NHL team tiers and expectations: Atlantic Division

The first games of the 2023-24 NHL season will be played on Oct. 10, so we are officially less than a month away from the puck dropping for real. All the work done in the off-season will start coming together, and we’ll see who is ahead of — or behind — their own expectations.

This week we’ll look at each division and express what the pre-season expectations reasonably are for everyone.

This is not a ranking. We’ve broken teams up into different tiers, whether they’re challenging to win, tanking for the top pick or somewhere in between. Within each tier, the teams are ordered alphabetically.

How would you order these tiers, or do you see the outlooks being any different?

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TOP TIER: ALL-IN FOR THE STANLEY CUP

BOSTON BRUINS
Key additions: Morgan Geekie, James van Riemsdyk, Milan Lucic, Kevin Shattenkirk
Key subtractions: Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Taylor Hall, Nick Foligno, Tyler Bertuzzi

Expectations: Remember last season, when the Bruins started with Brad Marchand and Charlie McAvoy on the sidelines, and much of the discussion assumed they would need to rally from a slower start after everyone returned healthy, months later? Instead, the Bruins won 17 of their first 20 games and ran away with the Presidents’ Trophy.

This year, they start without centres Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci – but neither are going to return from retirement. This will leave the team with a hole at centre, which has led to plenty of speculation it could be filled via the trade market. Time will tell. But beware of sleeping on the B’s. With a strong defensive system, a couple of William Jennings-winning goalies and an excellent head coach, Boston could still surprise. The sting of last spring’s first-round playoff upset remains and many will surely doubt this team’s ability to rebound, but internal expectations are to keep going for the Cup.

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TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING
Key additions: Conor Sheary
Key subtractions: Alex Killorn, Ross Colton, Corey Perry, Ian Cole, Pat Maroon

Expectations: It was going to happen eventually. After three consecutive seasons reaching the Stanley Cup Final, the Lightning finally ran out of gas and exited early, being ousted by the Toronto Maple Leafs in six games. While in Toronto they hope that series was the turning point for the franchise, in Tampa Bay they’re hoping it’s not the beginning of the end.

It doesn’t have to be. On one hand, the Lightning did lose key players from their past championship runs, namely Alex Killorn to free agency. It’s getting trickier to replace these departures, but since Tampa has signed so many of its core players to long-term contracts (many team-friendly), they might be in position to add again when the salary cap starts to rise. The core the Lightning have is still one of the best in the game, too, a nice mix of high-end superstars and productive, gritty players.

With a bit more summer rest this season, the Lightning should be back in 2023-24 and will do everything in their power to get back to the final.

TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS
Key additions: Tyler Bertuzzi, Max Domi, Ryan Reaves, John Klingberg
Key subtractions: Michael Bunting, Alex Kerfoot, Justin Holl, Noel Acciari

Expectations: It’s all or nothing, again. The exuberance of last year’s playoff series win — the team’s first since 2004 — was contrasted by how feeble they were in Round 2’s five-game elimination against bottom-seed Florida. It was yet another great opportunity squandered for this group.

New management had us believing great change could come, but instead GM Brad Treliving is so far buying into the core again. Auston Matthews has his extension, which shouldn’t be a surprise, but William Nylander remains without one, just a year away from UFA. Treliving also brought back head coach Sheldon Keefe and even extended him, believing Keefe can adapt and use the changes that were made to the roster positively.

Adding beef was a clear priority, as you have only one thing in mind when acquiring Ryan Reaves, but they hope to have upgraded the depth of scoring too, with Tyler Bertuzzi and Max Domi. John Klingberg is an intriguing add to the back end, but is that what the Leafs need, or is it more of the same? The expectations for this team are the same as they were for the past few years, and their season doesn’t even really start until April.

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SECOND TIER: BETWEEN THE ELITE AND THE RISERS

FLORIDA PANTHERS
Key additions: Evan Rodrigues, Niko Mikkola, Oliver Ekman-Larsson
Key subtractions: Anthony Duclair, Eric Staal, Marc Staal, Radko Gudas, Alex Lyon

Expectations: Yeah, they reached the Cup Final, but this team just barely made it into the playoffs and needed a miraculous run from its third-string netminder and help from other teams to do it. The Panthers will also start this season without their two most important defencemen, as Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour will still be recovering from post-season injuries.

There is not much room for error here. The Panthers have already used up all their first-round draft capital in both 2024 and 2025, so are committed to making this work. Will they be able to get the same career production out of Matthew Tkachuk? How will Sergei Bobrovsky perform, and will Spencer Knight return to form?

The Panthers are neither an upstart trying to emerge out of a rebuild — of which the Atlantic has a few — nor are they a top-tier Cup contender despite the fact they just made it to the final. To get that far again, they have to first qualify for the post-season, and that’s not necessarily a slam dunk. Caught in between those groups, where do the Panthers go from here?

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THIRD TIER: HOW HIGH CAN THEY GO?

BUFFALO SABRES
Key additions: Connor Clifton, Erik Johnson
Key subtractions: Craig Anderson, Ilya Lyubushkin

Expectations: Missing the playoffs by one point last season — and finishing with the same 42-win mark as wild-card clinchers Florida and New York — the Sabres seem on the cusp of returning to the post-season for the first time since 2011. It’s been a painful 12 years, with a couple of do-over rebuilds and several front office/coach changeovers, but this season arrives with legitimate hope.

Rasmus Dahlin took a massive step forward last season and might be entering the award-winning part of his career. Will Owen Power be far behind? Tage Thompson, perhaps soon to be followed by Dylan Cozens, is proving to be a heck of a bargain on his long-term contract. But the biggest X-factor of all might be the two young goalies, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Devon Levi, especially the latter, who came on late last season and was an absolute stud. Just 21 years old and undersized for the position at this level, how will he hold up over a full season?

Nothing is guaranteed, of course, and Buffalo not only has to battle with the four Atlantic teams that qualified for the playoffs last season, but also the two others in this tier that are looking to accomplish the same thing. Make no mistake: the expectation this season is a return to the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

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DETROIT RED WINGS
Key additions: Alex DeBrincat, J.T. Compher, Klim Kostin, Daniel Sprong, Christian Fischer, Shayne Gostisbehere, Justin Holl, Jeff Petry, James Reimer
Key subtractions: Dominik Kubalik, Pius Suter,

Expectations: Do you still believe in the Yzerplan? Admittedly, this has not gone quite as patiently as many expected, as the Red Wings haven’t been shy to spend money on middle-of-the-lineup contributors, presumably to speed up the process and introduce a winning culture. The results have been improving, little by little, but last season’s Wings still finished over 10 points off the playoff pace.

This summer, GM Steve Yzerman made a splash for a top-liner, acquiring Alex DeBrincat, who they need to return as a 40-goal scorer or something close to it. But these Wings will be competing against the more deliberate rebuilders from Ottawa, Buffalo and even Montreal to rise up, and have to hope one of the contenders atop the division steps down. The Red Wings might be at the lower end of this tier, and you might even be able to argue for them to join Montreal at the bottom. Behind that, though, progress needs to be made.

OTTAWA SENATORS
Key additions: Vladimir Tarasenko, Joonas Korpisalo
Key subtractions: Alex DeBrincat, Derick Brassard, Cam Talbot

Expectations: Any day now — and probably this week — Michael Andlauer will officially be named the new owner of the Ottawa Senators and we’ll hear all about his plans for the club. Eventually, we’ll wonder if he’s going to stick with this front office or maybe go in another direction. That’s why 2023-24 is such a big one for the Senators, GM Pierre Dorion and head coach D.J. Smith.

Ottawa improved by 13 points last season, but missed the playoffs by six points and then had to shed DeBrincat in the off-season (who had a down season). After bolstering their forwards and then last season making a big splash into the trade market, acquiring Jakob Chychrun to round out their blue-line, Dorion’s off-season gaze focused on locking up a goaltender. Now, the weight of expectation falls to Joonas Korpisalo, after one strong season, to backstop these Sens back to the post-season. Like the other two teams in this tier, progress has to be made by Ottawa and since it was so close to the playoffs already last season, that means it’s time to do it in 2024.

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FOURTH TIER: PROMISING FUTURE STILL NOT QUITE HERE

MONTREAL CANADIENS
Key additions: Alex Newhook, Case DeSmith
Key subtractions: Mike Hoffman, Jonathan Drouin, Joel Edmundson

Expectations: The fact Montreal is on its own in the bottom tier of this division is not meant as a slight. On the contrary, the Canadiens are taking a smart, slow approach to rebuilding their roster and you can start to see how it’s all coming together. But because they started later and finished well off the pace of Detroit, Ottawa and Buffalo last season, Montreal is still probably a year or two behind those others.

Unlike the Wings, Sens and Sabres, it could still be seen as acceptable for the Habs to miss the playoffs this season, since they still had so far to climb. They need to show progress of course, and prove that this whole thing is still firmly on the rails. And there’s no reason to think it’s not. Maybe a year from now we’re talking about Montreal needing to be a playoff team, but this season it just needs to be more competitive, and for longer. Finishing above this tier would be a huge win.

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