Culture
Weekend NHL rankings: The Wild, the Canadiens and the 10 teams we haven’t ranked yet
With the calendar about to flip over to April, we’re down to three weeks left in the regular season. And that means we don’t have many of these columns left. The finish line is in sight.
It’s safe to assume the last few weeks will be dedicated to breaking down the various playoff races, unless every bubble team in the East just voluntarily folds their franchise to avoid landing a spot it’s clear nobody wants. But in this semi-calm before the storm, a few of you have pointed out we’ve yet to visit an annual tradition around here: recognizing the teams that made it through the entire season without ever landing in either the top or bottom five.
This is the true middle of the pack, although as you’ll see, they come in some very different flavors. And this year, the numbers reinforce that in a pleasingly symmetrical way: 11 different teams showed up in the top five, and 11 more had at least one appearance in the bottom five. That leaves us with an even 10 teams that didn’t appear on either list all season long. Let’s divide them into categories.
Bonus Five: The teams that haven’t made the top or bottom five all year
5. The good teams that could still theoretically find the top five: It’s tough to crack either list for the first time this late in the season, but two teams have been good enough to be in top five consideration at a few points during the year and could theoretically still make it.
That would be the Lightning and the Maple Leafs, two teams battling with the Panthers for first in the Atlantic. The Panthers have been in the top five for much of the season despite having a similar record, which I think is fair given all their recent playoff success. But first place and a matchup with a wild-card is looming large, so if either the Leafs or Lightning got red-hot and ran away with the division down the stretch, they’d have a top-five case. For now, though, they’ve been just short.
4. The teams that weren’t close to the top five but are still happy with their season: I’ll put four teams in this category. The first is the Kings, a classic case of a team that’s been consistently good with occasional gusts up to great, but never all that close to top-five status. I’ll also include the Senators and Blues, two teams that have had their ups and downs but look like playoff teams down the stretch. And then there’s the Flames, a nice story that seems to be fading down the stretch. I’m not sure that finishing 10th in the West would feel like a major success, but this is a team a lot of us wrote off before the season even started, and they spent most of the year proving us wrong.
3. The true mushy middle teams: This would be the Islanders and Utah, two teams that spent the year plugging away, hanging right around the playoff mix without ever looking especially threatening. I’m not sure there was a single week all year in which either team even occurred to me as a legitimate contender for either list. They’re fine.
That leaves us with two teams, each of whom deserves its own category.
2. The disaster: That would be the Bruins. They started slow, fired the coach, never got more than a couple of games over fake .500, faded in the second half, sold at the deadline and are now cratering their way to a miserable finish. They’re actually closer to the bottom of the standings than I’d realized, so there’s a small but non-zero chance they could actually find the bottom five by the end of things. What a mess.
1. The mystery: That leaves us with the one team I still can’t figure out. Yes, it’s the Canucks, a team whose season has fallen well short of expectations but is still in the playoff hunt, if only barely, despite a firehose of drama, trading away one of their best players, key injuries and a coach who looks like he wants to strangle someone at all times. Every game these guys play is a roller coaster. I know they’re not among the five best or worst teams in the league, but that’s just about all I’ve been able to nail down.
On that note … Wow, this game:
The 2024-25 Vancouver Canucks: A lot of things, but definitely not boring.
A bonus note: We managed to avoid the dreaded “team that showed up on both lists” this year. Well done, everyone, we cleared the lowest possible bar there is. On to this week’s rankings …
Road to the Cup
The five teams with the best chances of winning the Stanley Cup.
Nope, still doesn’t look right in that uniform.
No Panthers in the top five this time, as I stay clear of the Atlantic for the second straight week. We’ll figure this out eventually, but when you’ve got time, use it.
5. Carolina Hurricanes (45-24-4, +44 true goals differential*) — They look good, the Devils do not, and Thursday’s meeting with the Capitals feels a lot like a second-round preview.
Also: We have a trade to announce?
4. Vegas Golden Knights (45-20-8, +57) — Six straight wins, all in regulation and by a combined score of 28-11, suggests a team hitting its stride at exactly the right time. Home games against the Oilers tomorrow and Jets on Thursday will be great tests.
3. Washington Capitals (47-17-9, +72) — Three straight losses, including one to the first-in-conference Jets and another to the last-in-conference Sabres, isn’t enough to have us panicking. These are the long-term rankings, and Caps fans had to wait for us to get on board, so we’re not going to bail now after a bad week. But let’s get it back on track tomorrow in Boston, OK?
2. Dallas Stars (48-21-4, +63) — I’m nervous about the first-round matchup, I’m nervous about the Miro Heiskanen injury and I’m nervous about having two teams in the same division in the top spots. But they just keep winning, so …
1. Winnipeg Jets (51-19-4, +83) — This absolutely has to happen, and when it does it’s Murat’s fault:
Connor Hellebuyck’s shutout song is Gangnam Style. @WPGMurat asked Hellebuyck after the game about that choice…
“I do know the dance, so maybe one day I’ll do the dance out there.” 😅
🎥: #NHLJets pic.twitter.com/90bR9LldT0
— Connor Hrabchak (@ConnorHrabchak1) March 29, 2025
*Goals differential without counting shootout decisions like the NHL does for some reason.
Not ranked: Minnesota Wild — Wait, is this now the playoff spot that’s up for grabs in the West?
It sure looks like it. The Wild begin the week in the seventh spot, tied with the Blues at 87 points but with an edge in points percentage thanks to a game in hand. But the switch almost feels like a formality, with the Blues remaining red-hot while the Wild spin their wheels. Saturday’s loss to the Devils was their third in their last four, essentially undoing the gains from a three-game mini-streak the week before. Meanwhile, the Blues have won nine straight, wiping out Minnesota’s eight-point lead in just two weeks.
Getting passed for seventh place isn’t ideal, but it’s far from an emergency. It probably means playing the Jets instead of the Golden Knights in Round 1, and that’s not necessarily a huge jump in degree of difficulty. The bigger question is whether dropping to eighth could be the precursor to dropping even further. And that’s where things get scary for the Wild.
Scary, mind you, but not terrifying. They were still sitting at 90 percent odds in yesterday’s projections, and that will go up with the Canucks losing. They’re six points up on Vancouver with the same number of games played, and seven up on the Flames, who have two in hand. They’ll likely hold the regulation wins tiebreaker over the Blues, and would definitely hold it over the Canucks or Flames. They’re in good shape.
But good shape still feels scary when you were a lock not that long ago. It’s really only been in the last few days that the alarm bells have started ringing, but the slump has been longer than that. After finishing the first half at an impressive 26-11-4, the Wild have gone just 15-17-1 since then, a 77-point pace. Maybe the bigger question than whether they can make the playoffs is whether they should bother, since they don’t seem like much of a threat right now.
They’ve got a three-game road trip against the Devils, Rangers and Islanders this week before returning home to face the Stars and Sharks. Then comes the last road trip of the regular season, a two-game swing against the Flames and Canucks that could be crucial. Or it could be meaningless, if the Wild can bank enough points this week to put this thing away before scary turns into terrifying.
The bottom five
The five teams headed toward dead last and the best lottery odds for a top pick that could be James Hagens, Matthew Schaefer, or someone else.
Pierre had an update on coaching hot seats, which will be of interest to a few of the teams that regularly grace this section.
5. Buffalo Sabres (31-36-6, -24) — Sabres fans, how are we feeling about this recent warm streak with nothing left to play for? Good sign for the future, or infuriating draft pick sabotage? (For the record, there is a right answer here.)
If you missed it, be sure to check out Matthew’s deep dive into just how much misery a fan base can be expected to handle.
4. Philadelphia Flyers (30-36-9, -49) — They made the big headline this week, firing John Tortorella after a weird stretch that included two blowout losses, some strange postgame comments and an apparent altercation with Cam York. Kevin has been all over it, reporting on what exactly happened behind the scenes, just what the deal is with York and the contenders for the full-time job (including three big names currently employed elsewhere).
3. Nashville Predators (27-38-8, -51) — If you missed it, be sure to read Pierre’s chat with Barry Trotz on how they start to dig out of this mess.
2. Chicago Blackhawks (21-44-9, -69) — There’s nothing left to play for, but Hawks fans will get a look at 2023 first-rounder Oliver Moore as well as 2022 first Sam Rinzel down the stretch. Both have signed out of college and made their NHL debuts in yesterday’s loss to Utah.
1. San Jose Sharks (20-44-9, -90) — There hasn’t been much in the way of good news for the Sharks this year, but fans who could use some optimism and/or a reminder about the big picture will enjoy this podcast.
(Also, while interpreting The Code is always dicey, I’m pretty sure somebody needs to fight the Rangers’ team bus.)
Not ranked: Montreal Canadiens — The losing streak is over. Everybody breathe.
Less than two weeks ago, the Habs were the hottest team in the league, winning eight of 11 immediately after the 4 Nations break. That stretch allowed them to push past the stagnant Eastern bubble field, looking a lot like the only team that actually wanted to be the conference’s eight-seed. After beating the Senators on March 18, the Habs were alone in the final wild-card spot and even seemed to have a potential path to catch Ottawa. But they followed that game by losing five straight while giving up 25 goals, including a high-profile matchup with the Blues earlier in the week that saw them get stomped. They were blowing it.
That’s the bad news, and well, it’s pretty bad. But step back, and the picture gets brighter. They might be blowing it, yes, but let’s remember that the “it” here is a playoff spot nobody really thought they had a shot at this year. The realistic goal heading into the season was to play meaningful games (with apologies to Tortorella) and stay close enough to the race that they could shock the world. Now it feels like a failure that they haven’t been able to lock up a spot with 10 games still left to play. It’s easy to forget how much the expectations have shifted in a relatively short amount of time.
Still, beating a good Panthers team on the road was exactly the sort of win this team needed, especially with a rematch coming tomorrow in Montreal. And it was another reminder that writing this team off has been a bad move pretty much all year long.
Will any of that matter if this team ends up coughing up a playoff spot that was there for the taking? I think it should. That doesn’t mean it won’t sting, because of course it would. But if the season was about progress, it’s already been an inarguable success, one that’s seen the Habs drive past teams like the Sabres and Red Wings who were supposed to be years ahead of them. What more could a reasonable fan want?
A playoff spot, sure. You can’t get this close without locking in on the prize. And that’s where the other half of the good news kicks in: They’re still in this thing. They get the Panthers again tomorrow, which is tough, but the rest of the season-ending schedule is reasonably friendly. The Bruins, Flyers and Predators are up next, three teams that are all but flatlining down the stretch. From there it’s Detroit, Ottawa and a Saturday night showdown with the Leafs, followed by the lowly Hawks and then a playoff-bound Hurricanes team with nothing to play for.
The path is there. None of those games are guaranteed, but they’re winnable. And at the very least, they’re damn sure meaningful.
(Photo of Marcus Foligno and Arber Xhekaj: Matt Blewett / Imagn Images)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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