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Good morning to everyone except Fluto for reminding me about the Fraser Minten trade. We’re a full month into the season, and it’s time to start staking our territory. We’ve also got an extra-long edition of No Dumb Questions. But first, there was a miracle in New York last night, and we have visual evidence.
While you were sleeping
The Rangers scored at home! No, really, it happened… more than once, even. Here’s Mike Zibanejad opening the scoring.
In related news, the Predators might be hopeless. Getting lit up at MSG? To the tune of six goals? I hear U2 just cancelled its tickets to see you.
Now on to the main topic today …
Let’s plant some flags
The weekend marked one full month since the NHL season began, and it’s no longer too early. It’s early, sure, but not too early, meaning we can’t just hand-wave away anything unusual by muttering about small sample sizes. This is the time of year when a true fan should be willing to plant a few flags, and be willing to fully buy in on an unexpected development or two.
It’s tricky territory. By this point in a typical NHL season, the hockey gods have tipped their hands on a few of the surprises they have up their sleeves. Of course, they’ve also been known to toss out a few decoys – this time last year, the Wild were unbeatable and the Canadiens were tied for dead last. Separating the signal from the noise is tough, and it can be fertile ground for the sort of takes that get the “this didn’t age well” treatment in a few months. Or weeks. Heck, even days.
But you didn’t subscribe to this newsletter to get your takes from a coward, so I’ve got five takes that I’m willing to stand behind right now, even though they’d have surprised me a month ago. Get your shovels, it’s flag-planting time.
Flag 1: We’re going to get real change in division hierarchy. Heading into the season, most of our division picks looked fairly similar. The Atlantic was one of the Leafs, Panthers or Lightning. The Metro was probably the Hurricanes. The Central was the Jets, Stars or Avs and then a big gap. And the Pacific was the Oilers or Knights, with nobody else even close.
A month later, it’s time to accept that we might be oh-for-four. The Canadiens look like the team to beat in the Atlantic, and the Ducks are going to give the Pacific all it can handle. The Hurricanes have their hands full with the Devils, and somehow the Penguins are right there too. And while the Central is indeed the Avs’ house so far, the Mammoth are right there with the Jets and Stars, and even the Hawks seem to think they belong.
It’s chaos. Beautiful chaos.
Flag 2: The race to the bottom isn’t as predictable as we thought. Heading into the season, it was a coin flip between San Jose and Chicago. But the Hawks are good, and the Sharks are at least putting up a fight. Meanwhile, the Flames, Blues and Predators are the surprise trio duking it out at the bottom. Which leads us to…
Flag 3: The Flames are cooked. It’s over. Sorry, Calgary fans, I’d love to be wrong here and will accept your scorn if I am. But I don’t see a way for this team to dig out of the hole its in. More importantly, I’m not sure they should want to. The Flames are old and need an injection of picks and prospects. Just one year removed from a 96-point season, they should be selling and selling hard. And if I was Craig Conroy, I’d start that process right now, instead of waiting for other sellers to find the market in the second half.
Flag 4: Matthew Schaefer is a star. We all knew he was headed there — you don’t get picked first overall because you project as a depth piece. The flag we’re planting here is that Schaefer has already arrived as a legitimate force, right now, today. That doesn’t mean he won’t get better, but there’s a good chance he’s already better than anyone on your team.
this is obscene pic.twitter.com/ZCOv5wZKdb
— dom 📈 (@domluszczyszyn) November 10, 2025
I ran that chart through my Dom-to-English translator, and it returned something about Bobby Orr and then exploded. That’s good, right? It sounds good.
Flag 5: The Ducks are making the playoffs, even though nobody predicted that. Oh wait, what’s that? You’re saying somebody did predict it? Interesting. What a smart handsome boy. (Note: Please do not review any of the other predictions in that post.) OK, how about a bonus flag — Pat Verbeek deserves some real consideration for GM of the Year, even though the finalists are almost always just from teams that make the conference final. It’s time to reward the rebuilders, and Verbeek looks to have pulled off something special in Anaheim.
💡Trivia time: Since we were just pumping the Ducks’ tires, let’s go with a simple one. The top four all-time goal scorers in Anaheim are all familiar names: Teemu Selanne leads the way with 457 goals scored as a Duck, followed by Corey Perry (372), Paul Kariya (300 on the nose) and Ryan Getzlaf (282). I’m guessing you’d have nailed all four of those if given the chance, maybe even in order. But who ranks fifth on the all-time list for goals scored by a Duck?
A hint: He wasn’t drafted by Anaheim, and spent his rookie year with a different team, but was a Duck for every other season of his (now concluded) NHL career. Answer below.
Coast to Coast
🍁 Pierre and CJ have some big updates on how the battle for roster spots on Team Canada is shaping up.
💲Harman has a look at five teams that are in great shape for cap relief in 2026 (Detroit and Chicago among them).
📈 We made some history in Monday’s power rankings: For the first time in 68 rankings stretching over nearly three years, the Blackhawks weren’t in the bottom five.
👶 A few days ago, Scott had his look at Gavin McKenna and his grip on top spot in the 2026 draft. And if you want to look even deeper into the future, Corey weighs in with his way-too-early look ahead to 2027.
🎙️On the Monday episode of “The Athletic Hockey Show,” the guys talk about the trio of young stars suddenly sitting atop the NHL’s points leaderboard, plus a check-in on the struggling Blues. Watch here.
What to watch
📺 Leafs @ Bruins
7 p.m. ET on TNT / TSN4
It sure doesn’t look like there’s going to be room for both of these rivals in the Eastern playoff mix, and right now it’s the surprising Bruins with the edge. They met in Toronto on Saturday, with the Bruins taking a regulation win. Another one on home ice would pad the Bruins’ early lead and send the Leafs even further into crisis.
📺 Capitals @ Hurricanes
7 p.m. ET on ESPN+ / SN
The Caps are fading out of the Metro race, and the Hurricanes would probably love nothing more than to bury them a little deeper in this rematch from last year’s second round.
📺 Ducks @ Avalanche
9:30 p.m. ET on TNT / SN360
Not too many of us had this one circled on our calendars as a game of the day (week? month?) candidate when the season started, but things move fast. The Ducks are the story of the league, scoring their way to top spot in the Pacific. Are they for real? They’ve got a great chance to prove it against the only team in the West ahead of them.
Full NHL schedule here. Try streaming games like these for free on Fubo.
No Dumb Questions
(Patrick Smith / Getty Images)
We believe that in hockey, as in life, there are no dumb questions. So if you have something you’ve always wondered about the sport, ask away by emailing us at redlight@theathletic.com.
How does left-hand shot/right-hand shot work? I’m right-handed. I swing a baseball bat as a right-handed hitter by standing to the left of home plate (when looking from behind), a golf club by standing to the left of the ball, etc. Does that mean I stand to the left of the puck (when looking from behind), with my right hand low, and we call that right-hand shot? If so, why are right-handed defensemen so rare? – Andy K.
This is a great question, but I’ll warn you that Andy has accidentally opened a bit of a can of worms here.
Let’s start with the first part. Yes, Andy, the scenario you’re describing would be a right-handed shot. It’s essentially the same as golf, so if you’re a righty on the links and you replace the club with a stick, you’re still a righty. And probably about to get kicked off the course.
But it’s that low hand that creates some confusion. Whether you’re a lefty or righty, imagine holding a hockey stick and going through the various motions — winding up for a slap shot, taking a faceoff, or just basic stickhandling. Mime it out right now, if you want. That lower hand is moving a lot more than the top hand, right? So it makes sense that that would be your dominant hand.
But! The top hand is the one that’s in control. Its movements are more subtle, but they’re just as important, and maybe even more so. And it’s also the one in control if you’re holding the stick with one hand. So there’s an argument that the dominant hand should be up to top — which is to say, right-handed people should shoot left, and those lefty weirdos should shoot right.
And that’s exactly what we see… sometimes. You’ll note that the NHL is much closer to an even split, with a bit more lefties than righties but nothing close to the overwhelming ratio we see in the day-to-day world. And if you dig even deeper, it looks like the divide might even have a geographic component, with more Canadians shooting left and more Americans shooting right.
What’s going on? One theory — and it’s only a theory, but it’s interesting enough to float — is that Canadians are more likely to play hockey as their very first sport. So when they pick up a stick for the first time, they naturally put their dominant right hand up top, which is to say they shoot left. But if a kid has already played other sports like baseball or golf, and they (or their parents) know they swing right, they’ll probably assume the same for hockey and get a right-handed stick. Americans are more likely to try hockey after other sports, so they’re more likely to shoot right.
One last wrinkle on an already long answer — while lefties are the majority in the NHL, including (as Andy points out) on the all-important blue line, most of history’s greatest goal-scorers were righties. Alexander Ovechkin, Mario Lemieux, Brett Hull, Guy Lafleur and Mike Bossy, for example, all shot right. There’s a line of thinking that this has to do with the goalies, where all this left/right weirdness doesn’t happen and the dominant hand pretty much always holds the stick. That means those righty shooters are carrying the puck on almost every goalie’s glove side, which is the easier side to score on.
(Wait, did we just find the only aspect of hockey where everyone else is weird and goalies are the normal ones? I’m scared, Andy.)
Bottom line: If you want your kid to be a defenseman, teach them to shoot left. But if you want them to be the one to break Ovechkin’s record, right might be better.
Your trivia answer …
Fifth spot on the Ducks’ all-time goal-scoring list belongs to Jakob Silfverberg, who scored 158 goals for them in 11 seasons after coming over from Anaheim in the Bobby Ryan trade. Rickard Rakell is right behind at 154, and Steve Rucchin had 153.
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