NHL Power Rankings: Team Rankings 2025

It seems like we’re hurdling towards a rematch of last year’s Stanley Cup Final. 

Once again, it’s probably the league’s most dominant player against the league’s most dominant team. 

This isn’t an attempt at a jinx or a reverse jinx or any kind of that voodoo stuff. 

But compared to the first two rounds of the NHL playoffs, these Conference Finals have been far more chalky and boring than the ones before. 

Ending that round with just a repeat of what we had last year, which was, I’ll admit, a very entertaining series, would be a sudden heel turn for the drunken rounds we saw earlier in the postseason. 

Here’s this week’s ranking of the final four teams as of May 27. 

NHL Power Rankings 2025

#2 Stars (1-2) vs #3 Oilers (2-1)

After Dallas grabbed the series opener on their home ice, Edmonton has won back-to-back games and hopes to take a 3-1 lead on Tuesday night. BetMGM has the Oilers at a -375 line to win the series, and their most favorable odds for game results are to win the series in six games. 

Despite the odds being in Edmonton’s favor, Dallas could definitely still win this series. 

Game 1 was an incredible show of force from the Stars, with an all-time five-goal third-period performance. From a Stars fan perspective, Game 2 was a close loss, and Jake Oettinger had a terrible outlier performance in Game 3. 

And, after all, they’re just one win away in Tuesday’s Game 4 of evening the series. 

Additionally Dallas has won the faceoff battle in every game, and on average over the series they’ve got a 58% winning percentage. If you want to get really granular and look at expected goal stats, also known as xG, the Stars have had a higher xG in every game except for, strangely enough, Game 1. 

I viewed Oettinger going into the series as an X-factor in Dallas’ favor, but they’re behind in the series because of him. The Oilers have converted on 14.29% of their high-danger chances and 14.75% on their overall shots. These are just unsustainable numbers for the Stars. 

Some things can certainly shift back towards Dallas’ favor in the series. If we get a regression to the mean from Oettinger or a rethink of the goaltending strategy altogether, the Stars have a really good shot at winning this series. 

But that’s only if you’re taking it from the perspective of Dallas overhauling the things that they can control, outside of their control is the dominance of Edmonton and McDavid. 

Despite what we’ve seen from the Panthers on the other side of the bracket, with the way that the Oilers are winning these games, I don’t view any team in the same way as Edmonton right now. They should be far in a way the favorites to win the Stanley Cup.

#2 Hurricanes (1-3) vs #3 Panthers (3-1)

Carolina coughed up what may have been their last gasp in Game 4 of the series, ending a 15-game conference final losing streak with a 3-0 win over Florida. The Panthers are still a -1100 favorite to win the series and a +180 favorite to finish the series in six games.

The Hurricanes had a lot of hype all playoffs. They were up in the odds to win the Stanley Cup. Some of their players had a moment in the spotlight on Conn Smythe odds. 

But it always came back to, what will Carolina look like against Florida?

The answer: pretty bad. 

Game 4’s 3-0 score may look a little misleading by itself. The score was 1-0 for most of the game until the Panthers pulled Sergei Bobrovsky in the final minutes and the Hurricanes scored two empty netters. 

When asked about Bobrovsky’s play, Florida coach Paul Maurice jokingly said “I didn’t like the last two at all, the gap was horse-sh**t.” Maurice’s decision to pull Bobrovsky may have been ill-advised in that spot, but that decision probably doesn’t matter nor does the game’s result. 

Carolina doesn’t stand much of a chance in this series, it’s possible they could make it more competitive. But unlikely that they’ll cause any significant problems for the Panthers.