10 NHL Teams Most Likely to Disappoint During the 2026-27 Season

When it comes to the new NHL season, disappointment is something most teams get to experience in some way or another. Some teams might be let down by having a great season that falls short of winning the Stanley Cup while others are left asking what happened during a year which was all but over before New Year's Day.

With training camps set to open in a matter of weeks, we're looking back at what teams did a year ago and looking ahead at what they'll do in the new season and wondering who among them will be left disappointed compared to last season. That doesn't always necessarily mean missing the playoffs and it doesn't always mean a team is challenging for the No. 1 pick in the draft either.

We've picked out a handful of teams who enter the season with questions, concerns and potential pitfalls that could lead them to feeling like they should've done more in the end. Whether the end comes in early April or mid-June matters not because sadness can come for anyone at any time in the NHL.

Anaheim Ducks

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Cutter Gauthier

The Ducks took plenty of onlookers by surprise last season with their high-paced style of play and penchant for piling up goals. Their youngest players took massive steps last season from Leo Carlsson to Cutter Gauthier to Beckett Sennecke, Anaheim was powered by guys they focused their rebuild around.

The offseason was a bit dramatic, however. Carlsson's five-year, $90 million offer sheet with the Philadelphia Flyers was matched and threw GM Pat Verbeek's plans out the window for salary cap management. Gauthier remains unsigned and rumors have swirled about how those talks are going. The Ducks managed one restricted free agent by trading defenseman Olen Zellweger to Buffalo and with just over $9 million in cap space to get Gauthier done, the headaches for management haven't gone away.

These kinds of off-ice dealings are problems for Verbeek until camp starts and if Gauthier isn't signed when it opens, then it's a problem for coach Joel Quenneville and the rest of the team who can't afford to slip up after such a strong showing in the playoffs last season. The vibes are way off for the Ducks and while all it takes is to string wins together to fix that, an unsigned star player is an uneasy feeling.

Buffalo Sabres

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Zach Benson and Kaiden Guhle

The Sabres had one of the more remarkable seasons a year ago. In early December, they were last in the Eastern Conference and by the end of the season, they were Atlantic Division champions with 109 points and one of the best teams in the NHL. Going from being a team where people said, "Boy, it would be fun if they can make the playoffs," to one that's expected to be not just a playoff team, but one that can make a deep run is a drastic change.

Buffalo's offseason saw those new expectations land while also moving Bowen Byram to Chicago and signing-and-trading Alex Tuch to Washington. Although they found a way to replace Byram with Olen Zellweger from Anaheim, they're banking on their younger players to fill the void of Tuch's departure. Whether that's Jiri Kulich, Konsta Helenius or Noah Östlund taking a big step or Zach Benson building on his explosive playoff performances to add more offense, the Sabres at least have a lot of options.

There's also been the talk about Connor Hellebuyck potentially joining the team all summer long and if that move never comes to pass, will that have an effect on goalies Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Alex Lyon? Trade rumors are part of the business, but they're rattling, nonetheless. Rasmus Dahlin and Tage Thompson will need to continue to be strong leaders to soften the blow of losing Tuch and keep everyone else focused thanks to the trade rumors.

Chicago Blackhawks

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Connor Bedard

Hope always burns hot for Chicago thanks to having Connor Bedard. The problem Blackhawks fans have dealt with, however, is Bedard's unfortunate injury history early in his career. That he'll start this season, one that starts with a lot of hope for a positive turn, injured again makes it tough to get super hyped.

Chicago has made some moves to do things differently. They acquired defenseman Bowen Byram from Buffalo (for the No. 4 pick in the 2026 Draft and defenseman Louis Crevier) and signed him to a six-year, $75 million extension to be their No. 1 blue liner. They also brought back team legend and future Hall of Famer Patrick Kane to spur their offense and power play. Those are reasons to think GM Kyle Davidson is getting aggressive about their perennial status as a lottery team.

Even with those additions, not starting the season with Bedard is a reminder of how thin the team still is. Yes, they've got some fun young talent with Frank Nazar, Anton Frondell, Artyom Levshunov and Roman Kantserov, but relying on young guys means needing them to be consistently strong players and that can take time.

Chicago could improve by 15-20 points and that would be a huge jump, but it also might not be enough to get them to the playoffs which is what everyone wanted yesterday.

Detroit Red Wings

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Moritz Seider

If there's something Red Wings fans have learned over the past 10 years, it's that things can always be worse. A decade out of the playoffs is hard enough but watching their team fade down the stretch the past few seasons made it harder to witness. Now they've got a team without a GM (for now) and with a team captain in Dylan Larkin who wants out and he's still in.

Hopes and dreams in Detroit are to see harmony return and perhaps an end to their playoff drought. If the new GM can patch things up with Larkin or get a haul for the guy who's scored 30-plus goals in five straight seasons, then hope can have a chance to grow for the Red Wings. As time rolls on with none of these issues settled, it's hard to not believe it'll be another disappointing season for the Red Wings.

Wings fans can feel good about Moritz Seider's growth into one of the finest defensemen in the league and for Lucas Raymond's continued improvement on the wing, but without Larkin and without a GM to guide the organization in arguably the most competitive division in the NHL, Detroit may be home to a deep pit of depression.

Florida Panthers

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Matthew Tkachuk and Aleksander Barkov

After missing the playoffs last season following back-to-back Stanley Cup championships, the Panthers did everything they could to make sure they'd be back with vengeance. They added Brady Tkachuk via trade, signed Radko Gudas and Garnet Hathaway and replaced Sergei Bobrovsky with Jacob Markström in goal. With a healthy Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk, Florida is expected to be in the playoffs and to be a Cup contender again.

That expectation is where disappointment can be easily found, however. With how veteran the Panthers are and how many players from their Cup teams have remained, it's hard to not believe they'll be able to just turn it all on again and run roughshod through the league and in the playoffs again. But age and injury can have their say as well.

Brad Marchand had offseason surgery and may miss the start of the season. We saw how injuries hampered so many of their players last season, including Marchand, Seth Jones, Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart and Anton Lundell and overcoming bad health is hard to do. Marchand's offseason surgery isn't foreboding, but it is a reminder of how things can get in the way. They should be a playoff team, but the expectation is for them to be back to where they left off and that's a tall order.

Los Angeles Kings

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Drew Doughty

Even though the Kings' season ended with yet another first-round playoff loss, it also saw them lose team captain Anže Kopitar to retirement. This season, they'll hope young center Quinton Byfield can step into Kopitar's role, and they'll have new head coach Peter Laviolette to try and guide them through that.

Things haven't ended great for Laviolette in his past couple of spots in New York and Washington, but with a veteran team like the Kings have, he might be the right guy to lead the way. L.A. put up 90 points last season and had to outrun the Sharks, Blues and Predators for the final wild card spot. They were also two points back of Anaheim for third in the division and two back of Utah in the first wild card.

The point is, it'll be tight if they don't improve and making up for Kopitar hanging it up is going to be difficult. They'll need Drew Doughty to find more points and for Brandt Clarke to take another step forward on defense while Artemi Panarin and Adrian Kempe continue to produce offense while Kevin Fiala returns from his gruesome Olympic injury. Some "ifs" can be OK, but the Kings have a lot of them they'll need to come through to not have a letdown season.

Ottawa Senators

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Tim Stützle and Linus Ullmark

The Senators provided a lot of drama and excitement last season, and the offseason was no different. They traded captain Brady Tkachuk to division rival Florida but added William Eklund from San Jose to make them speedier and more skilled.

With all the grumping that surrounded Tkachuk last season, you wonder if losing him could lead to the Senators playing in a more relieved way. Then again, you wonder if a player like Tkachuk was the guy that helped drive them to the playoffs last season in the first place.

Ottawa has talent, however. Tim Stützle with Eklund up front will be exciting and Jake Sanderson and Thomas Chabot on the blue line are solid and Linus Ullmark is still a top goalie. But after making the playoffs in a tumultuous season, only a return to the postseason in a calmer setting will make things feel normal again in Canada's capital city and the competition to get there is going to be ferocious in and out of the division.

Philadelphia Flyers

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Porter Martone

The Flyers run to the playoffs last season, and advancement to the second round at that, was stunning in a lot of ways. After all, expectations for the rebuilding-on-the-fly team were low and even with a motivating coach like Rick Tocchet in place, the postseason seemed like a stretch.

The downside to making the playoffs out of the blue is that the expectation now is they'll not just go back, but they'll go even deeper than last year. Flyers management has tried to make the team better this summer (just ask the Anaheim Ducks and Leo Carlsson) but were mostly quiet outside of that blockbuster offer sheet. What that means is they're pretty much running it back with the same team that finished tied with Pittsburgh for second in the Metropolitan. Having Porter Martone joining Travis Konecny and Trevor Zegras should provide a lot of help.

A team that had the kind of chemistry Philly did last season doing it again this season could work out really well, but if they slip back at all, it could mean missing the playoffs again, especially since Carolina doesn't look weaker and Washington made great strides to improve.

Pittsburgh Penguins

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Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang

The Metropolitan Division is going to be messy, but that means "fun" for everyone looking for a playoff race. For the Penguins, they had a taste of that last season in returning to the postseason, but with their older stars getting another year older, we have to wonder can they do it again?

We bank on Sidney Crosby continuing to be great. We loved seeing Evgeni Malkin turn it on again last season and we can hope that Kris Letang can find that kind of fortune himself as well. After all, Erik Karlsson found a new, old gear last season.

Coach Dan Muse fine-tuned the Penguins last season to make them a solid, yet still somewhat maddening, team. With Arturs Silovs in goal, they'll bank on him carrying the load, but competition with the Stanley Cup champion Hurricanes, a much-improved Washington Capitals team, and the rest of the division vying for the playoffs as well, it could be slippery all year.

Plenty of fans want to see the likes of Crosby, Malkin and Letang get one more playoff run before any of them decide to hang it up and even though they've missed the playoffs in recent years, missing them now could mean the end of an era and nothing is more disappointing than facing up to that.

San Jose Sharks

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Let's get this out of the way, the Sharks are going to be a good team. They're going to be a very fun and exciting team to watch, too, and after coming so close to making the playoffs last season, the expectation is that they'll make it this season.

Sharks GM Mike Grier made moves to better prepare his team for the season and added veterans for the blue line (Darnell Nurse, Jacob Trouba, Michael Kesselring) and with Macklin Celebrini being a superstar player (even landing the cover of EA's NHL 27) and Will Smith a star winger in the making, there are questions if the team is still a little too green for big success.

San Jose has other young players like 2025 No. 2 overall pick Michael Misa and 2026 No. 2 pick Ivar Stenberg ready to make big impressions as well as 2024 first-rounder Sam Dickinson ready to take another step on defense.

This is a lot of youth to manage and not everyone can hit at the same time in their development into being NHL players. If they all hit simultaneously? Look out. But if the struggles get tough to manage and the Western Conference stiffens up or improves, these young Sharks could be in for a fight that will teach them more lessons for the years to come and the kind that fans can run out of patience with.