal will catch up to them, especially with so many of their key players already on the wrong side of 30.
How do the Golden Knights avoid getting worse?
There is always the possibility that management has another blockbuster move lurking.
It might be something that comes out of nowhere.
It might a pursuit of a big-name player whose name is already out on the trade block.
They do, after all, finally have some future draft pick capital again, and they always find a way to make the salary cap work.
Could they get involved in the Connor Hellebuyck sweepstakes?
Maybe the Dylan Larkin talks?
You really cannot rule out anything with these guys, and the way the roster looks now is likely not going to be the way it looks by midseason or the 2027 trade deadline. That might be what they need to do to avoid a step backwards.
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