16 Storylines for the 2022-23 NHL Season - Eastern Conference
Getting you ready for the new NHL season with 16 things to follow this year
A new NHL season is upon us. Tonight the Lightning and Rangers, as well as the Kings and Golden Knights kick off their 2022-23 seasons, officially getting the ball rolling on this year (last week’s two games in Switzerland don’t really count for my money). Rather than doing team by team previews like last year, I decided to structure this by listing one storyline I’m interested in following for each team this season. It could be a player or a positional group, an X-Factor or merely a reason to watch each team. If you don’t like the one I listed for your team, yell at me angrily on Twitter.com I guess.
1.) Kids and the Buffalo Sabres. I really dig what the Sabres are trying this season, even if it doesn’t work out. Rather than going out and signing veterans with the infinite cap space they have, blocking their loaded prospect pool (like so many teams do (see: LA Kings)), the Sabres have decided to keep spots open on the roster and let the kids learn. Last season’s team already had many young players on it regularly, Dylan Cozens, Mattias Samuelsson, and Peyton Krebs, and the slightly more experienced Rasmus Dahlin, Henri Jokiharju, Jacob Bryson, and Casey Mittelstadt, but now another wave of youth is here. Owen Power (20) will make his full-time debut this season, as will Jack Quinn (21) and possibly John-Jason Peterka (20). In total, the Sabres are possibly going to run out a roster where 8 of 12 forwards and 5 of 6 defensemen are age 25 or younger. CapFriendly has pegged the Sabres as the youngest opening night roster in the NHL.
So many NHL teams are afraid of the youth. I joke sometimes that no one in the NHL hates young players more than NHL coaches, who so often put promising and talented players in the doghouse for small, fundamental mistakes and favor older/worse players because they are less likely to make that mental mistake. It’s a trade-off for sure, but it also has a history of stunting the development of young players and it’s how you wind up burning prospects. The Sabres are going in the total opposite direction, saying “screw the old guys, we don’t care if these kids make 15 mental mistakes per game, it’s time for them to learn”. It’s swimming against the current and I’m here for it.
2.) Can Derek Lalonde and Steve Yzerman’s acquisitions fix the Detroit defense? The Red Wings didn’t make the splashiest moves in this division, being one-upped by the rivals in the Canadian capital, but boy were they busy. GM Steve Yzerman has made it clear he wants this team to be drastically more competitive, perhaps even pushing for the playoffs. He handed out UFA contracts to four different defensemen, three forwards, and a goalie, totaling $26.275 M in cap space for this season(!). It was a series of bold moves and he also added a new head coach in Tampa Bay assistant Derek Lalonde. Now, can all these changes get the Red Wings to where Yzerman wants them to be?
The Red Wings were not good offensively last year, but I feel pretty comfortable projecting a sizable offensive leap. Growth from Lucas Raymond, Tyler Bertuzzi getting to play in Canada this year, and better health from Jakub Vrana will be part of that + offseason additions: David Perron will help the PP, Dominik Kubalik can shoot the puck, and Andrew Copp is an effective 2C. But the defensive side of the game is where the Red Wings were worst and there I’m a bit more uncertain. Detroit wasn’t just bad last season defensively- they were a catastrophe. They allowed 5+ goals *32* times last season, 6+ goals *15* times, and 7+ *10* times. That cannot happen. I know the defensive talent was bad, goalies weren’t great, scoring was up across the league, yada yada. It just cannot happen. It was enough reason to fire Jeff Blashill and major changes were needed.
Ben Chiarot is a defenseman I’m not a huge fan of, but he isn’t as terrible as the analytics say. Next to Seider he should be okay. Olli Maatta is a fine player and was a nice add but the defensive depth and overall shape of the defensive lineup is not great yet. Maybe Swedish prospects Simon Edvinsson or Albert Johansson break through midseason, but right now, Detroit getting significantly better defensively rests on three things: structural improvement from Lalonde, two decent to good pairs (Chiarot-Seider, Hronek-Maatta), and good goaltending. The latter is a black box as it always is. Alex Nedeljkovic and Ville Husso are two fair value lottery tickets, but they are just lottery tickets. I think I feel best about the coaching improvement happening and am more iffy on the other two, but these three seem like they will say a lot about how close this team comes to the playoffs.
3.) Are the Canadiens too good to tank for Connor Bedard? If your definition of “tank” is “be the last placed team” then the answer is obviously yes. Their roster is significantly better than the Coyotes and Arizona is fully committed to the bit. I would be shocked if anyone out-tanks Arizona. But are the Canadiens too good to finish bottom three or four? That’s what I’m unsure of. They were the NHL’s worst team a year ago but when you look at this roster, it doesn’t strike me as one that will obviously be bottom two in the league. Yeah, the defense is rough but there is some upside with young guys like Jordan Harris and Justin Barron. Same thing with the goaltending situation, where Jake Allen is not a great option but he’s definitely miles better than Karel Vejmelka. Allen has a career .911 in the NHL and has started 23 playoff games. Different ballpark.
Forwards are also filled with plenty of decent players. Many played poorly last year, dealt with injuries (Brendan Gallagher), or have questions about their true caliber (Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield), but with this roster I see a 75 point team, not a 60 point team and a number of squads will be gunning to be 60 or less. Arizona for that matter is possibly crashing under 50. You also have to factor in the Marty St. Louis situation, as the team went 14-19-4 under the new coach last season, which is a 70-71 point pace across a full season. Unless they choose to slash the tires more and sell off pieces, or come up with some carefully timed “injuries”, I don’t think the Canadiens will be in the bottom three NHL teams next season… which makes the dream of Connor Bedard in the blue, blanc et rouge more unlikely.
4.) Is Ottawa’s core worth the $$$ they’ve been given? A lot of people will focus on the huge moves that the Senators made, inking the second-most discussed free agent contract and executed the second-most discussed trade in Claude Giroux and Alex DeBrincat, respectively, and I get that. Those are the shiny new toys, but GM Pierre Dorion also dropped the dough for the toys they already had, locking up the existing core. Over the course of the last year, Dorion gave 7x$8.2 M to Brady Tkachuk, 8x$7.95 M to Josh Norris, 8x$8.35 M to Tim Stützle, and 6x$4.98 M to Drake Batherson. That’s nearly $30 M doled out to four forwards! If you want to toss in Thomas Chabot’s 8x$8 M deal signed a few years back, you have close to half the cap given to five players, all of whom are signed for at least the next five seasons.
I’m not against the strategy of allotting a lot of the cap to only a few guys on principle. You need elite players to win the Cup! If those guys are Stamkos/Hedman/Kucherov/ Vasilevskiy or Makar/MacKinnon/Rantanen/Landeskog, I can get behind it. Those guys are all top 50-100 players in the league, including several of the top Hart contenders in a given year. But none of those Senators players right now are anywhere close to that level. I like several of those players, to be clear. But are Norris and Tkachuk and Stützle in the same conversation as any of those forwards? No. Is Chabot in the same sentence as Hedman or Makar? No. Chabot’s deal is fine in the abstract given comparable contracts (Morgan Rielly, Darnell Nurse, etc), but this is a lot of multi-year, high AAV deals given to non-elite players. Pierre Dorion made a bet that this core will grow into one that contains at least one or two elite players. We need to see signs of that from at least a few guys this year and that question is tied pretty closely to whether this squad makes the playoffs.
5.) Do the Lightning have enough in the tank to go on another run? Last season I got too deep into hockey history and insisted the Lightning couldn’t move past the second round because it hadn’t happened for a repeat champ in decades, something I realized was wrong once I saw how the path for Tampa was setting up after they edged Toronto in Game 7. Continually hoping that this is the year Tampa isn’t elite feels like Waiting for Godot at this point, so I’m not going to do that anymore. The Lightning’s roster got a fair bit worse in the offseason in losing Ondrej Palat and jettisoning Ryan McDonagh, even if the latter was the correct move for the cap and the long term picture. But even with those losses, they arguably have the best roster in hockey, certainly the one with the most stars at all three positions, and until someone beats them *in the playoffs*, they are the rulers of the Eastern Conference.
Tampa got off to a tremendous start to last season and then they sleptwalked for several months. Debates raged across Atlantic Division fanbases about whether Boston or Tampa would be the scarier playoff opponent, something that seems very silly in hindsight. As the team slumped along in March, part of me thought the Bolts might finally be on the ropes. Then they turned it on in the playoffs. They played a tremendous series against a great opponent in the Leafs, then slapped around the Presidents’ Trophy winner (Florida), and showed the resolve of a champion to rally to beat New York. They ran out of gas and played a team that was better in the Cup Final (Colorado), but the lesson of that story is no matter how cooked the Lightning may look this season at times, they are not dead until they are dead in the playoffs. We can learn nothing about Tampa in the regular season and so my only storyline with this team is whether they have enough gas in the tank for a fourth straight playoff run.
6.) The Boston Bruins and the Elixir of Life. Speaking of things that feel like Waiting for Godot, predicting the day in which Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand age like normal hockey players feels much the same. Every year I say, these guys are “_____ years old now, this can’t go on forever” and it does. So here it goes again: Patrice Bergeron is now 37 and Brad Marchand is 34, this can’t go on forever. I am fully assuming that it will, but as everyone who has discussed the Bruins has commented, this team does feel like a Last Dance scenario. Bergeron agreed to come back on a one-year deal and much of the reporting suggests this might be it. David Krejci agreed to return from Czechia at age 36 to play on a one-year deal. David Pastrnak is a pending UFA who has not inked an extension and reports are that he is unhappy. The Bruins have just four forwards of note on the books for next season, with everyone else a UFA or RFA, a group that also includes goalie Jeremy Swayman.
Boston could look very different this time next season and they will navigate this huge season with a new coach behind the bench (Jim Montgomery) and injuries complicating the start of the year. Defensemen Charlie McAvoy and Matt Grzelcyk are out a month or two each, as is Marchand. Yet despite the moving pieces and the injuries and some uncertainty with the netminders, whether the Bruins can contend for a Cup one more season hinges on whether the Elixir of Life is still on sale in Massachusetts drugstores. Whatever concoction has allowed Marchand to hit his prime in his 30s and Bergeron to be at his peak defensively in his mid-to-upper-30s is the secret to Boston’s success. If either or both of those guys decline some, the Bruins could be in trouble. If they are their usual selves, the Bruins probably will be too.
7.) Sooooo Florida is contending for a Cup with that defensive depth chart? The first thing I thought of when the blockbuster Matthew Tkachuk trade went down was “the Panthers gave up MacKenzie Weegar??????” I had heard he was possibly on the trade block but never thought it could happen unless there was a defenseman coming back. Instead, the Panthers shipped out a star defenseman and didn’t replace him. Matthew Tkachuk is an incredible player and I can be persuaded that perhaps Tkachuk at that deal > Weegar/Huberdeau at their extension prices long-term, but it’ll be hard to sell me on the idea that Florida isn’t quite a bit worse off in the immediate term as a result.
Weegar is a divisive player in some circles, even though I remain steadfast in my praise of him. His analytical metrics are awesome and in my opinion, so is the eye test. Weegar is culpable for the One Big Mistake from time to time, as was the case in the playoffs, but he’s a right-shot defenseman who has finished top 15 for the Norris two straight years, one that drives play at both ends of the ice and shoulders more than 23 minutes per game. Now he’s gone and the replacement is…. 35-year-old Marc Staal? I already felt the Panthers were weak at defense and now they have gotten even weaker. They have several good puck-moving defensemen, guys like Brandon Montour and Gustav Forsling who I like to push play up ice and join the rush within Florida’s system but are those guys you want on the ice late in a game protecting a lead? Not for me. Right now they have one defenseman on their roster who fits that bill for me and his name is Aaron Ekblad. He’s a sensational player but he can’t do it alone. Right now Florida’s defensive depth chart is far worse than that of Tampa, Carolina, Toronto, Colorado or Calgary among the teams that many consider to be in the “contender” tier and that’s a major problem worth monitoring.
8.) Matt Murray, Ilya Samsonov, and the future of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Perhaps the most interesting development of the offseason was Kyle Dubas, a GM whose job probably depends on the outcome of this season, placing his faith in net on Matt Murray and Ilya Samsonov, who are more lottery tickets than known commodities right now. A typical GM fighting for his life would’ve signed Darcy Kuemper, long-term contract consequences be damned because the short term is all that matters to the GM’s self-interest. But Dubas didn’t do so, saying that term on the contracts were a primary reason in acquiring Murray/Samsonov. Is Dubas being extraordinarily selfless in helping the organization he works for or is he just supremely confident of two guys that few fans are confident of?
I’m not sure. There are reasons to be optimistic about both. Murray is a 2x Stanley Cup winning goalie who has ideal size for the position and has made structural changes to the way he plays the position in recent years, ones that started to bear some limited fruits last season in Ottawa. As for Samsonov, he’s a former elite prospect who dominated the second-best pro league in the world (KHL) in his early 20s and is still only 25. On the other hand, neither guy has been particularly great the last few years and in Murray’s case, injuries are a real concern. The Leafs also replaced goaltender coach Steve Briere with Curtis Sanford so there are a lot of moving parts here and maybe it all works out. Both goalies looked sharp in the preseason, which largely means nothing but hey, that’s better than looking awful in the preseason! I honestly don’t know what to expect but one thing is for sure, concerning the Toronto Maple Leafs and the sport’s most talked-about position, you, the casual hockey fan, are sure to hear all about it.
9.) How much of a beautiful mess will the Philadelphia Flyers be? Look, the Flyers are going to be a mess. Their hopes for jumping back into the picture went out the window when Sean Couturier and Ryan Ellis were ruled out for the season, leaving a half-ass roster of good, decent, and terrible pieces that don’t fit together. At face value, they shouldn’t threaten for the playoffs whatsoever, but also aren’t going to be bad enough to truly be in the Connor Bedard tankathon. Oh and John Tortorella is now behind the bench for this. Again, a mess!
I honestly don’t have too much to say here. The best way to enjoy the Flyers’ season is through the inevitable memes that will come out of it. There are a few pretty good players (Konecny, Sanheim, Farabee) and some intriguing youngsters (Brink, Tippett, Cam York (when he’s on the team)), but not a lot of reasons to watch this team. Best case scenario is the Flyers blow a 5-1 lead on the same night that Tortorella has to be restrained from fighting the opposing coach again which is also the same night that Gritty is arrested for tackling a fan in the concourse. The memes would be immaculate!
10.) Do the Columbus Blue Jackets have a nucleus to make signing Johnny Gaudreau worth it? I understand why the Blue Jackets signed Gaudreau. When your team, which has not gotten a single major free agent in its two decade history and consistently overpays for players because no one ever wants to play for the team, has a chance to sign the biggest free agent on the market (one who is a legitimate NHL superstar), you gotta do it. Anytime a superstar wants to sign with your team, you probably have to, but if you’re the Columbus Freakin Blue Jackets, you have to. Just to show the fans you’re a legit organization and dispel the No One Wants To Play In Columbus thing.
So I get why they did it. But I also couldn’t help but think that this reminded me quite a bit of the Minnesota Wild signing Zach Parise and Ryan Suter all those years ago, a team with a chance to sign a big fish free agent to change the franchise’s image, but without a nucleus on the roster that could maximize that fish’s value. The Wild got into the playoffs for a few years with Parise/Suter but barely brushed true Cup contention and in the end the contracts had devastating long-term downsides. That’s the frightening future the Jackets are looking down. In the present, I don’t see a win-now nucleus that can take advantage of Johnny Hockey’s talents. Patrik Laine’s goal totals will likely go through the roof, sure, but this does not feel like a well-rounded enough team to make the playoffs.
Zach Werenski is a good offensive defenseman but they don’t have a single impact defensive D that I like, although Vladislav Gavrikov is pretty solid. The Jackets were awful defensively last year (30th in xGA/60 at 5v5) and the only move they made to fix that was signing Erik Gudbranson. Their forward depth outside of the star line is hoping that young guns like Kent Johnson and Cole Sillinger pan out, or that Jakub Voráček will ever shoot the puck. And their goalie, Elvis Merzlikins, has been middling since his meteoric rookie year in 2019-20. In short, there are a lot of holes on this roster and to me, the only path for Columbus to wind up in the playoffs this year is through Merzlikins having a great season and the offense carrying the day. But even if the Jackets don’t make the playoffs, there needs to be evident strides that a nucleus is emerging that can compete before Gaudreau is too far past his prime or else this signing may end up like the horrors of Suter and Parise past.
11.) Will the Islanders be able to score enough to return to the playoffs? One of the more interesting developments of last season is that a team who had gone to two straight conference finals, the New York Islanders, missed the playoffs altogether and no one really noticed or talked about it. Partially that was because the Isles fell off the radar so early. They returned from their 13-game road trip to start the season (due to the late opening of their new stadium) 5-6-2 and then went 0-4-3 over their next seven. At that point, they were in real trouble and a better pace the rest of the way was not nearly enough to dig out of the giant hole that had been created.
Now the core is another year older and it feels like the Isles have to return to the postseason or else 2022-23 is a failure. They don’t have a great farm system and their roster is dominated by older forwards on multi-year deals. This is a win now team and thus, the roster needs to deliver some wins now. I feel pretty good about their ability to prevent goals. Yes there may be some drop off from firing Barry Trotz in terms of the defensive structure, but the tandem of Ilya Sorokin/Semyon Varlamov is the best 1-2 goalie punch in the NHL. Plus, if they get better health from their D, Adam Pelech, Ryan Pulock, and Noah Dobson are a pretty nice 1-3 at defense. But can they score? NYI was 24th in goals scored and 22nd in xGF/60 (all situations) last season. Brock Nelson had a monster year and Anders Lee bounced back to full health nicely, but no one else popped when it came to putting the biscuit in the basket. Mat Barzal is a good player but he’s not a goalscorer. The Isles desperately need more goals from the likes of Oliver Wahlstrom, Anthony Beauvillier, and Kyle Palmieri because if they don’t, it’ll be tough to make the playoffs in a loaded East, and that would spell disaster for this franchise’s trajectory.
12.) Can the Devils get a single f****** save? I should delve into this at some point, but the 2021-22 New Jersey Devils’ goalie situation remains one of the most amazingly horrible goalie rooms that I can ever remember. Through injuries and poor play, New Jersey used seven goalies last season and only *one* had a SV% >.900. The team SV% was .886(!!!!!!!!). In Evolving Hockey’s numbers, they combined to save 61 fewer goals than expected (!!!). The goaltending situation singlehandedly turned the Devils from a mediocre team nibbling on the playoff bubble (their xGF% at 5v5 was 15th in the league!) to one that finished with the 5th fewest points in the NHL.
As I look at New Jersey’s team, I feel pretty good about talking myself into them making the playoffs IF I believed the goaltending would be merely decent. Jack Hughes is evolving into a star center and Nico Hischier ain’t bad behind him. I loved that they picked up Ondrej Palat and between Jesper Bratt, Yegor Sharangovich, Dawson Mercer, and rookie prospect Alexander Holtz, there’s tons of offensive talent. Dougie Hamilton seems likely to rebound some on D and the pick up of John Marino was savvy. This is not a bad team and with neutral goaltending, I think they’re in the playoff hunt. With good goaltending I think they are a legit playoff team. But those seem to be both very lofty propositions right now given what happened last season. NJ rolls over Mackenzie Blackwood from 2021-22 (.892) and adds Vitek Vaneček from Washington (.905), not exactly the most confidence building goalie add. But hey, these are two young goalies and there’s reason for hope. The Devils don’t need either of these guys to be Martin Brodeur to be competitive in the East’s playoff picture, they just need them to not be a sieve. Which sadly is an open question.
13.) Are the Rangers a top disappointment candidate this season? If we were doing a hot takes segment, mine might be that the Rangers will miss the playoffs. I know, I know, not likely to happen but they are the team I think that is most under-talked about when we discuss teams who could disappoint. Everyone focuses on the aging cores in PIT/WSH or the injuries in Boston, but the Rangers were actually the flimsiest of all the playoff teams when you look at their underlying results, something people forgot when they went on their run in the postseason. The Rangers were 21st in xGF% at 5v5 last season(!), the worst mark of any playoff team in either league.
New York made the postseason and did it with a zealous 110 points because they benefitted from one of the greatest goalie seasons of all time in 5/8 of the games and they had a PP that clicked with other-worldly efficiency for much of the year, which helped get Chris Kreider of all people *52* goals. Now I assume the Rangers will get quite good goaltending again this year because Igor Shesterkin is indeed incredible. But let’s say his SV% drops from .935 (unbelievable) to .920 (still one of the best marks in the league), which is a decent assumption given that it’s really hard to be at .935 ever year. That’s 24 extra goals being let in, which would halve New York’s goal differential. Let’s say the PP regresses some, from 25.2% (elite) to 20% (still good). That’s another 11 goals gone right there. In short, we’ve just dropped the Rangers’ goal differential from +47 to +12 and all it requires is slight reversion to the mean, even if those factors stay better-than-average or close to it.
There are also other factors to account for. Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad saw their underlying numbers slip some last year and Kreider is now 31 (same age as Panarin will be). Age curve related decline is something to be aware of. The Rangers can counteract all of this possible regression by having young players step up but outside of K’Andre Miller, who I love, I’m a bit iffy on that. Feels like a massive season for both Kaapo Kakko and Alex Lafreniere. I’m more optimistic on the latter. Filip Chytil needs to prove he is a legit NHL center after showing flashes in the playoffs and Vitali Kravtsov is back from Russia for another swing. The development of Ranger prospects has come in well below expectations thus far and it seems to me that it will need to change for them to not see a sizable mean-reversion related drop in their standings point total. They’re still in a decent place to make the playoffs, hot takes aside, but I am more tepid on this team than many.
14.) Alex Ovechkin. That’s it. That’s the tweet. Sure, we could talk about how Darcy Kuemper will fit in to his new home and how that raises the baseline for the Caps a good deal by addressing their greatest weakness last year, but the reason most non-Caps fans are going to watch this team this year (and some Caps fans too) is to see Ovechkin play hockey. The Great 8 is in his twilight years at age 37, but he is still one hell of a goalscorer, an alien to the world of normal hockey and the best to ever score goals in this league. Savor it while we still have him. Ovechkin’s play has fallen off some (especially at 5v5 + defensively) and last year he showed signs of fatigue as his pace slipped following his gangbusters start to the season, but he still wound up with 50 goals. Again.
Ovechkin enters this season with 780 career goals, 114 short of Wayne Gretzky. He has four years remaining on his contract, so if you do the math, he only needs to average ~30 goals per season to get it done if he plays through age 40. This year will go a long way towards seeing whether he can finish it off- another 40 or 50 goal year starts to make this a “it’s only a matter of time” situation. On the other hand, some players fall off a cliff in their 30s and you never know when that’s coming. Ovechkin has defied it a long time and managed to stay miraculously healthy, but those things are only true in the present… they say nothing about the future. No matter how the season unfolds, it’s crucial for Ovechkin’s pursuit of one of hockey’s most immortal records. I think most hockey fans want to see him do it and at the very least, he’s likely to pass Gordie Howe for second all time this season (Howe finished with 801). That’s reason enough to track the Washington Capitals in 2022-23.
15.) If the Penguins make the playoffs, will their goaltending submarine them again? I could do a similar history-geek type drooling segment on Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang here as well, but I don’t think you want that. Instead I will consider what could break the Penguins out of this cycle they’ve been in since 2018, where they make the playoffs as a solid seed and then get bounced in the first round. Namely, playoff goaltending. The Pens have lost in the first round four straight seasons and nearly every series can be chalked up to the goaltending not being good.
2019 was largely on the forwards for not being able to score against the Islanders, but Penguins G Matt Murray only posted a .906 in that series. The next year in the bizarro bubble the Penguins played a 3-out-of-5 against a far inferior Montreal team and lost in basically repeat fashion: their goalie (still Murray) was okay while the other team’s guy way outplayed them (Carey Price). Then came 2021, when Tristan Jarry engineered one of the greatest playoff goalie meltdowns this side of Dan Cloutier, with an .888 across the six games, including a legendary self-immolation in Games 5 and 6. That knocked the Penguins out of a series in which they outshot the opposition 231-187. Finally there is this past season, when the Penguins had the Rangers on the ropes, consistently outplaying them, but had to rely on AHL goalie Louis Domingue due to injuries to both Tristan Jarry and Casey DeSmith. Eventually Domingue’s level of play reared its head and it allowed the Rangers to charge back to win the series.
It’s a recurring theme that keeps sinking this group and there’s not much else to talk about here unless you want to ponder if a core of three 35+ year olds can make the playoffs again. I assume that they will. Pittsburgh will probably ice a very competitive roster of skaters and it will be on the goaltenders for the fifth straight season. Jarry was stellar last year but unfortunately didn’t get the chance to redeem himself from 2021 in the playoffs. Maybe that crack comes this season, or maybe it will be DeSmith rising to the occasion. Whoever it is, getting much better goaltending is the big key to the Penguins making one last run to scratch out a fourth Crosby-era Cup.
16.) Jesperi Kotkaniemi, #2 center? The Carolina Hurricanes enter the season as one of the top contenders for the Stanley Cup. They also are a franchise that is handing the keys to one of their top two lines to a player that does not appear to be the most ready for that role. The player is Jesperi Kotkaniemi, the former 3rd overall pick in the 2018 NHL Draft who has never scored more than 34 points in four NHL seasons. Kotkaniemi was selected by the Canadiens and played three seasons for Montreal before being strangely offer-sheeted by the Hurricanes in the summer of 2021, likely as payback for Montreal’s infamous offer sheet of Sebastian Aho in 2019. The Habs declined to match the offer sheet, taking the first round pick and giving up on the once hailed #1 Center of the Future. Kotkaniemi went to Carolina on a one-year deal and the Canes then gave him a stunning 8x$4.82 M contract which begins this season.
In his lone season in Carolina, Kotkaniemi was basically the same player he was in Montreal. He played even fewer minutes on average than before (12:01 ATOI), scoring 29 points in 66 games. His points-per-minute share were the best of his career and there are reasons for further improvement: despite being a four-year NHL vet, Kotkaniemi is only 22 years old. That said, he has not done enough to this point to make me feel comfortable making KK the #2 center on a Cup contending team. Carolina let Vincent Trocheck walk in the offseason just to promote Kotkaniemi to that role and it will be very interesting to see if he can maintain the level of play Trocheck was at. I’m skeptical, but you never know. Luckily, Jordan Staal will shoulder a good bit of the defensive load on a different line, and Sebastian Aho’s line will take top competition, so the role is a bit easier for Kotkaniemi, but this is still a hell of a gamble. We’ll see if pays off.