Checking In On My Bold Pre-Season Predictions

Prediction 9: Buffalo will push for a playoffs spot, but come up just short

Buffalo fans had quite a bit to be excited about, Rasmus Dahlin was being compared to Niklas Lidstrom, they hadn’t yet acquired Jeff Skinner, but that was coming shortly and had a few players expected to take the next step and force their way into the lineup, and up until Christmas, the Sabres looked like a team ready to surprise. Going 21-11-5 entering the Christmas break. It seems the players may have had a bit too much egg-nog during the break, however, seeing as since the Christmas break the Sabres are 10-27-5 managing only 15 points over half a season. Certainly not a pretty sight and one that deflated all hopes for the team and it’s fans.

Result of Hot Take: Yeah this one is bad and is getting worse by the day, if this was done 2 months ago it’d be a great call, but instead the Sabres did Sabres things and will be looking at a top 10 pick yet again.

Prediction 10: The Anaheim Ducks will finish sub .500 and between 7th-9th worst in the league.

This one is a bit of an elaboration on the previous prediction of the Ducks and Kings missing the playoffs, I didn’t have much faith in the Ducks entering this season, I saw them as a team without a direction, and a team set to continue regressing, after an embarrassing sweep in the playoffs last year. They had a franchise-caliber goaltender in John Gibson and some promising rookies, but nothing to be overly optimistic about and I predicted that the Ducks would be due for a season that was better left forgotten.

Result of Hot Take: Hey finally one that seems like it’ll end up entirely correct The Ducks have two games remaining on their schedule if they win both they’ll be 35-37-10 which is sub-.500. They currently sit 7th worst in the league behind the Kings, Sabres, Rangers, Senators, Red Wings, and Devils. All 6 have games in hand on the Ducks, but as it stands, only the Rangers are a threat to move ahead of the Ducks, meanwhile, the Ducks sit only 2 points from passing the Oilers and Canucks, and 3 points from passing the Blackhawks. I think the Ducks will finish either 7th or 8th overall at this point in the season.

Prediction 11: The Tampa Bay Lightning will win the President’s Trophy and the Stanley Cup

I saw something really special in the Lightning entering this season, and that was before they were considered the likely landing spot for Erik Karlsson (Which for the sake of everyone else in the league didn’t come to fruition). But my goodness, I even underestimated these Lightning. The Bolts currently sit with 4 games remaining in their schedule, with a staggering 122 points and 59 wins. The Lightning sit at a +97 goal differential, which is a measly +38 from the next highest team (The Calgary Flames). Nikita Kucherov has 122 points. Simply put, the Lightning are really, really good.

Result of Hot Take: So far so good. The Lightning won the President’s trophy what seems like months ago, and are the favorites heading into the playoffs. As I said earlier in this article, the playoffs are an entirely different beast, but so is this Lightning team so if any team can live up to the hype, it’s gotta be them.

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