Red Light newsletter 🏒 | This is The Athletic’s hockey newsletter. Sign up here to receive Red Light directly in your inbox.Greetings from right in the dead of summer: early August, aka the heart of the NHL’s offseason. Consider this your weekly hockey fix as we await rookie camps in, oh, about five weeks.(Illustration by Will Tullos / The Athletic; photos by Bruce Bennett and JC Ruiz / Getty Images)Survey SaysYour takes on burning NHL questionsAll season, you’ve heard from our writers, reading several thousand of our hockey stories. And you heard from the players, coaches and NHL executives who often drive the news cycle in the sport.But this week, we took a step back to hear from you, the fans, to gauge your perspective on the league, the sport and where everything stands as we head into 2026-27. The first two surveys with your responses — on the state of the game and predictions for the coming year — were released today by our guy Harman Dayal. Part 3 goes up tomorrow.The one thing that stood out to me reading the results initially was that the majority of the more than 20,000 respondents were downright bullish on the NHL, with nearly 80 percent marking “hopeful” or “enthusiastic” when asked, “Which of the following best describes your feelings about the current overall state of the NHL?”And only 22 percent of fans gave Gary Bettman a negative grade for the job he’s done as commissioner overall, which feels like a relatively recent development. (Maybe I’m wrong, but the annual “Booing of the Bettman” at the Stanley Cup Final and draft seems to be tamer of late.)As for the prediction side of things, well, the other thing you’re all clearly bullish on is the Florida Panthers, who were picked as the most improved team, the most likely to return to the playoffs and the second-most likely to win the Stanley Cup.You must really love that the Tkachuk podcast will be in person this season, I guess.Meanwhile, three Canadian teams received the most votes for most unlikely to win a Cup in the next decade — try to guess which three before clicking — and fans were pretty heavily split when it came to the question of whether the league should pursue expansion.There’s a lot more to dig into, such as gambling in hockey, the Department of Player Safety and changes fans would like to see. And if you missed the window to cast a fan survey ballot, you’ve got another chance to make your voice heard: Polling opened this morning for our annual front-office confidence survey. Vote here.Thanks for writing a few stories for us this time around.💡 MirTrivia QuestionMy next section is about the NHL’s “mushy middle,” so let’s tee that up with a question for you about the ultimate mushy-middle team.Over the past decade, this club has the league’s 17th-best record (.561 points percentage) but has won just 11 playoff games and didn’t select in the top five in the draft once in that span. What team is it?Hint: This franchise also hasn’t had a top-three pick — ever.Answer at the bottom.(Steph Chambers / Getty Images)NHL’s Most Mediocre TeamsI guess we’re not giving Harman any days off in August, because he’s been busy lately. The other piece he wrote this week that caught my eye was his examination of the seven teams most “in danger of getting stuck in the mushy middle.”