No Crosby, No Ovechkin, No Toews

As the NHL regular season wraps up and we get ready for the Stanley Cup Playoffs, it's truly the start of a new era.  All three New York-area teams made it, the Bruins will chase history and the Kraken will make their playoff debut in just their second season.  But, this year's Stanley Cup Playoffs will be just as significant for the teams that aren't there as those that are.  No Penguins.  No Capitals.  No Blackhawks.

Since the NHL returned from the lockout in 2005-06, those three teams have been constants.  Chicago's had some ups and downs, but, until recently, was a pretty consistent playoff team...and the Blackhawks did win three Cups in six years.  Pittsburgh and Washington, meanwhile, have been models of consistency.  You could pencil them in for the playoffs even before the season started.  Until this year, that is.

With Washington, you almost saw it coming.  The Capitals had to deal with so many injuries this season, and they were just too much to overcome.  They simply got too far back with too many games to go.  They knew it too, and started trading players at the deadline.

Different story with Pittsburgh, though.  Everybody was healthy.  Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin both played all 82 games as a matter of fact.  They just didn't get it done.  They lost a must-win game (against Chicago) and got passed by both the Panthers and Islanders for the Eastern Conference wild card spots, thus ending their 16-year playoff streak.

The last time Pittsburgh missed the playoffs was 2005-06, the season after the lockout ended and Crosby's rookie year.  Two years later, the Penguins were in the Cup Final before winning the Cup the year after that.  Then they won back-to-back Cups in 2016 and 2017.  With the exception of 2014-15, when they finished fourth, they placed no lower than third in the division during that span, too.  The Crosby/Malkin Penguins haven't just been one of the best teams in hockey over the past decade and a half, they've been one of the most reliable draws.

Speaking of reliable draws, may I present the Chicago Blackhawks.  They've appeared in so many Winter Classics that it became a running joke within the NHL offices.  "If there's an outdoor game, the Blackhawks are probably playing."  There was a good reason for that.  With Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews and Duncan Keith leading the way, they were as good and as popular as the Penguins. 

Chicago started trending downward after getting swept in the first round by Nashville in 2017, and the Blackhawks' only playoff appearance since then took place in the Edmonton bubble in 2020.  Even then, the only reason they got in was because they expanded the tournament to 12 teams per conference, and they were in 12th place in the West when the season was suspended.  Had that been a normal season with the standard playoff format, the Blackhawks wouldn't have made it then, either, and they'd be looking at a five-year playoff drought.

This season, it hit rock bottom.  The Blackhawks tallied just 59 points, which put them at the bottom of the league along with Anaheim and Columbus.  And they really moved on from the glory days.  Keith, who was traded (at his request) to Edmonton prior to last season, retired.  Kane was traded to the Rangers at the deadline.  And they announced that they wouldn't be re-signing Toews, a pending free agent and their captain for all three Stanley Cup runs.  All three future Hall of Fame pillars of the Blackhawks' dynasty are gone.

In Pittsburgh, that's not the case.  Crosby and Malkin aren't going anywhere.  So it's very possible that this is a one-year blip.  Especially since the Penguins aren't just a consistently good team.  They're one of the best-run franchises in the NHL.  Which leads me to believe that there'll be some changes, but it's still entirely possible that we'll see them right back in the playoffs in 2023-24.

What's so remarkable about the Penguins' run (other than the length of it) is how it started.  They were really bad and incredibly mismanaged.  Prior to Mario Lemieux's group buying the team, there were even some questions about whether they'd stay in Pittsburgh.  That's how they ended up getting the generational talent that is Sidney Crosby, who completely turned the franchise around.

Crosby was the No. 1 overall pick in 2005.  The No. 1 overall pick in 2004 was Alex Ovechkin.  Who had the same type of impact on the Washington Capitals as Crosby had on the Penguins.  It took the Capitals until 2007-08 to make the playoffs, and they also missed out in 2013-14.  After that, though, they won five straight Metropolitan Division titles and lifted the Cup for the first time in 2018.

Like the Penguins, the Capitals' time out of the playoffs may not end up being particularly long.  They didn't just have a lot of injuries this season, they had a lot of key players miss significant time.  They get full seasons T.J. Oshie and Nicklas Backstrom and John Carlson to go along with Ovechkin's usual greatness, they could very easily be right back in the postseason in 2024.  Or, this could be the beginning of the end.  Ovechkin is 37 years old, after all.  If nothing else, he'll still have that pursuit of Gretzky's all-time scoring record, though.

Regardless of whether they return to the playoffs next season or not, this is the end of an era in the NHL.  Crosby and Ovechkin were transformational players who defined the post-lockout era.  They both led their team to the playoffs every year, and they both won the Stanley Cup.  Which is something Jonathan Toews did three times as captain of the Blackhawks' dynasty.  None of them will be in the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs.  Which is just an odd thing to even think about.

So, yeah, this year's Stanley Cup Playoffs will look a little different.  There will be plenty of stories and plenty of intrigue.  We just won't be seeing some of the usual suspects.  No Crosby and Malkin.  No Ovechkin and Backstrom.  No Toews.  And, while we will see Kane, he'll be in a Rangers uniform.  The NHL has turned the page on the Penguins, Capitals and Blackhawks.  Will this be the year a new dynasty to take their place begins?