NHL's Biggest Collapses Every Season Since 2009-10

What teams have had the best season starts, and the worst final results over the last 15 years?

Oftentimes, we look at the end-of-season standings to determine which teams played well and which teams didn’t during a certain campaign. But that doesn’t tell the full story. In every season since 2009-10, what were the most severe declines?

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2009-10: Calgary Flames

The 2009-10 Calgary Flames are a classic case of SPSV% (or PDO) regression, which is the sum of a team’s shooting percentage (SP%) and save percentage (SV%). Led by veterans Jarome Iginla and Miikka Kiprusoff, this club started out hot with a 25-12-5 record—they were one point shy of being tied for fourth in the NHL. With a great defense (sixth-best in expected goals against in the NHL) and a solid supporting cast, this looked like a playoff team.

But from Jan. 6, 2010, until the end of the season, the Flames’ SPSV% fell from the second-best in the NHL to the second-worst. Kiprusoff lost his mojo, Iginla had just 27 points in his final 40 games, and the rest of the team faded. Calgary went 15-20-5 in that span, missing the playoffs. They were tied with the Colorado Avalanche in points with four contests to spare, having a very real shot at qualifying for the postseason, but they didn’t win once.

This started a five-season streak without making the playoffs, and the first miss of Kiprusoff’s time with the Flames since joining in 2003-04. Both he and Iginla left by 2012-13, so this campaign sort of served as the end of an era for two legends of the time period.

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2010-11: Dallas Stars

Starting 29-13-5, the playoffs seemed like the bare minimum for the 2010-11 Dallas Stars. With the fourth-best record in the NHL and less than 43 percent of the season to go, a championship was the goal here. But a 13-16-6 finish made it so this team was ninth place in a 15-team Western Conference—what happened?

Well, it was the same thing that happened to the Flames. The Stars had the second-best SPSV% in the league, led by point-per-game forwards Brad Richards and Loui Eriksson. With an impressive group of both young and old forwards around them and a high-end goaltending duo of Kari Lehtonen and Andrew Raycroft, things just clicked.

From Jan. 21 onward, however, the offensive production declined and the goaltending became some of the worst in the league. Raycroft barely played due to his struggles, leaving Lehtonen to take the net in the team’s final 23 contests—that didn’t end well. The Stars made it close, needing a non-shootout win in their final game to edge out the Chicago Blackhawks for the eighth seed. Letting a 2-1 lead against the Minnesota Wild in Game 82 slip away, Dallas missed the playoffs.

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2011-12: Minnesota Wild

As if the Stars passed on their curse in that last game, it was Minnesota’s turn for a collapse in 2011-12. Starting out with the best record in the NHL at 20-7-3, it seemed like this team was poised to not just make the playoffs, but potentially win their first series since 2003. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.