We’re a few weeks into a new season, and there’s a good chance your team is off to a bad start. Maybe it’s simply disappointing, or maybe it’s bordering on disastrous — these things come in different flavors. But when it happens, it leads to panic and a sense of impending doom, as you can’t help but hear about looming milestones like November 1 or U.S. Thanksgiving, and how the season will be a total write-off if your team isn’t back on track by then. A slow start is the worst.
Also, it might not matter.
The “might” is a key word here, because a slow start can absolutely torpedo a season. But it doesn’t have to, as history often reminds us. So today, let’s see if we can calm a few nerves for fan bases in Colorado, Nashville, Buffalo and elsewhere, and maybe rekindle a few memories for others. Let’s look back at your team’s worst start to a season that ended up being just fine, thanks.
We’re going to define a bad start a little loosely here, which allows us to play around with some arbitrary end points, although we want a team that’s at least under .500. For some teams, that cold streak will only last a few games, while others might take months to get going. And of course, the “didn’t matter” part will be in the eye of the beholder — for some of these teams, a few extra points in October could have meant home ice, or a better playoff matchup, or who knows what else down the road. But the larger point remains: Often, a few bad games are just a few bad games, and good teams find a way.
There is hope. You just need to know where to look. Let’s remember some bad starts.
Western Conference
Anaheim Ducks
We’re doing this alphabetically, which works out beautifully since the Ducks are one of the best examples of how little a bad start can mean. They entered the 2015-16 season with optimism after a trip to the conference final, but face-planted almost immediately. Ten games in, they had just one win, sitting at 1-7-2 and looking up at the entire league. It was such a deep hole that they didn’t make it back to .500 until after Christmas, but an 11-game win streak in the second half helped them finish first in the division with 103 points. And for once, a GM promising not to make change for the sake of change actually worked.
Calgary Flames
By mid-November of the 2003-04 season, the Flames had stumbled out to a record of 6-8-0-2, which is awful for two reasons: First, because they were under .500, and second and far more importantly, because it reminds us there was a brief window where NHL records had four columns. Good times. As for the Flames, they finished strong to the tune of 94 points, then went on a run all the way to the final.
Jarome Iginla poses with Bill Daly and the Clarence Campbell Bowl after winning the West for a berth in the 2004 Stanley Cup Final. (Jeff Vinnick / Getty Images)
Chicago Blackhawks
The 1969-70 Blackhawks started 0-5-1, finally won a game in their seventh try, then promptly lost to the laughingstock Golden Seals. They finished with the best record in the league. More recently, the 2008-09 team started so poorly that head coach (and franchise legend) Denis Savard was fired after just four games. That team went to the conference final, then won three Cups in six years.
Colorado Avalanche
They haven’t looked great this season, to put it mildly. They also didn’t look great three years ago, when they were 4-5-1 through 10 games and had just been swept in a home-and-home against the Brad Larsen-era Blue Jackets. Then they ran off six straight wins, one of five streaks of at least five victories they had over the rest of the regular season. You can add two more in the playoffs, when they went 16-4 to win the Cup.
Dallas Stars
Here’s another of those near-perfect examples of the sort of turnarounds we’re talking about. The 2019-20 Stars had one of the worst starts in franchise history, going 1-7-1, and it felt like a controversial take to not have them in my bottom five. Then they reeled off 14 wins in 16 games, and after the pandemic break, they ended up going all the way to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in two decades.
Edmonton Oilers
We could absolutely go with last year’s 2-9-1 start that cost Jay Woodcroft his job, but didn’t stop the Oilers from making the final. (Although three more wins would have meant home ice in that deciding Game 7, so maybe it mattered more than we realized.) Instead, I’m going to go with the 1989-90 Oilers. Still reeling from the Wayne Gretzky trade a year earlier, they started 5-8-4 and didn’t make it to .500 to stay until the end of November. Then they won their fifth Cup in seven years.
Los Angeles Kings
I think we have to go with the 2011-12 Kings here, even though their start wasn’t so much bad as just uninspiring, with the team hovering around .500 well into December. That’s when they made the switch to Darryl Sutter as coach and played well enough to earn the final Western playoff spot. The rest was history.
Minnesota Wild
Just two years ago, the Wild started off by not just losing their first three games, but giving up 20 goals in the process. It was bad enough that their coach just sent them all home. They were back to .500 by November and went on to record 103 points while finishing a solid sixth in fewest goals allowed. Then they lost in the first round, because they were still the Wild.
(Also, let’s send a bonus shout out to the 1990-91 North Stars, who started 4-14-5 and still made the Stanley Cup Final.)
Nashville Predators
No team could probably use more of an “October doesn’t matter” pick-me-up than the Predators these days, and they’re in luck, since both of the best two seasons in franchise history featured slow starts. The 2016-17 team was 2-5-1 in the season’s first month but still made the final. And the 2017-18 edition started 5-5-2 before winning nine of 10 and finishing the year with the league’s best record.
San Jose Sharks
Sharks fans have some recent experience with awful starts, including a 3-9-3 launch two years ago and of course last year’s 11-game losing streak. Neither of those seasons ended well, but 2003-04 did despite the Sharks winning just three of their first 19 games. The good news was they only lost eight of those 19 — the rest were ties, back when we still did those. The Sharks shook off the start, finished with 103 points and went to the conference final for the first time in franchise history.
Seattle Kraken
You didn’t really think we’d leave them out, did you? The Kraken may only be in year four, but they did start 3-4-2 in 2022-23, the only year they made the playoffs. That team ended up with 100 points, and they even won a round.
The Kraken made it to the second round in 2022-23 in just their second year in the NHL. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
St. Louis Blues
With all due respect to the debut season that saw the Blues start 5-16-2 before going all the way to the Final, this has to be the 2018-19 Blues championship. Pick your record — at various points they were 1-3-2, 2-4-3, 7-10-3 and even 15-18-4 on January 3, the day they woke up dead last in the league. It may stand as the greatest turnaround season in NHL history, not to mention the season every bad team will point to for decades to come while begging their fan base for patience.
Utah Hockey Club
The worst start in franchise history is (checks note) this year since the NHL is trying to tell us this is a brand-new team that never existed before. If you want to go with that, then I’m sorry Utah fans, you don’t get to join in today’s fun. But we all know these are the repackaged Coyotes, so let’s go with the 2010-11 team that won just four of their first 14 games but finished with 99 points, second most in team history.
Vancouver Canucks
Give them credit, the Canucks have a history of making sure their worst starts tend to end with their worst seasons. One notable exception was the best team in franchise history: the 2010-11 team that limped out to just two wins in their first seven games before heating up, running away with the Presidents’ Trophy and then coming within a win of a championship.
Vegas Golden Knights
The Golden Knights have actually only had two slow starts in franchise history, starting 1-4-0 in both 2018-19 and 2021-22. One of those years ended in almost unfathomably heartbreaking fashion, the other saw them miss the playoffs for the only time ever. OK, fine, this one is the exception that proves the rule.
Winnipeg Jets
The 2017-18 Jets didn’t just start the season 0-2-0, they got shelled for 13 goals in the process. The good news is they immediately recovered and went on to post a franchise-record 114 points while almost winning the Presidents’ Trophy. The better news is that those shaky first two games paved the way for starter Steve Mason to lose his job to some kid named Connor Hellebuyck.
Eastern Conference
Boston Bruins
Can we use a single game as a bad start? I think we can if the other team raises a Cup banner in front of you, then beats you 7-0 in a loss so humiliating your future captain flips out and jumps a guy. That was how the 2018-19 Bruins opened their season; they ended it by playing in the Stanley Cup Final.
Buffalo Sabres
Let’s scroll down until we find a good Sabres season to work with. (Scrolls for a while.) OK, here we go. The 2005-06 team didn’t look like much out of the lockout; they were still sitting at .500 in the middle of November, with just nine wins through 18 games. They’d win 43 of their last 64, finishing with 110 points and then winning two rounds before blue-line injuries derailed what could have been the franchise’s first Cup. As if to prove starts don’t really matter, the next year’s team flipped the script by starting 10-0-0, then went out in the conference finals yet again.
Daniel Briere celebrates his overtime game-winning goal to force Game 7 in the 2006 Eastern Conference final against Carolina. (Rick Stewart / Getty Images)
Carolina Hurricanes
Their 2005-06 Cup-winning season featured a decent enough start. But go back three years earlier, and a team coached by teenage wunderkind Paul Maurice had a wobbly first few months; they didn’t get over the .500 mark for good until a win in the second week of December, and that team ended up going all the way to the final. More recently, the 2018-19 team under rookie coach Rod Brind’Amour had a stretch in October and November where they lost eight of 10, and didn’t get back over .500 until the new year. That team finished with 99 points and won two playoff rounds.
Columbus Blue Jackets
A bad start that gives way to a successful season is tricky here, because, well, it means we have to find a successful season. That hasn’t been easy in Columbus, given the team has only won a single seven-game series in franchise history. That one came in 2018-19, and their start that year was fine. So at the risk of damning with faint praise, let’s turn to the 2016-17 team that lost four of its first six before flipping the switch on the way to a team-record 108-point season. Pro tip: Posting a 16-game win streak that covers all of December and beyond helps in the turnaround.
Detroit Red Wings
Their recent Cup wins all had decent starts, although they were 2-4-0 two weeks into the 1996-97 season. I’m going to go a year earlier, when the 95-96 edition of the team started 5-5-2, then heated up ever so slightly to go 57-8-5 the rest of the way, setting the NHL record for wins in a year with 62. (The record has since been tied and then broken, but those came in the loser point/shootout era, so they don’t count.)
Florida Panthers
No need to get cute here, especially with a team that doesn’t have a ton of successful seasons to choose from. Last year would qualify, to put it mildly, and they were just 2-3-0 out of the gate. Things turned out OK.
Montreal Canadiens
There’s plenty of history to choose from, but let’s stay in the modern era by going with the 1985-86 Habs, who went 4-6-0 through October before recovering to cruise into the playoffs and win the franchise’s 23rd Stanley Cup. Let’s just say that for Montreal fans, it’s a more pleasant reminder about October not always mattering than some other years we could mention.
New Jersey Devils
We don’t have to go back very far to learn a valuable lesson in not overreacting to early games, since it was just two years ago that an 0-2-0 start had fans chanting to Fire Lindy right before the team won 16 of their next 17 on their way to 112 points. But we could also go back to 1994-95, in which a seeming breakthrough season turned into a 3-5-2 start. That team didn’t get over .500 until the last day of March. OK, fine, it was a lockout season, but that’s still a long wait.
New York Islanders
The 1979-80 team took forever to get going, hitting a nadir with a 6-11-4 record at the end of November and not getting to .500 until mid-January. Then they made a deadline deal with the Kings that you may have heard of. Then they won the Cup. Then they won the next three after that, too. Then everyone forgot all about that slow start in the fall of 1979.
The Islanders won their first-ever Stanley Cup in 1980 after a rough start. Then they won the next three as well, just for good measure. (Bruce Bennett Studios via Getty Images Studios / Getty Images)
New York Rangers
The 1993-94 team started the season 4-5-0, reaching the mark thanks to humiliating back-to-back losses to recent expansion teams in the Mighty Ducks and Lightning (back in the era when expansion teams were supposed to be terrible). If you’re not sure how this Rangers season turned out, flip on the NHL Network and wait a few seconds, they’ll probably start talking about it.
Ottawa Senators
The Senators are a weird team when it comes to starts; they’ve torpedoed themselves with bad Octobers each of the last few years, and also once started a season 13-1-0 and fired their brand new coach just a few months later. They also started the 2006-07 season with a 6-10-1 record through mid-November, but still managed to rack up 105 points and score the Stanley Cup-winning goal.
Philadelphia Flyers
Old-time Flyers fans can tell you all about how starts don’t always matter — this team once made it to its 38th game before suffering their second loss, but didn’t win the Cup. Neither did the 1999-2000 team, but they were more useful for this premise because they started off 0-4-1, including scoring just one goal in the first three games. They immediately ran off four in a row to get back into the mix, and finished with 105 points before making it to a conference final their fans all remember for all the wrong reasons.
Pittsburgh Penguins
The 1990-91 team started the season with consecutive wins, but then won only one of their next seven on the way to a 3-5-1 record. Even worse, Mario Lemieux would be out of the lineup for months, hotshot rookie Jaromir Jagr was an early bust and they had a hole on the blue line they wouldn’t fill until Larry Murphy arrived in December. They ended up winning the next two Stanley Cups. Your team can too, as long as they have two of the best offensive players of all time ready to tear up the league and acquire a Hall-of-Fame defenseman for peanuts. Huh. Maybe this one isn’t very helpful after all.
Tampa Bay Lightning
We have to cheat just a bit on our “under .500” criteria, since the 2019-20 Lightning never quite got there. But they were close throughout October, dropping to 6-5-2 through 13 games. That was a big deal, considering they were coming off a record-setting 128-point season that saw them lose in a shocking first-round upset. Even their own captain was warning it was going to be a “really, really, really long year.” It was, because they played into September and won the Stanley Cup.
Toronto Maple Leafs
Leafs history certainly isn’t short on bad starts, and I’m tempted to point out that they once started 1-10-0 and still made the playoffs. (With, uh, 57 points. Wendel bless the Norris Division.) Instead, let’s go with the 1992-93 team that was just 2-3-1 through six games. Even worse, they’d given up at least three goals in every game, proving this new Pat Burns guy couldn’t coach defense and nothing fun would happen that year.
Washington Capitals
I’d love to use our last entry on the 1974-75 team that only won one of its first 18 games, then heated up over the rest of the year to finish with eight times that many. But no, I think we have to point to the 2017-18 team that was coming off a Presidents’ Trophy win, but started the season with a 5-6-1 October. It took a while, but apparently the Caps finally learned the lesson this whole column has been about: how you start is just slightly less important than how you finish.
(Top photo of Alex Pietrangelo hoisting the Stanley Cup in 2019: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
