Lapsed fan's guide to the NHL season: Biggest storylines, top contenders, key players to know

The 2024-25 NHL play was a smashing success.

There was Alex Ovechkin breaking Wayne Gretzky's all-time goals record. There were the Florida Panthers shattering the hearts of Edmonton Oilers fans for a 2nd consecutive Final bid to win different Stanley Cup. There were the Tkachuk brothers (Matthew and Brady) trying to smash each Canadian subordinate successful show during the 4 Nations Face-Off.

What's successful store for 2025-26? Plenty wherever that came from, including the NHL's much-anticipated instrumentality to the Winter Olympics.

If you haven't kept up with the NHL successful the past fewer months, don't fret, we've got you covered. Here's a accidental to drawback up connected everything that has happened -- the hirings, firings, signings, trades and important rules changes acknowledgment to a caller corporate bargaining agreement. It's each successful our usher to the 2025-26 play for lapsed fans. Read up earlier the puck drops!

Jump ahead:
Panthers' threepeat attempt
Free agency, trades
What's adjacent for Ovi?
Coaching carousel
Crosby's uncertain future

NHL players instrumentality to the Winter Olympics

For the archetypal clip since the 2014 Sochi Games, the NHL volition nonstop its players to the Winter Olympics successful 2026. The league volition intermission its play Feb. 6-25 to let players to vie for their location nations astatine the Winter Games successful Italy. Preliminary games volition statesman Feb. 11, and the golden medal matchup is acceptable for Feb. 22.

The NHL volition clasp a motorboat lawsuit astatine UBS Arena successful Long Island, New York, that Sports Business Journal reports volition beryllium a "Super Bowl-style media day" earlier players and coaches permission for the Milan-Cortina Olympics.

The level of hype for this Olympic tourney couldn't beryllium higher. The occurrence of the 4 Nations Face-Off past play was the cleanable planetary hockey appetizer. Who doesn't privation to spot different showdown betwixt the U.S. and Canada aft the Tkachuk-led punch-fest and the melodramatic overtime title crippled betwixt the North American rivals astatine 4 Nations?

The 12 countries that qualified for the men's Olympic hockey tourney each named their archetypal six players to their rosters. Now comes the existent drama, arsenic players usage the archetypal fewer months of the NHL play to marque their Olympic cases to their nationalist teams.

The last 25-man rosters for the Olympics are expected to beryllium announced successful aboriginal January, leaving plentifulness of clip for 4 Nations snubs specified arsenic Buffalo Sabres prima Tage Thompson to permission an content connected Team USA GM Bill Guerin, the Minnesota Wild wide manager who conscionable made histor...