A month into the NHL season, the playoff race is already shifting in unexpected ways. While many of the highest postseason chances belong to the usual suspects — as do the lowest (sorry, San Jose Sharks) — some are the property of rising teams surging ahead of schedule, versus others who’ve stumbled hard out of the gate.

Using playoff odds, season stats, Elo ratings and other indicators of team quality, we can see which clubs have overachieved or underwhelmed the most relative to preseason expectations.

Some of these early sources of curiosity (for good or bad) look built to last. But others? Not so much.

Let’s dive into the biggest surprises to see which look real, and what they say about the league’s shifting balance of power.

Pleasant surprises

Year 1 of Joel Quenneville’s tenure behind the bench in Anaheim has been nothing less than a rousing success early, with the Ducks ranking No. 1 in goals per game and No. 4 in goal differential overall. To say that’s a massive departure from their usual norm is an understatement; this team had previously ranked no better than 24th in scoring or 21st in goal differential in any season since 2018-19.

But the forward corps of Cutter Gauthier, Leo Carlsson and Troy Terry has been among the most productive teammate trios in the league (with 49 combined points), while former Rangers captain Jacob Trouba has solidified the blue line and Lukas Dostal has supplied strong goaltending.

Suddenly a team that hadn’t made the playoffs or posted a winning record in any of the previous seven seasons holds one of the best records in the NHL, with a 61% probability to make the playoffs.

Chance to continue: Moderate.

Because hockey is so prone to randomness in small samples, 12 games is a bit early to render a full verdict on the Ducks officially being back; they still rank No. 26 in the Elo ratings, for instance, which move slowly but are optimized to predict future games.

But it’s already clear that this team is better than it has been in a long time. (Case in point: a traditionally offense-starved team is generating far more chances than in recent years.) With the league’s third-youngest roster, it finally feels as if the Ducks are building toward something sustainable.

The Pens were written off so completely before this season that their main questions were when or if Sidney Crosby and Erik Karlsson would be traded — and whether Evgeni Malkin might just retire after the season. There didn’t seem to be any way that a team that had been the oldest in hockey — and sixth-worst by goals-per-game differential — in 2024-25 could actually contend a season later.

But that’s exactly what has happened to start 2025-26, as Sid the Kid has continued to play at an elite level at age 38, Malkin and Karlsson have rediscovered what once made them great, newcomers Justin Brazeau and Anthony Mantha have added scoring punch and the tandem of Arturs Silovs and Tristan Jarry has stood out in net.

Remarkably, Pittsburgh ranks in the top five in goal differential — a first for the club since 2020-21 — and they have a 56% chance at returning to the playoffs after a three-year absence.

Chance to continue: Low to moderate.

As great a story as the fountain-of-youth Penguins have been to start the season, there are some warning lights flashing that they might not be able to keep it up all season. The first is, obviously, age: The team still ranks as the league’s fifth-oldest roster, with a number of veterans playing key roles. Among their top 12 players by goals above replacement, eight of them — Malkin, Crosby, Karlsson, Mantha, Jarry, Kris Letang, Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell — are age 30 or older this season.

Plus, the team is reliant on a few unsustainably high percentages, including a league-high power-play success rate of 35.9% and both the NHL’s fifth-highest team shooting percentage (13%) and second-best save percentage (.909). Strip away those, and this is a team outside the top 20 in zone-time percentage and share of total scoring chances in their games.

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Arturs Silovs makes terrific glove save for Penguins

Arturs Silovs makes terrific glove save for Penguins

Given a fresh start with a new name this season, the Mammoth are skating full speed into what seems like a bright franchise future.

The team currently ranks top 10 in points percentage and goals-per-game differential, with the league’s 11th-best offense and defense. Prime-age (or younger) cornerstones Nick Schmaltz, Logan Cooley, Mikhail Sergachev, Dylan Guenther and Clayton Keller are all on pace for the best seasons of their careers by goals above replacement (GAR), while newcomers JJ Peterka and Nate Schmidt are also making a difference.

The Mammoth have the league’s best defense in terms of fewest shots allowed per game, and they could be even scarier if they ever get their goaltending in order. Right now, Utah has a 69% chance to make the playoffs for only the second time since 2011-12 (if we include their previous era as the Arizona Coyotes).

Chance to continue: High.

The Mammoth are no fluke. If anything, they should probably be doing even better than their .643 points percentage suggests.

The team ranks seventh in the share of shot attempts in their games, eighth in the share of scoring chances and sixth in the share of expected goals. Furthermore, Utah has done it against the league’s third-hardest schedule by average opponent Elo rating — which improves to 27th-hardest going forward.

The netminding duo of Karel Vejmelka and Vitek Vanecek have been mediocre so far, ranking 25th in save percentage as a team, but the skaters have been producing chances and playing airtight defense.

It’s easy to view Utah as a team that more established opponents would not be excited to face in a first-round series.

As we wrote when talking about the teams with the most to prove this season, the Red Wings have teased a playoff return too many times to be given the full benefit of the doubt this early.

That said, Detroit’s players are starting to click, with Dylan Larkin playing like a long shot MVP contender to lead a group that also includes Alex DeBrincat and the burgeoning trio of Lucas Raymond, Moritz Seider and Emmitt Finnie.

Nothing about the Wings’ résumé jumps off the page. Even after their improvement, they still rank only 15th in goals-per-game differential, but that would be their best mark since the second-to-last season of their 25-year playoff streak that ended after the 2015-16 season.

Chance to continue: Moderate.

With a 59% playoff chance, the Red Wings are still on the skate-blade’s edge of making the playoffs — and their middle-of-the-road rankings don’t make it seem like that stressful ride will change much over the rest of the season.

But there are reasons to think Detroit can shore up their chances a bit more from here. In terms of expected goals (a measure of controlling play that filters luck out of shooting and save percentages), they rank No. 9 in the share predicted to go their way in games. There’s also hope for better goaltending, as veterans Cam Talbot and John Gibson have a better track record than their average-at-best performances this season suggest.

Finally, the schedule should get a bit easier from here, going from fourth-hardest so far to 16th-hardest going forward.

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Moritz Seider tallies goal vs. Sharks

Moritz Seider tallies goal vs. Sharks

Not-so-pleasant surprises

After a remarkable late-season run to the playoffs under new coach Jim Montgomery last season — during which the Blues somehow produced a better record (21 wins, nine losses) over the final 30 games of the regular season than the Cup-winning 2018-19 team did (20-10) — St. Louis appeared poised to build on that success this season.

But at 5-8-3 so far, the Blues hold the league’s second-worst record and they also sit last in goals allowed per game and goals-per-game differential, having lost the most playoff probability since opening night (minus-34%) of any team.

All of the team’s top skaters — Jordan Kyrou, Robert Thomas, Pavel Buchnevich, Dylan Holloway, Colton Parayko, Cam Fowler — have undershot GAR expectations by significant margins, while goaltender Jordan Binnington has been one of the worst netminders in the NHL. (His best act of protecting the puck might’ve been swiping Alex Ovechkin‘s 900th goal from the ice and into the back of his pants before having to return it.)

Chance to continue: Low to moderate.

Perhaps surprisingly for a team that has performed so badly over the season’s first month, St. Louis is not in terrible shape. The Blues still have a 32% playoff probability, owing to how the rest of the West basement hasn’t exactly been impressive either, and there’s a good chance the Blues start winning more games soon.

The team has been one of the unluckiest in the league by PDO, which measures which teams are unduly benefiting (or not) from shooting and save percentages. Cut through that noise, and St. Louis ranks No. 7 in their share of total scoring chances in games, 11th in their share of expected goals and fourth in offensive zone time percentage.

If they can get better goaltending — right now, Binnington and Joel Hofer combine to rank 31st in save percentage — the Blues are very capable of turning things around.

The Flames have been on parallel tracks with the Blues for a while, for whatever reason, complete with similar late-season changes that landed the two teams in a tie for the West’s final playoff spot in 2024-25 (which St. Louis won on a tiebreaker). Now, they have the two biggest losses of playoff chances in the league to start 2025-26.

The only difference is that Calgary’s goaltenders — Dustin Wolf and Devin Cooley — have actually done an admirable job under the circumstances this season, playing behind a defense that allows 30.5 shots per game and with some of the league’s worst goal support — the Flames’ 2.06 goals-per-game rate ranks last in the league.

This team needed either more scoring punch or a more stingy approach at the other end, but so far it has received neither.

Chance to continue: Moderate.

The Flames are in a less enviable position than the Blues because their dip in playoff odds has already landed them at 18%, roughly half as likely as the Blues’ chances. They’re also starting from a position of little hope for an offensive turnaround; the team ranked 29th in goals per game last season, and added little of note over the summer, so they’re banking on whatever positive regression is still left in Nazem Kadri, Jonathan Huberdeau, MacKenzie Weegar, Blake Coleman and Yegor Sharangovich.

Otherwise, Calgary does have a few factors in its favor: It looks better by scoring-chance and expected-goals shares than its bad record would indicate, and the Flames will go from facing the No. 1 most difficult schedule to No. 30 from here, the biggest scheduling easement in the league.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about how the Rangers were under some of the most pressure of any team to prove that last season’s disaster was a one-off from a franchise that typically has been the model of consistent quality over the previous two decades.

But their start in 2025-26 has done little to dispel the idea that something is fundamentally wrong with the Broadway Blueshirts.

New York currently ranks 20th in goals-per-game differential — which would be only their third season ranking so low since the 2005 lockout — and the way they’ve done it is downright bizarre. By goals per game, they have the best defense in the league, yet also the second-worst offense. A similar feat hasn’t been done since the 1963 Chicago Blackhawks finished first on defense and sixth (hey, it was the Original Six era) on offense.

Chance to continue: Low.

Like St. Louis, the Rangers have reasonably decent playoff odds (41%) despite currently sitting near the bottom of the pile in the East standings. They have too much offensive talent on hand — Artemi Panarin, J.T. Miller, Mika Zibanejad, among others — to sit last in scoring, after six consecutive seasons ranking 16th or better at that end. Though they might not finish first in goals allowed per game either, that extreme is a lot more fitting with this team’s track record than the 31st-ranked offense.

In terms of controlling play, the Rangers rank fourth in scoring-chance share, fifth in expected-goals share and seventh in offensive zone-time share. When they start improving upon their league-worst 7.8% shooting percentage, the Rangers should start winning more games, and their playoff chances will rise.

Before the season, the Wild signed Kirill Kaprizov to the richest contract in NHL history (which kicks in next season) because the data said he was as indispensable as any star: Since 2020-21, he’d driven roughly one-third of Minnesota’s offense, and in 2024-25 the team scored like a borderline top-10 team when he played and cratered without him. The logic around Kaprizov’s value still seems sound; he’s currently on pace for 45 adjusted goals and 105 adjusted points.

But while he’s holding up his end, the goaltending, defense and depth scoring aren’t, as Minnesota ranks just 20th in goals per game, despite Kaprizov’s production, to go with a No. 25 ranking in goals allowed per game and No. 29 in goals-per-game differential.

It’s now looking as if the Wild committed a lot to one player who hasn’t been able to overcome the rest of the team’s flaws to start the season.

Chance to continue: Moderate to high.

Minnesota is a confusing mixed bag so far in 2025-26. On the positive side, the Wild are a top-six team by share of offensive zone time, which would seem to suggest the potential for better results when their 98.9 PDO — 25th in the league — gets straightened out. (PDO is a highly luck-driven stat that tends to regress to the mean of 100.0 over time.)

But the Wild also haven’t done much with all that zone time, ranking 23rd in scoring-chance share and 25th in expected-goals share, perhaps indicating the need for tactical adjustments from coach John Hynes.

Also on the negative side: The Wild play a slightly tougher schedule from here, and with 24% playoff chances, they have little margin for error.