NHL Sour Rankings: Celebrini Tops the Holiday Wish List of NHL’s Bottom Tier

T’was just weeks before world juniors,

And all throughout hockey,

Hardly a bad team was winning,

In hopes that Celebrini would soon be there.

The Hawks were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of glory years danced in their heads;

The Sharks won some games and Ducks fell back,

While the Sabres and Blues have slumps to unpack.

When out of the basement there arose such a clatter,

McDavid sprang from his slumber to fix the Oilers tattered.

Away from the bottom, they flew like a flash,

Tore open the standings and prevented a crash.

Welcome back to the NHL sour rankings, and thank you for putting up with my attempt at poetry. The holiday season is here, and the basement in the NHL is becoming more clear by the day. The Oilers finally fixed their early season struggles, winning eight straight games and sitting just outside of the playoffs.

The NHL’s race to the basement has become interesting over the last few weeks as the Sharks don’t look as putrid, and the early-season pretenders have fallen back down to earth. Let’s dive into the NHL Sour Rankings, our monthly look at the race to the bottom.

The team that won the lottery last year currently has the best shot at winning it once again this year at this point. Aside from Connor Bedard, the franchise icon they selected first overall last year, the Hawks have been terrible. 

The 18-year-old leads the team in scoring by eight points, and there doesn’t seem to be much help on the way. Giving Chicago a one-two punch of Bedard-Celebrini down the middle could see them reliving the glory days sooner than any non-Hawks fan would like. They will need more help, and almost none of the help they’ll need is currently on the roster. It’s not a surprise the Hawks are in the basement.

After starting the season fairly strong, the Ducks have fallen from grace, winning just one of their last 13 games. 

The struggles of Trevor Zegras were becoming more of a concern, and then he hasn’t played since Nov. 7 due to injury. The Ducks still have plenty of young talent, and the future looks bright, but the excitement of their early-season hot streak has worn off. Leo Carlsson continues to be impressive, and although Pavel Mintyukov and Lukas Dostal have slowed down, they still feature a fun group of rookies and young players worth watching.

After genuinely questioning if they would win double-digit games this season, they have been on fire. They’ve won six of their last nine, and they are up to nine wins on the season. The turnaround is credited to impressive goaltending, William Eklund looking like the player they always hoped to see and Tomas Hertl asserting himself as ‘The Guy’ for the Sharks. They are still the third-worst team in the league, but seeing them not tank at the level we thought they might have at the start of the season is encouraging.

The NHL’s quietest dumpster fire continues to rage on as the Blue Jackets can’t seem to get out of their own way. Adam Fantilli looks fantastic and Zach Werenski continues to show that he can be the No. 1 defenseman they hoped he could be. Aside from that, the positives are few and far between. 

Boone Jenner is out with an injury. Kent Johnson is back from the AHL but hasn’t eclipsed 15 minutes in any game since. Patrik Laine still isn’t a center (no matter how much they wanted him to be). This season feels like a big depressing wash already. A lottery win to cap it off at the end of the season would be nice.

Was last year an anomaly? Is Matty Beniers ever going to look like the top-line center he was last year? Is Shane Wright going to make this club full-time? Should this team sell at the deadline? 

The Seattle Kraken have more questions than answers, and they don’t seem to be closer to an answer today than they were a month ago. The Kraken aren’t a dumpster fire, and they aren’t really suffering from any major absences. This team might just not be very good. They could use the lottery luck at the end of the year.

This team needs to commit to selling, give the reins to the young players in the organization and get moving on the rebuild. Unfortunately for them, they don’t have their own first-round pick in 2025, so tanking hard this year and getting Celebrini would be a massive win. 

They seem like they are committed to being stuck in the mushy middle for the next couple of years, which is a terrible idea because the mediocre usually end up having a couple of rough years before realizing they must rebuild. Embrace the chance, move on from the veterans that you can and get moving on the rebuild before next year ends up being the year you bottom out – and Montreal gets what should have been your first overall pick.

Oh, Buffalo. We were all cheering for you. 

The young talent that this team has is so much fun to watch when they are playing at their peak, but they seem to be going through some growing pains this year. They've played more than most, and despite only being four points back of a playoff spot, the teams ahead have games in hand besides Tampa Bay. 

The Sabres have had their run at the top of the draft and likely don’t want to suffer through another season of losing, so a second-half turnaround would be a great sign that this young core is getting it. They probably won’t make the playoffs, but getting back in the race is key for Buffalo.

After a disastrous start to the season, the Minnesota Wild fired head coach Dean Evason on Nov. 27 and brought in John Hynes. They have gone 5-2-0 since then, and they seem to be on the rise. 

The salary cap hinders them, but on the ice, this team has been better as of late. Kirill Kaprizov is a true superstar, and the emerging talent around him, such as Matt Boldy, Marco Rossi, and Brock Faber, have all been finding their way of late. This team likely won’t be this close to the bottom for long – even if the playoffs aren’t in the cards this year.

Yet again, the Senators find a way to sit under .500 and look like they are going to be struggling to make the playoffs. They currently sit at the bottom of the Eastern Conference when you look at just points, but the silver lining is they have games in hand on every team in the NHL. The downside is that they haven’t proven capable of winning games when it matters. 

They’ve already brought on an advisor for their coaching staff and parted with their GM. This team needs to get it together because they have the talent to be better than this.

This team is at a crossroads. They need to choose between rebuilding or retooling on the fly – something they’ve done before but most teams struggle to do properly. 

The Blues lack high-end prospects, and they can’t really afford to trade away the few assets they have because if they do and it doesn’t work, they could be in for a world of pain. They just fired their coach, and GM Doug Armstrong seems focused on getting the culture of the Cup-winning squad from a few years back. We’ll see how that goes.