1 Reason Why Your Favorite NHL Team Won't Win the 2025 Stanley Cup

The start of the 2024-25 NHL season is right around the corner, and this is the point in the summer when everybody is probably feeling good about their team's chances.

Moves have been made, coaches have been hired, and the anticipation of a new season and a fresh start brings excitement and optimism for everybody.

No matter how good your team is, though, there is a much greater chance that your season is going to end with a loss and disappointment than it is with your captain getting handed the Stanley Cup by NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.

Every team in the league has a flaw or something that could hold it back, and we have identified one reason why your team is not going to win the Cup this season.

The Lightning have been one of the gold-standard teams in the NHL for the past decade and have produced nearly unmatched results.

But they are slowly starting to lose some of that magic.

Steven Stamkos is gone, Victor Hedman and Andrei Vasilevskiy are both showing serious signs of slowing down, and their overall 5-on-5 play took a massive step backward in 2023-24.

They were under 50 percent in both expected goal share and goals scored share, ranking lower than 20th in both categories, and they are nowhere near as dominant as they were during their run of three consecutive trips to the Cup Final.

Still a very good team with potential game-breakers, but probably not a championship-level side anymore.