The Latest (April 3)

We’re coming down to the wire.

With Wednesday night’s games in the books, the only NHL club with more than eight games remaining on its schedule is the Columbus Blue Jackets, who have nine contests left to play in pursuit of a wild-card berth.

If you’re looking back at the Jackets’ entire season, there’s not a huge variance in where the team was at the halfway point of the campaign versus where it sits now.

The official midway point of the 2024-25 NHL calendar was Jan. 9 and Columbus woke up that morning in the second wild-card spot — the same place it’s currently just two points removed from with two weeks to go in the season.   

Of course, the other Eastern Conference wild-card team at the halfway mark, the Boston Bruins, are a reminder of how much things can change in the season’s second act. Today, the B’s are well out of the playoff chase and, in truth, are probably getting a little excited about their lottery odds; only three clubs have a better shot at the No. 1 pick than the Bruins right now and Boston is definitely counting on a top-five selection that could add much-needed talent into the retooling organization.

For the Bruins, the story of the second half has been steering into the skid. And while not every club can say the entire trajectory of the franchise changed in the past three months, it’s still worth rooting around to see what stands out.

With that in mind — and with the campaign winding down — we’re using this week’s edition of the power rankings to highlight the story of the season’s second half for all 32 clubs.

1. Dallas Stars (49-21-4): The Stars have the best points percentage (.729) in the league in the second half. Dallas made a franchise-defining move to land Mikko Rantanen at the trade deadline and are all in — and then some — in pursuit of their first Cup since 1999.

2. Winnipeg Jets (51-20-4): Cole Perfetti has really emerged as a top-six forward, with 10 goals and 22 points in his past 26 games.

3. Washington Capitals (48-18-9): The Caps locked up all of their potential UFAs in the past couple months, inking Logan Thompson, Charlie Lindgren and Jakob Chychrun to extensions.

4. Carolina Hurricanes (46-24-4): The Rantanen saga was obviously a huge, league-wide story. Increasingly, though, it looks like Carolina struck gold with the guy who originally landed alongside Rantanen, Taylor Hall. The first overall pick from 2010 has seven goals and 13 points in his past dozen outings. 

5. Vegas Golden Knights (45-21-8): Somewhat surprisingly, Vegas endured a 27-game stretch starting right at the midway point where it was only 11-11-5. But after an eerily quiet trade deadline in the desert, the Knights took hold of the Pacific by winning six of their past seven games.

6. Toronto Maple Leafs (46-25-4): After years of cycling through different defence partners, Toronto may have found the ri