NHL Atlantic Division Preview: Who Is the Team to Beat?

Headed into the 2025-26 season, the Atlantic Division could play a central role in the battle to see if any team can stop the Panthers’ pursuit of a third-straight Stanley Cup win. 

If anyone’s going to mount a significant campaign to topple the current kings of the league, it’s probably going to start in the regular season, where seven teams will challenge Florida for a Division Title.

The Panthers are, of course, favored right now to win the division, but — with Matthew Tkachuk’s injury news in mind – they probably shouldn’t be…we can get into that later. 

Here’s a preview of the Atlantic Division with odds to win the division, make the playoffs, and win the Stanley Cup as of September 22. 

Florida Panthers 

• Win Stanley Cup Odds: +600
• Win Conference Odds: +300
• Win Division Odds: +155
• Make Playoff Odds: -1600

Florida’s obviously going to carry a fair deal of hype with them as we enter the 2025-26 season. Any repeat Stanley Cup champion would. 

If you’re a bettor looking to get on the Panthers hype train, though, I’d caution you against purchasing your ticket right now when its price is at the highest of highs. I don’t think, though, that Florida has that good of a shot at being as good a regular-season team as these odds would have you believe. 

The aforementioned Tkachuk injury is a significant factor, as the star forward is expected to miss at least two months to start the season.

Beyond Tkachuk’s current injury, I don’t see the Panthers being anywhere close to 100% effort as they start the season, given the immense workload they’ve had across three consecutive runs to the Stanley Cup Finals. Through their playoff runs in the last three years, they’ve played 68 games, almost an entire extra season. 

Hopefully, this doesn’t mean more injuries for Florida, but it will probably manifest as a team that comes out a step slower and slightly less lethal than at their peak level.

The Panthers are designed to be a playoff team, not necessarily a regular-season juggernaut. I don’t really think they’re as good a bet to win the division as some of the other teams on this list. 

Tampa Bay Lightning

• Win Stanley Cup Odds: +1400
• Win Conference Odds: +625
• Win Division Odds: +270
• Make Playoff Odds: -500

What world are we living in where the 2025-26 Lightning are the second-best team in the Atlantic Division? Frankly, it’s a world in which I don’t want to live. 

Tampa Bay has lost in the first round three years in a row, following their back-to-back Stanley Cups, and two of those series losses came at the hands of their in-state rival. 

Despite a lack of playoff success recently, the Lightning have remained a decent regular-season team. They finished second in the Atlantic last season with a 47-27-8 record. The year prior, they had a 45-29-8 record.

Tampa Bay had zero meaningful changes in the offseason, only signing one free agent of any significance in right winger Pontus Holmberg. 

Maybe it’s premature, but I think the league has passed the Lightning by. Their core is either past their prime or on the tail-end of it. Nikita Kucherov is 32, Brayden Point is 29, and Andrei Vasilevskiy is 30. 

Toronto and Montreal are both teams that could finish second in this division, but I don’t see Tampa Bay being good enough this year to maintain its second-best status. 

I’m not suggesting that the Lightning will miss the playoffs or anything — they’ll still probably have a Hart Trophy contender in Kucherov and a Vezina Trophy contender in Vasilevskiy — but I don’t see them being a major contender for the Stanley Cup. 

Toronto Maple Leafs

• Win Stanley Cup Odds: +1800
• Win Conference Odds: +850
• Win Division Odds: +360
• Make Playoff Odds: -375

After spending years privately crapping on the Maple Leafs and spending last season publicly crapping on them in these articles, I’m happily announcing that Toronto is officially underrated. 

They should be favored over Tampa Bay to be the second-best team in the conference. 

On paper, they’ve lost Mitch Marner and replaced him with, um, nothing. However, I think losing the media circus that has surrounded Marner over the last few years will be a net positive for the Maple Leafs. 

Furthermore, the recalibration of Toronto’s roster has taken away some of the boom-or-bust ‘Core Four’ offense and put more of an emphasis on their veteran defensive talent, like Chris Tanev, Brandon Carlo, Morgan Rielly, and Oliver Ekman-Larsson. 

The season will also, hopefully, give more of an opportunity to Matthew Knies, who’s shown superstar-level upside in flashes over the last few years. 

Knies had a breakout season last year, with 28 goals and 29 assists in 78 games played. He had more goal-scoring than Marner last season, despite Marner, on average, playing four minutes more per game than Knies. 

If Knies can replace even 60% of the offensive production of Marner, the Maple Leafs will be in a great spot. 

As I’ve said before this offseason, without Marner, there are far fewer excuses and places to hide for the remaining superstars on Toronto’s roster. This year needs to be a significant showcase of leadership from captain Auston Matthews. He’ll also need to signal that he can shoulder a bigger workload on the offensive end. 

If he can do both those things, I think Matthews has a strong chance to win his second Hart Trophy this season.

Ottawa Senators

• Win Stanley Cup Odds: +3500
• Win Conference Odds: +1600
• Win Division Odds: +850
• Make Playoff Odds: -175

Ottawa ended an eight-year playoff drought last season, appearing in a first-round series against the Maple Leafs, where they lost in six games. 

They had a 45-30-7 record, landing them in fourth place in the Atlantic Division. The oddsmakers at BetMGM have them slotted into a similar spot here this season. 

It’s hard to know what to make of the Senators as we head into the 2025-26 season. They’re a young-ish team with a lot of solid pieces, headlined by captain Brady Tkachuk. 

They’ve also got Tim Stützle, Dylan Cozens, Fabian Zetterlund, and 37-year-old forward Claude Giroux. Additionally, they have one of the best goalies in the NHL in Linus Ullmark. Ottawa also acquired defenseman Jordan Spence from the Los Angeles Kings this offseason, a player that I think is one of the most underrated in the league, based on the fact that he just wasn’t used that well in LA. 

Despite all the good things on the Senators’ roster, there are really no expectations for this team. 

As evidenced by their Stanley Cup odds, they’re not really a title contender, nor are they really a strong contender to win the East or the division, and they’re only a slight favorite to make the playoffs. 

On paper, there’s more good in Ottawa right now than bad, but until we see them play in the regular season, I still don’t know how heavily they should be bought into. 

Montreal Canadiens

• Win Stanley Cup Odds: +5000
• Win Conference Odds: +2200
• Win Division Odds: +1400
• Make Playoff Odds: +100

The most surprising thing about the preseason NHL odds for me is how underrated Montreal is. 

Last year was a big step forward for the team, as they made the playoffs for the first time since losing in the Stanley Cup Finals in 2021 to the Lightning. They had a 40-31-11 record and finished fifth in the Atlantic after three straight last-place finishes in the Division. 

It’s hard to see why oddsmakers wouldn’t assume there’d be some more natural progression here for the Canadiens as their stars of the future continue to mature. 

The core of the team is its first line — Cole Caufield on the left wing, Nick Suzuki at center, and Juraj Slafkovsky on the right — and they already proved last season that they’ve fully matured into one of the best lines in the NHL. 

Outside of that, you have defenseman Lane Hutson coming off an electric Calder Trophy rookie season, where he proved that his unique playstyle at the D-position in college would 100% carry over into the pros. 

Montreal may have back-to-back stellar rookie seasons with Russian forward Ivan Demidov, who only appeared in 8 games last season. He’s a +175 favorite to win the Calder right now. 

The Canadiens also added more in the offseason than just about anyone else in the division. They acquired defenseman Noah Dobson in a trade with the Islanders and Zach Bolduc in a trade with the Blues. They also signed two new goalies in Jakub Dobes and Kaapo Kahkanonen, and center Joe Veleno. 

Montreal is one or two years away from bona fide top-tier Stanley Cup contender status, but their +100 odds to make the playoffs and +1400 to win the Division are both too low. 

Buffalo Sabres

• Win Stanley Cup Odds: +15000
• Win Conference Odds: +6600
• Win Division Odds: +3000
• Make Playoff Odds: +275

The Buffalo Sabres Memorial “What Are We Even Doing” Award has once again been awarded to the Buffalo Sabres. 

The Sabres didn’t have a lot going for them last year, and they decided to rectify that this summer by subtracting one of the few key pieces they had, in 23-year-old forward JJ Peterka, who they traded to the Mammoth. 

Last season was by far the best in Peterka’s three full years in the NHL, finishing the year with 27 goals and 41 assists in 77 games played. It was the kind of season that naturally makes you go, “Hey, let’s get rid of this guy.”

In return, Peterka, Utah sent Buffalo 23-year-old forward Josh Doan and 25-year-old defenseman Michael Kesselring. 

Doan, who was drafted 37th overall by Arizona in 2021, scored seven goals and had 12 assists in the 51 games he played at the NHL level last year. Kesselring was drafted in the sixth round in 2018 by Edmonton but was traded to the Coyotes in 2023 before he made his NHL debut. In 82 games played with the Utah Hockey Club last season, Kesselring had seven goals and 22 assists. 

These guys are both solid depth pieces for a team that needed depth. However, in the traditional school of thought around roster building, you use depth to build around good players. It’s kind of like selling your house to remodel your kitchen. 

Add to that the semi-unexplainable trade of Cozens last season, who was a solid piece for Buffalo in four seasons with them, and you begin to wonder what the strategy is with the Sabres, or, instead, if there is a strategy at all. 

Buffalo fans don’t need to be reminded that the team has an NHL-record 14-season playoff drought — the longest active drought in North American professional sports. And, sadly for them, it’s not ending this year. 

Detroit Red Wings

• Win Stanley Cup Odds: +9000
• Win Conference Odds: +4000
• Win Division Odds: +4000
• Make Playoff Odds: +230

This is probably the last year that Detroit fans will be willing to wait for the ‘Yzer-plan’ to come to fruition. If the Red Wings miss the playoffs for a tenth year in a row, it’s probably curtains for general manager Steve Yzerman.

The last two seasons, Detroit has been close to making the postseason. 

They finished with the same points as the final Wild Card team, the Capitals, in 2023-24, but lost a tiebreaker and were eliminated. Last season, they were in contention for the final Wild Card spot once again, but again fell short. 

Looking at the Red Wings’ overall team statistics from last year, two things stand out: they had the fourth best power play percentage and the worst penalty kill percentage. Detroit had a league-best 64 power play goals and the sixth most power play goals allowed with 55. 

Any advantage the Red Wings would get on the power play was immediately canceled out by their porous penalty kill. 

Did Detroit do anything to address this in the offseason? Not really. They signed center Mason Appleton, forward James van Riemsdyk and defenseman Travis Hamonic. I don’t think anyone, even Hamonic, would consider his signing enough to bolster their penalty kill situation. 

Even with clear flashing red signs that the ‘Yzerplan’ isn’t working, this doesn’t seem to be reflected in the media. The Red Wings, I think, are viewed as a team that could figure it out come playoff time and be fighting for a Wild Card spot at the end of the year.

There’s just no path for that in this division or this conference. 

Sadly, the Yzerplan may go down in history alongside George Bush’s ‘No Child Left Behind’ program as warnings that just because you give something a snappy name that doesn’t mean it will work. 

Boston Bruins

• Win Stanley Cup Odds: +20000
• Win Conference Odds: +8000
• Win Division Odds: +10000
• Make Playoff Odds: +375

The Bruins have the longest odds to win the Atlantic Division and some of the longest odds in the Eastern Conference to win the Stanley Cup. 

I get that last season in Boston was pretty disastrous on a lot of levels, they did kind of hit every level of organizational dysfunction you could imagine: an RFA contract hold out, a coach firing, trading your captain and trading everything else they could get their hands on. 

I mention all of that to say, are we going to see such a perfect storm of suck again for the Bruins? Things can’t — or, rather, probably can’t — get that bad again. 

Only a few things have to go differently for Boston to find themselves in the hunt for the Wild Card: get off to a better start, get a better season out of Jeremy Swayman, and get better coaching from newly-hired rookie head coach Marco Sturm.

The first thing, the Bruins lost seven of their first 11 games to start the 2024-25 season. That slow start resulted in the firing of coach Jim Montgomery. You could blame that start on a frustrating training camp and preseason due to the Swayman contract fight. In his first 10 games last season, Swayman went 4-6 and let in 30 goals. 

If the Bruins can have a slightly above .500 start to their season this year, which opens up with the Washington Capitals on October 8th, they’ll be much better prepared to weather losing streaks or bad losses in the future. 

On the Swayman front, the goalie’s lack of a training camp and preseason was something he couldn’t overcome throughout the year. He wore that bad start to the year throughout the 2024-25 season and could never shake it off. 

Swayman ended the season with a 22-29 record as a starter, a 3.11 GAA, and a .892 save percentage. All three stand out as the worst in each category for his career. If Boston can get some regression to the mean for their starting goaltender, they’ll also be much better off. 

Lastly, the addition of Marco Sturm allows the Bruins to have a fresh voice in a locker room that badly needs leadership. Clearly, something was off with Montgomery to start the year in Boston, and the situation certainly wasn’t improved by bringing in a Joe Sacco who everyone knew was just an interim coach. 

Just by being a coach who is, presumably, here to stay, he’ll command more respect than Sacco did, and that will be an improvement for the Bruins.

I think Boston is far better than their +375 odds to make the playoffs suggest they are.