Why extreme parity in the NHL this season is a blessing and a curse

In 2019 I wrote an article about how a weird team was going to win the Stanley Cup that season, a prediction I explained thusly: Some weird team is going to win the Stanley Cup this season, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Final played between two weird teams. (The phrase “weird” just means a team that hasn’t won it all in forever, if ever, or didn’t show itself to be a real Cup hopeful for most of the regular season. Simply a team that hasn’t recently or consistently qualified for consensus Big Dog status.)

As we now know, the St. Louis Blues – a team that was out of the playoffs around Christmas and had never won a Cup before – went on to win it. But I wrote that in April of 2019, and I’m here making the same proclamation for this season in early December of 2023.

The NHL’s parity has reached unforeseen levels of ridiculous, and this year the Cup could very well go to some heavily flawed team that gets a hot goaltending run and stays healthy. By which, of course, I mean your favourite team. You know that goalie of yours has nights where he looks like a world-beater, doesn’t he?

Allow me to better explain.

I have never, in all my years following the NHL, seen an entire conference look like this year’s East. On December 5 a whopping two of 16 teams are currently below .500 by the NHL’s accounting (points percentage). Just two! Almost every team has played more than a quarter of their schedule, so at least some of this is a reflection of their true ability (assuming you accept that an overtime loss is a “tie,” as the NHL rewards it, and not a loss).

The craziest part is the Buffalo Sabres are one of the sub-.500 teams, and frankly I don’t think they’re that bad. If they got red hot for a month and played themselves into wild card contention by year's end, it would not shock me. While we can safely write off Columbus and, probably, Montreal, even the Canadiens are 11-11-3, have some talent on the roster, and aren’t handing anyone two free points.

So the bottom of the Eastern Conference is the best it’s been in years. Last year on December 5 five teams were sub .500.

But the top is weaker than I can remember, too.

The Boston Bruins are tied for top spot in the East, and they’re… pretty good. Good defence, great goaltending, comparable forwards to a dozen other teams. The Rangers have been hot, but they just got spanked by the East's last place team (by points), the Ottawa Senators, and aren't without their flaws up front either.

At this time last year two teams in the East had points percentages above .820 and eight teams were getting points at about a .600 clip. This season the top points percentage in the East is .771 and only six teams are above .600.

So the bottom is better, and the top is weaker, got it.

Everyone is just OK, flawed, trying to stay healthy and working for the most bounces out there.

We could have done a similar exercise in the West, were you willing to look past the league’s only two flagrantly tanking teams in San Jose and Chicago. The Oilers sit just above those two teams in points -- 14^th in the conference -- and they'll probably finish above a wild card spot this year. The Minnesota Wild just fired their coach, won four straight, and are now just five points away from a playoff spot. Vegas leads the conference in points and even they’re clinging to great goaltending and sit below where their points percentage was at this point one year ago.

The NHL’s flat salary cap is giving the league what it thought it wanted: tons of fan bases staying engaged as late into the season as possible. But it's coming at a real cost. Having super-powered teams come into your team’s barn is fun. Teams get up, they talk about “measuring stick” games, and you get to see elite talent work in tandem. Right now, little differentiates one team from the next, which saps personality from the league.

With all that established…it sure does leave the door open, doesn’t it?

Next year the salary cap is set to shoot north some $4 million and don’t be surprised if the season after it shoots up a similar amount. Teams will be better able to hang on to “luxury items” and a Stanley Cup champion won’t necessarily have to sell every useful piece outside of its top-six and top pair to keep the key contributors together. If you’re a team that’s coming into your own now, you should be able to keep your core pieces for the foreseeable future.

Which means that now – as in, this season, immediately, now – is the year for the next “weird" team to win their Stanley Cup before anyone can load up.

The early-crisis Oilers or the lead-blowing Islanders, hey, it could happen with a couple small tweaks. The…gulp…Maple Leafs? Carolina, with the league’s worst goaltending which could turn, the 12-10-1 Devils, the…Vancouver Canucks? Why couldn’t Connor Hellebuyck get red hot and play the Jets through a “pretty good” Central Division and beyond?

As much as there’s still some good teams we expect to claim the one-seeds – someone has to, after all – how big is the gap really between the Bruins and Senators, first and last in the Atlantic? Or the Rangers and the Penguins, who are second-last in the Metro?

I’m encouraged by the league’s direction, but I don’t love the shape of today’s competitive balance. The flat salary cap has obliterated the dynastic Tampa Bay Lightning, who’ve done tremendous work to hang on after moving on from (*takes a deep breath*) Ryan McDonagh, Yanni Gourde, Ondrej Palat, Alex Killorn, Carter Verhaeghe, Mathieu Joseph, Blake Coleman, Barclay Goodrow, David Savard, Luke Schenn, Tyler Johnson…and on and on. I don’t recall the early-1980s Islanders having to do that after their first couple Cups, or who knows if my Dad, Bob Bourne -- a tier below the Isles' Hall of Famers -- is still there to lead them in scoring en route to their 1983 Cup?

Every recent team that’s won the Cup has had to move on from a few key pieces, as the Avs did with Nazem Kadri. It’s brutal for their fans and the management who went to great pains to acquire those good players.

It seems like, with the cap once again becoming unstuck, those instances will be less common in the future.

But while we’re here, the door is wide open this season. If your team isn’t one of Columbus, Anaheim, San Jose or Chicago, you’ve got a fighting chance. Nobody is handing the Bruins, Rangers, Golden Knights or Avalanche the Stanley Cup just yet.

The group of teams that could possibly etch their name on the 2024 Stanley Cup is as vast as the field that qualifies for the playoffs.