<p>We’ve seen&nbsp;several NHL franchises in despair this season, seemingly doomed never to escape their ruts, from bottom dwellers like the <a href="https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/teams/buffalo-sabres/line-combinations">Buffalo Sabres </a>and <a href="https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/teams/chicago-blackhawks/line-combinations">Chicago Blackhawks</a> to the collapsing <a href="https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/teams/new-york-rangers/line-combinations">New York Rangers</a>. But which is truly in the worst long-term situation?</p>



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<p>Time to make some enemies, Roundtable.&nbsp;<strong>Which NHL team do you believe is farthest from a Stanley Cup right now?</strong></p>



<p><strong>MATT LARKIN:&nbsp;</strong>This question is never as simple as picking the worst team in the league. When measuring how much suffering lies ahead, those clubs aren’t always in the most painful positions; no, that belongs to the aging contenders, still good enough compete for playoff spots but long past their chance at winning a Cup. That’s why I believe the&nbsp;<strong><a href="https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/teams/boston-bruins/line-combinations">Boston Bruins</a>&nbsp;</strong>are the farthest. They have exactly one high-end offensive player now in David Pastrnak. Their prospect pool is absolutely barren, so they have little help coming from within. They’re set to regress in the standings a second consecutive year, and the trend should continue. They’re still too good to crash onto the basement floor, so they appear to have&nbsp;<em>years&nbsp;</em>of suffering ahead of them before they can even start contending for lottery picks.</p><div class="injected-ad injected-video" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="0" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="190"></div>



<p><strong>STEVEN ELLIS</strong>: Boston is a great one, Matt, but I’m going to go with the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/teams/pittsburgh-penguins/line-combinations" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>Pittsburgh Penguins.</strong></a> Yes, I understand they’re battling for a Wildcard spot right now. The team has one of the worst prospect pools in the game, and as long as they hold on to Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang, they’re still not close to being in a full rebuild. The team was built for success in the era of the big three, and it worked amazingly. But they’ve continued to make moves to try and keep them relevant in the standings and it just hasn’t paid off in any meaningful way for more than half a decade. I also just don’t trust their goaltending in the short-term, either. Prospect forward Rutger McGroarty is good, but he’s not a franchise-changer.&nbsp;– you don’t build a a team around him. The Penguins don’t have a second-rounder this year, and as long as they continue to float around playoff contention, they’re going to struggle to build up the assets necessary to start a new competitive window once 87 calls it quits.</p><div class="injected-ad" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="1" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="182"></div>



<p><strong>PAUL PIDUTTI:</strong>&nbsp;Fascinating question. When I first read it, four teams immediately came to mind. Matt and Steven gobbled up two of them. While I feel like I pick on this team a bit, it’s got to be the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/teams/new-york-islanders/line-combinations" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>New York Islanders</strong></a>. They’ve had a plucky, overachieving style for a while and I have all kinds of respect for this group’s lunchpail approach. But you need to squint, wear bifocals and use a telescope to see a Cup contender on Long Island. Patrick Roy is a unique hockey mind and personality that has kept a mediocre, duct-taped roster riddled with injuries within the playoff picture. But what is the big picture? Their core is neither youthful nor high-end on talent. They have a bevy of long-term, immovable contracts. They were 25th of 32 teams in Steven’s preseason&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/news/ranking-every-nhl-teams-2024-25-prospect-pool-from-1-32" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">prospect rankings</a>. Noah Dobson is the only impact player on the roster under 26 years old — and he’s 25. The Isles have a few solid players who may still have some value on the open market and a goalie in Ilya Sorokin who is exceptional when hot. But I just can’t conjure any path to a Cup in the next five years (or more) for the Islanders.</p><div class="injected-ad" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="2" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="202"></div>



<p><strong>SCOTT MAXWELL:&nbsp;</strong>Those are all good picks, but each of those teams does have that one element you could at least conceivably see carrying a team on their backs to a Cup, even if it’s unlikely. For Pittsburgh, that’s Sidney Crosby. Boston, David Pastrnak and Jeremy Swayman. Islanders, Ilya Sorokin, Noah Dobson and Mat Barzal. One team that is in a similar state to those three teams but doesn’t have that element is the&nbsp;<strong><a href="https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/teams/seattle-kraken/line-combinations" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Seattle Kraken</a>.&nbsp;</strong>They made some noise in the playoffs in 2023 thanks to their immense depth, but that hasn’t worked in their favor since then, and they otherwise lack the game-breaking talent that they’d need in the playoffs, especially since Matty Beniers and Shane Wright haven’t quite reached their full potential yet.&nbsp;Joey D’Accord could be that guy in net, but we have yet to see how he handles the pressure of the playoffs. On top of that, this team isn’t young either with an average roster age of 28.33 that is the 12th-oldest in the league, so they aren’t a team on the rise either. This is their window, and once it closes, they’ll already need to retool or rebuild, barring a move for a high-end player that can put them over the top. For now though, they might be one of the only “competitive” teams where I see absolutely no path to winning a Cup, and they lack the game-breaking talent either on their roster or in their prospect pool right now to convince me otherwise.</p><div class="injected-ad" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="3" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="248"></div>



<p>_____</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Recent Daily Faceoff Roundtables</h2>



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