Mark Scheifele and Josh Morrissey are the only Olympic Canadians returning to a team that's probably already planning for next year.

This one's essentially done. Winnipeg was 12-7 in November and looked like a Central Division contender. They went 2-7-4 in December and never recovered. Connor Hellebuyck — who just played the game of his life in the gold medal final against Canada — had missed time with injury during that collapse, and the team's defensive structure fell apart so thoroughly that getting him back didn't fully fix it.

Their expected goals numbers at five-on-five rank near the bottom of the league over the second half of the season.

The Olympic break was a welcome distraction. The NHL schedule is not going to be.

This finish is going to amplify every conversation about the future of the core, the coaching staff, and what this franchise is actually building toward.

This one stings the most for Ontarians, because it always does.

Mitch Marner comes back to a team that's functionally eliminated. Toronto's Atlantic Division standing has been, by any honest measure, a failure. They sit near the bottom of playoff probability in the entire Eastern Conference. The Leafs faithful — and there are millions of them, coast to coast — spent Sunday morning cheering for the maple leaf, watching Marner chip in at the Olympics, feeling that national pride. Monday morning, the Leafs are a 1% playoff team.

The off-season is going to be loud. It already would have been. For now, they play out the schedule. That's all there is to do.

The matchup to watch: Edmonton's remaining schedule includes several divisional games against Anaheim and Seattle, both of whom stand directly between them and a playoff spot. Those are the games that define the next chapter of McDavid's NHL story, and whether the narrative coming out of the Olympics is redemption or just more of the same.

McDavid lands back in Edmonton needing the Oilers to essentially run the table in the Pacific. That's not a comfortable position. Anaheim and Vegas both hold spots ahead of them right now, and the margin for error is thin to the point of nearly disappearing. The talent is unquestionably there, McDavid is the best player in the world, Draisaitl is right behind him, and Evan Bouchard has been excellent — but Edmonton has spent this season failing to build the kind of consistency around their top two that a playoff run requires.

If the Oilers catch fire over the next six weeks, they're a dangerous team. If they play like they have for most of February, they're watching the first round on TV.

Less than one percent. For the purposes of this preview, we'll move on. The Flames are a team trending in the right direction in terms of their rebuild, but they are not a 2026 playoff team. Nazem Kadri and the veterans will fight hard — they always do — but the math just doesn't work.

Same situation as Calgary, possibly worse given the expectations that came into this season. Vancouver was supposed to be building off recent momentum. Instead, the Pacific Division has been brutally competitive, with Anaheim, Vegas, and the Kraken all in the mix ahead of them. The Canucks have no meaningful games left in February.

They're not going to do that. But the next few weeks will at least be meaningful, which is more than can be said for most of this list.

This is the only genuinely interesting Canadian team left in the race, and even here the odds aren't good. Ottawa has roughly a 6-8% shot at a wildcard spot in the East, which puts them firmly in the category of "possible but unlikely." Brady Tkachuk — who you just watched bury Canada's spirit with that overtime celebration in Milano — comes back as the face of a team that needs to win something like 20 of their remaining 28 games to genuinely threaten for a spot.

Montreal's path to the playoffs requires them to hold off Detroit, Buffalo, and a resurgent Boston squad over the final stretch. It's possible. It would require nearly everything to go right.

The Canadiens are interesting in the way that a close race that you probably won't finish is interesting. They're legitimately in the wildcard conversation, and Nick Suzuki — back from the Olympics — has been their best forward all season. The Atlantic Division has been genuinely chaotic, with Tampa Bay leading the pack but a logjam of teams behind them. The young core of the team is real, this isn't a fluke team (take a look at their record), but getting in this year would be something of an overachievement.