The NHL has its contenders, its basement dwellers and then the forgettable, often-overlooked mushy middle.
The mushy middle is home to teams that aren’t good enough to be Stanley Cup contenders but not bad enough to collect picks in the top 5-10 range, where you’re most likely to draft future stars. The Los Angeles Kings and Detroit Red Wings are prime examples of teams recently stuck in this mediocre territory. There’s nothing wrong with being middle-of-the-pack for a year or two, especially if you’re trying to accelerate from a tear-it-down rebuild to being playoff-competitive again, but eventually everybody wants to escape this no-man’s-land.
It’s pretty straightforward to identify teams that will probably land in the mushy middle this coming season. But the more interesting question is which teams might find themselves stuck here over the medium-term future for the next three to four seasons. I went through every NHL team’s roster, cap situation, prospect pool and more to identify clubs likely destined for this reality.
The teams we’re going to highlight in this “mushy middle” aren’t all equal. Some of the franchises on this list actually have a decent chance to make the playoffs next year (they’re on the list because their ceiling to go on a deep run and their future outlook is limited), whereas others are in far worse positions where the postseason isn’t even a realistic ambition. Even within this list, you’d prefer some “mushy middle” situations over others.
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Without further ado, let’s dive in.
Los Angeles Kings
The Kings have already been stuck in mediocrity for a while, as they’ve suffered five consecutive first-round playoff defeats, which included a four-game sweep at the hands of the Colorado Avalanche last spring. It’s difficult to see how they can shake up the status quo and elevate their ceiling.
L.A. has one of the oldest rosters in the NHL, with 14 players who are 30 or older. Anže Kopitar’s retirement has left a gaping need for a bona fide top-six center to play behind Quinton Byfield. The Kings’ blue line is too old, slow and limited at breaking the puck out, as Joel Edmundson, Brian Dumoulin and Cody Ceci are redundant stay-at-home defensemen. Their prospect cupboard is very thin — colleague Scott Wheeler ranked them as the No. 27 pool in the NHL in March (before this year’s draft). Elton Hermansson is the only Kings prospect who cracked Wheeler’s top-100 drafted NHL prospects ranking earlier this month.
The Kings still have enough drivers to contend for a playoff spot in a weak Pacific Division. They’ve got lots of talent on the wing with Artemi Panarin, Adrian Kempe, Kevin Fiala (we didn’t get a chance to see Panarin and Fiala in the lineup at the same time because the latter got injured at the Olympics), Mats Zuccarello and Alex Laferriere. Byfield and Brandt Clarke also have breakout potential.
However, it’s hard to see them as anything more than an average team at best. Playoff success feels especially unlikely because Panarin, their best player, is a notorious underachiever in the playoffs and proved it again, recording zero five-on-five points in four games against the Avs.
Seattle Kraken
You need elite talent to have success in today’s NHL, which explains why the Kraken are stuck in purgatory.
Seattle doesn’t have a single forward who would be considered a top-line player on a Cup-contending team. They lack a true No. 1 center, a star winger and a bona fide No. 1 defenseman. Jordan Eberle, who turned 36 in May, was their leading scorer last year with 55 points, which says all you need to know. They’ve always had capable depth (they seem to love loading up on middle-six forwards), which has helped them avoid being truly awful, but outside of a fluke 100-point season in 2022-23 where they made the playoffs and won a round, they’ve been stuck as an uninspiring, below-average team, recording between 76 and 81 points in each of the last three seasons.
It hurts that neither of their early top-five picks, Matty Beniers and Shane Wright, has developed into an elite player. As a franchise, they haven’t fully bought into rebuilding, which has resulted in chasing middling veterans in free agency in past years.
I like Seattle’s prospect pool a lot — Chase Reid, Jake O’Brien and Berkly Catton are A-grade prospects — but the club’s current roster is so bereft of impact talent that I don’t see how they become a true contender anytime soon. This feels like a team that’s destined to finish in the 20s of the league standings for the foreseeable future.
Winnipeg Jets
Winnipeg is only a year removed from winning the Presidents’ Trophy in 2024-25, and injuries were a big reason why the team missed the playoffs last season, but the franchise’s trajectory is in jeopardy.
The Jets were the NHL’s oldest team last year, and it showed in how slow and uncreative they looked night to night. The loss of Nikolaj Ehlers was a devastating blow to the Jets’ middle-six offensive attack, as they essentially became a one-line team. GM Kevin Cheveldayoff hasn’t been able to make a marquee acquisition to fix that weakness this summer.
There’s still a path for them to make the playoffs next year — they have elite players at every position with Mark Scheifele, Kyle Connor, Josh Morrissey and Connor Hellebuyck — but how can they possibly challenge for a Stanley Cup in a Central Division that features three juggernauts in Colorado, Minnesota and Dallas? Even Utah has leaped ahead of Winnipeg with tantalizing young up-and-coming talent.
Making matters worse, there’s an elephant in the room with Hellebuyck’s uncertain future. If the Jets are forced to trade him, it ends any realistic ambition of being an above-average team. The logical course of action, if that were to happen, would be to embrace a rebuild, but Cheveldayoff reaffirmed at development camp that “the plan is still to win.” It’s understandable from a business perspective, as the club has faced attendance woes and a long rebuild could jeopardize the franchise’s financial stability, but it leaves them caught in the middle; they aren’t good enough to contend for a Cup, and haven’t shown any signs of embracing a future-focused direction.
New York Rangers
GM Chris Drury made aggressive moves this summer to beef up his 30th-place Rangers. Pavel Dorofeyev is a top-flight goal scorer, and their second pair has been successfully rebuilt with Marcus Pettersson and Sean Durzi. Couple that with better health for Adam Fox (55 games played) and Igor Shesterkin (51 games played), Gabriel Perreault’s breakout potential and the possibility of Alexis Lafrenière taking a leap (he scored 28 points in 29 games after Artemi Panarin sat out and was eventually traded), and there’s a compelling case for the Rangers to contend for a playoff spot.
However, it’s difficult to envision what their window to actually contend for a championship is.
The current lineup isn’t close to the level of the best teams in the Eastern Conference. Sure, there’s a long-shot scenario where Shesterkin steals a series if they squeak into the postseason, but the odds of a deep playoff run feel slim to none. The bigger issue is that their core is aging — Mika Zibanejad, J.T. Miller, Fox, Shesterkin and Vladislav Gavrikov are all in their late 20s or early 30s — and there isn’t enough of a strong youth movement coming, as the team’s prospect pool is average and they’ve already traded away two of their next four first-round picks.
The Rangers should be significantly better next season, but their ceiling looks quite limited, and it feels like they’ve locked themselves into being a “mid” team for the foreseeable future.
Toronto Maple Leafs
Can the Leafs realistically bounce back and make the playoffs next season? Absolutely.
Toronto’s back end could be significantly better with the addition of Darren Raddysh and a healthy Chris Tanev (who only played 11 games last season), and moving Simon Benoit out and bringing Emil Andrae in should result in a third pair that’s much better at breaking the puck out. Gavin McKenna should give the team’s top-six and first-unit power play a big jolt. The new coach bump going from Craig Berube to Jim Hiller could be meaningful; the bottom six is upgraded (Nick Paul, Jack Roslovic, Colton Sissons, Brandon Duhaime, Teddy Blueger) and Auston Matthews should rebound after arguably the worst season of his NHL career.
However, the issue is that even if they make the playoffs, the path to a deep run feels quite unlikely in a stacked Atlantic Division. The Montreal Canadiens, Florida Panthers and Buffalo Sabres are all stronger teams than the Leafs on paper. Their future outlook also faces several question marks.
Yes, McKenna has a good chance of eventually developing into a star, but the rest of Toronto’s core is aging. The Leafs’ five best defenders are all in their 30s, John Tavares will turn 36 and Sergei Bobrovsky will turn 38 before the season starts. Matthews will turn 29 in September and William Nylander is 30. They don’t have enough young pieces coming with a prospect pool that’s quite bleak beyond McKenna (ranked No. 29 by Wheeler in March) and they’re asset-poor as they don’t own their next two first-rounders.
There’s a path for the Leafs to be decent short-term, but a Stanley Cup run over the next few years feels like a long shot, especially since their best players have underwhelming playoff track records.
Detroit Red Wings
The Red Wings have missed the playoffs by slim margins three years in a row with 91, 86 and 92 points respectively, which is a perfect snapshot of the mushy middle. There isn’t a realistic path for them to explode past that ceiling anytime soon, especially with captain Dylan Larkin’s trade request.
Detroit is too weak down the middle, five-on-five scoring still looks like a major issue and they’re stuck in an absolutely stacked Atlantic. And because they’ve flirted with the playoffs over the last few years, they haven’t drafted high enough to land another elite star to their core. If anything, in the event the Red Wings trade Larkin, they may be too bad next season to even be considered mediocre.
Committing to a step back in the short term is probably the wisest decision for the franchise’s long-term health, though. Detroit doesn’t need a full-scale teardown as it has some foundational pieces in Moritz Seider, Lucas Raymond and Simon Edvinsson, along with a top-10 prospect pool in the NHL, but the worst possible scenario would be to trade Larkin for a win-now package in an attempt to stay competitive and end their postseason drought.
In any case, it feels like a while before the Red Wings will be relevant again. For the sake of their fans, hopefully their next GM accepts this fate, is OK with taking a step back and commits to a path that at least creates some light at the end of the tunnel.
Columbus Blue Jackets
Columbus has narrowly missed the playoffs in back-to-back years despite Zach Werenski putting up two borderline MVP-caliber seasons.
There’s still a lot of intriguing young talent on this roster (especially if Adam Fantilli breaks out and if the likes of Kent Johnson and Dmitri Voronkov rebound) and there’s a possibility that veterans Sean Monahan and Conor Garland could bounce back, which would revitalize the club’s second line. Their offseason hasn’t been particularly exciting — Valeri Nichushkin is a sweet pick-up but it’s offset by the departures of Mason Marchment and Boone Jenner — but they’re still a good enough team on paper to be a roughly 50/50 bet to make the playoffs next season.
The problem is that, like many other clubs on this list, they may end up stuck as a bubble team for the foreseeable future. Columbus catastrophically whiffed in drafting Cayden Lindstrom over Ivan Demidov in 2024, which leaves their prospect pool in a mediocre situation. Jackson Smith and Oscar Hemming are the only prospects who landed on Wheeler’s top-100 drafted NHL prospects ranking. In other words, there isn’t a young stud coming that will quickly change the franchise’s outlook, the way you’d hope for with a team that’s missed the playoffs six years in a row and drafted relatively high.
Columbus is also surprisingly close to the salary cap ceiling for a middle-of-the-pack team. The Blue Jackets have just over $14 million in projected room according to CapWages, but RFA Adam Fantilli is still unsigned and will eat up nearly all that space by himself. Next summer, Kirill Marchenko, Denton Mateychuk, Johnson and Voronkov will also be RFAs in line for significant raises.
The Blue Jackets are one of the higher upside teams within this “mushy middle” list, but I don’t see a realistic path to them becoming an elite team and challenging for a Cup within the next few years.
Honorable mentions: Nashville Predators, Pittsburgh Penguins, St. Louis Blues, Boston Bruins
