Which 2023 Atlantic Division Playoff Team is Most Vulnerable for the 2024 Postseason?

When it comes to the 2024 playoff race, the Detroit Red Wings' fortunes have as much to do with context as with the internal progress of the Yzer-plan.  

The Atlantic Division is a veritable murderers' row between established contenders and teams like Detroit, vying to break free from the shackles of a rebuild.  For today, we're going to set aside the latter category and focus on the former, circling around a single question:

Of the four Atlantic teams to qualify for the 2023 postseason, which is most vulnerable to missing out on the playoffs in 2024?

Despite major off-season losses (more on these in a moment), the Bruins can still credibly claim one of the league's best forwards in David Pastrnak and one of its best defenseman in Charlie McAvoy.  In net, Linus Ullmark is the reigning Vezina Trophy winner.

You can question the long-term prospects of Boston's blue line, but in '23-24, expect it to again be one of the best groups in the NHL, as it was a year ago under David Montgomery.

At a .938 SV% and 1.89 GAA, winning 40 of his 48 starts, Ullmark was nothing short of absurd last season.  His form could dip significantly (i.e. a 20 point dip in save percentage), and we'd still be talking about good goaltending.

That premise applies to the team as a whole as well.  Coming off the best regular season in NHL history, the Bruins could take a major step back in the win column and remain comfortably in playoff position.

It's simple really.  Patrice Bergeron retired.  Even at 37, he was one of the best 200-foot players in the NHL a season ago.  There is no replacing him because there is only one of him.

The obvious impact is a Bergeron-sized hole at the 1C slot on the depth chart, but the uncertainty that comes from the cascading impact of his retirement is perhaps more significant.  What is the knock-on effect of Bergeron's absence for the rest of Boston's forward group?

Sure, Bergeron wasn't immune to missing time due to injury, but he is also among the most reliable players of the last decade, and replacing him for 10, 15, or even 20 games is a much different proposition than doing so for 82.

Throw David Krejci's retirement on top of that, and you'd be hard pressed to say that a one-two punch of Pavel Zacha and Charlie Coyle down the middle is striking fear into anybody. 

After (another) summer in which it was in some doubt, the "Core Four" of Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Mitch Marner, and John Tavares are back for the Maple Leafs.  Whatever you think of that decision and what it might portend for the postseason, it's hard to argue against the idea that Toronto has enough firepower to comfortably return to the playoffs.

Matthews scored 40 goals a year ago, and it was a disappointment.  Nylander set career highs in goals and assists last year, and now he has a point to prove in a contract year.  Marner remains an elite scorer from the wing, and his exemplary defensive stick makes him a credible Selke candidate in a Bergeron-less world.  Tavares might not be able to muster the 47 goals he scored his first season back home in Toronto, but he remained a point-a-game player last year.

As a bonus, Tyler Bertuzzi arrives on a great value, one-year deal for the Leafs, promising to bring a bit of the bite that has seemed absent in bygone postseason disappointments.

It's something of a surprise head coach Sheldon Keefe survived another such disappointing playoff exit and change in general managers, but in his three full seasons at the helm, the Leafs have never finished worse than second in the division.

If things go horribly wrong (and missing the playoffs entirely would, without a doubt, qualify as horribly wrong), it would probably have to do with vulnerability along the blue line.

Toronto has exactly six proven NHL defensemen on its roster, all but one of whom is 29 or older.  That's a dangerous formula when injury inevitably strikes.  Topi Niemela and Mikko Kokkonen are both compelling prospects who might be ready for NHL workloads in 2023-24, but it's hard to escape the conclusion that the Maple Leafs are thin on the back end.  And that's without factoring in a dip in form from any of the established six.

Meanwhile, in net, Ilya Samsonov rewarded the Leafs for gambling on him a year ago, posting a .919 SV% and 2.33 GAA in 42 regular season games.  However, should he stumble in the coming season, the options behind him are Martin Jones (of a .886 SV % a year ago in Seattle) and Joseph Woll, who has played just 11 NHL games.  It's a potentially precarious proposition.

Tampa's strongest claim to holding onto a playoff spot in '24 probably lies in its championship pedigree.  It's an opaque concept, and perhaps even offensive to more numerically inclined readers, but it's impossible for me to shake the notion that the Lightning's playoff experience carries a decided advantage with it should the Bolts wind up in a tight playoff race come March.

Regardless of what's behind them, the combination of Steven Stamkos, Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov, and Anthony Cirelli constitute the foundation of a lethal forward group.  Connor Sheary, Tyler Motte, and Luke Glendening figure to be effective veteran fill-ins in the bottom six, and, despite an extraordinary acquisition cost and middling playoff performance, I'd expect Tanner Jeannot to find more of a role in his first full season with the Lightning.

On the back end, Victor Hedman, Mikhail Sergachev, and Erik Cernak have all racked up more than their fair share of mileage, but I'd expect them to form the backbone of another reliable defense corps once again this season.

There is a general reason to doubt Tampa can return to the playoffs in 2024 and an acute one.  The general one would be the collective mileage and the continued sacrifices to the salary cap that come from such a long run of championship contention.  The acute one is back surgery for goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy, which is slated to keep him out for about two months to open the regular season.

Vasilevskiy has been remarkable in both his performance and health throughout the Lightning's run of success, so any time without him is bound to be a major blow.  It's also fair to wonder about the state his game will be in when he has recovered.  Back surgery at 29 doesn't strike me as something a goaltender can just brush off.  

There's a realistic scenario in which Tampa is out of the playoff race before Vasilevskiy even returns, let alone returns to form, should things go poorly in between the pipes.  However, the Lightning did get an encouraging sign from now-starter Jonas Johansson, who delivered a 42-save shutout against Carolina Friday.

For what it's worth, Red Wings head coach (and two-time Cup-winning assistant in Tampa) Derek Lalonde doesn't buy the idea that Vasilevskiy's injury is a death knell for the Lightning's playoff aspirations.

"Jon Cooper survives on adversity," Lalonde told the media last week. "He probably didn't sleep much when he got that news, and then he went right to Tampa versus the world. No Vassy, and they still have three or four of the best players in the world, but that's why he's probably the best coach in the world...They were a .500 team, just above, for most of the start of the season last year, and then, as a talented veteran group usually does, they hit their stride, so I just hope Vassy's healthy and gets back."

When Florida traded for Matthew Tkachuk in the summer of 2022, it was a move with an eye toward long-term contention.  Then, in his debut season in South Florida, Tkachuk proceeded to radically exceed expectations through an improbable run to the Stanley Cup Final.

Every hockey team talks about identity.  Finding an identity.  Playing to an identity.  Imposing an identity.  It would be hard to find a sharper example of a team's identity coalescing than the way it did for Paul Maurice's Panthers in the 2023 playoffs.  Nasty, vertical, aggressive, capable of making hay on slim margins thanks to a deep array of potent scorers.

Assuming the Panthers can carry that game forward into the 2023-24 regular season, they should have little trouble making their way into the 2024 playoffs.

Rookie Mackie Samoskevich has turned heads throughout the preseason, brining the potential of even more firepower, and Spencer Knight has returned from the NHLPA Player Assistance Program, providing insurance should Sergei Bobrovsky prove unable to retain his strong form from the '23 playoffs.

The most glaring vulnerability for Florida is the fact that defensemen Brandon Montour and Aaron Ekblad will both begin the year on the shelf due to injury.  With those two expected to miss not insignificant portions of the regular season, there are serious questions to be asked of this Panther defense corps.

Gustav Forsling proved his worth on last year's playoff run, but I don't think anybody would call him a number one defenseman in the NHL, which he may have to be at least to start the season.

Dmitry Kulikov is back in Florida where his career began, and Oliver Ekman-Larsson looks like a decent value bet as an affordable veteran after being bought out in Vancouver.  Still, if the Ice Cats can't get back to the postseason in 2024, it seems likely their problems would begin and end with the defense corps.

As I see it, it's between Boston and Tampa for the strongest candidate to fail to return to the playoffs in 2024.  Bergeron's retirement and Vasilevskiy's surgery are major blows to rosters that would've had serious question marks even without those absences.

In the end, I'm inclined to believe the Lightning are in more perilous straits than the Bruins, if only because their margin for error is smaller.  Tampa was seven points clear of the Buffalo Sabres a year ago (the first team out in the East), while Boston was a whopping 44 points ahead of Buffalo.  As a result, the Bruins have a lot more room to fall and still land back into the postseason.

In a playoff series, I would pick the Lightning over Boston, assuming a reasonably healthy Vasilevskiy.  The Bruins' dubious center depth figures to be a greater issue in the match-up driven realm of the postseason than it will be over the course of the regular year.  Meanwhile, I'd expect the Bolts' guile and pedigree to make them a bear to wrestle in a seven-game series for as long as Cooper stands behind the bench.

I think Lalonde makes a worthwhile point in suggesting that this sort of adversity is something Cooper will embrace.  There is something to the idea of a team rallying behind an under-qualified goaltender, at least relative to the cyborg he is replacing.

However, the combination of that injury to Vasilevskiy and the general accumulation of wear and tear on Tampa's playoff wizened core suggests to me that the Lightning are the '23 Atlantic playoff qualifier least likely to return in 2024.