2021-22 NHL Regular Season

[Ridleylash]

Vegas also benefited from Florida completely :censored:ing up the expansion draft, as well; which is what gifted them Smith and Marchessault.

[DoctorWhom]

For the first time in a while Toronto actually  scares me. I'm actually glad the Bruins aren't going to face them in the 1st round,  for once I don't think they'd win. Of course it also denies Leafs fans the glory of lauding over beating the Bruins in a playoff series for the first time since helmets became mandatory.  LOL

 

Whoever wins that series between Tampa & Toronto is making the Finals, Maybe Carolina if they get hot. Panthers will lose in the 2nd round because the President's Trophy winner almost never wins it all. 

 

As for the West, Calgary will probably flame out as they usually do. I could see the Blues going on a run like they did in 2019. But the Cup it's the Avs to lose imo. 

 

Avalanche vs. Leafs is my Finals prediction. With Avs in 5. 

[Ridleylash]

https://www.nhlpa.com/news/1-22308/nhlpa-begins-search-for-a-new-executive-director

 Donald Fehr is gone

[habsfan1]

...

[Crabcake]

Man, May 2 is gonna be a heck of a day. 

[Shumway]

2 hours ago, Crabcake said:

Man, May 2 is gonna be a heck of a day. 

I hope round 2 isn't on the 3rd. Those guys are gonna be tired.

[tigerslionspistonshabs]

Hurricanes over Bruins in 6

Rangers over Penguins in 7

Lightning over Leafs in 6

Panthers over Capitals in 5

 

Flames over Stars in 6

Oilers over Kings in 5

Blues over Wild in 7

Avalanche over Preds in 5

 

 

Hurricanes over Rangers in 6

Panthers over Lightning in 7

 

Flames over Oilers in 7

Avalanche over Blues in 6

 

Panthers over Hurricanes in 7

Flames over Avalanche in 7

 

Panthers over Flames in 6

 

[Kooky01]

Some predictions of my own

 

Eastern Conference

Atlantic Division

Panthers over Capitals in 4

Lightning over Maple Leafs in 6

Panthers over Lightning in 7

 

Metro Division

Hurricanes over Bruins in 7

Penguins over Rangers in 7

Hurricanes over Penguins in 6

 

Central Division

Avalanche over Predators in 5

Blues over Wild in 7

Avalanche over Blues in 5

 

Pacific Division

Flames over Stars in 5

Oilers over Kings in 6

Oilers over Flames in 7

 

Conference Finals

Hurricanes over Panthers in 6

Avalanche over Oilers in 6

 

2022 Stanley Cup Finals

Hurricanes over Avalanche in 7

[charger77]

Red Wings can their entire coaching staff aside from Alex Tanguay. 

[Jer15]

@DoctorWhom As someone who grew up in the GTA but has been an Avalanche fans since a kid….that’d be the dream match up. 

[JerseyJimmy]

FIRST ROUND

>Panthers over Capitals in 5

>Maple Leafs over Lightning in 7

>Hurricanes over Bruins in 6

>Rangers over Penguins in 6

 

>Flames over Stars in 5

>Kings over Oilers in 6

>Avalanche over Predators in 4

>Wild over Blues in 7

 

SECOND ROUND

>Panthers over Maple Leafs in 6

>Hurricanes over Rangers in 6

 

>Flames over Kings in 7

>Avalanche over Wild in 5

 

CONFERENCE FINALS

>Hurricanes over Panthers in 7

>Avalanche over Flames in 6

 

FINALS

>Avalanche over Hurricanes in 6

[Glover]

Bruins over Hurricanes in 6

Rangers over Penguins in 6

Lightning over Leafs in 7

Panthers over Capitals in 5

 

Flames over Stars in 5

Oilers over Kings in 5

Wild over Blues in 7

Avalanche over Preds in 4

 

 

Rangers over Bruins in 6

Lightning over Panthers in 6

 

Flames over Oilers in 5

Avalanche over Wild in 6

 

Lightning over Rangers in 7

Avalanche over Flames in 6

 

Avalanche over Lightning in 6

[Sport]

On 4/29/2022 at 2:48 PM, spartacat_12 said:

 

I've said this before and I'll say it again: Vegas was not just handed a fantastic roster. Management passed on taking established guys like Matt Dumba, Sami Vatanen, Josh Manson, and Josh Anderson in favour of stockpiling picks/prospects.

 

Bolded: yes they were and you go on to explain how throughout your post. Bolded Italicized: The Blue Jackets traded a pick to Vegas so they'd take William Karlsson instead of Josh Anderson. A lot of other teams made similar mistakes. Those side deals didn't happen with Seattle because GMs learned it was better to take your medicine and lose one guy instead of two. So Vegas actually both stockpiled picks and prospects and also took established guys like....

 

On 4/29/2022 at 2:48 PM, spartacat_12 said:

Fleury was looking washed up at the time and Pittsburgh was so desperate to dump his contract that they gave up a pick to guarantee he'd get picked. They specifically took guys like James Neal & David Perron who were going into the last years of their deals because they assumed they'd be sellers at the deadline. 

 

Because the cap meant good players were available. They took said good players, and then either intentionally or accidentally won. Not really a good point to use when trying to claim they weren't handed a good team. Even if they were better than they thought they were still "handed a fantastic roster".

 

Using Vegas as a way to dump contracts is also different from the 98, 99, and 00 expansion drafts when the teams didn't worry about a cap. Vegas benefitted from the most generous expansion draft rules ever in terms of how many players teams had to expose, but they also benefitted from a cap system that Nashville, Atlanta, Columbus, and Minnesota didn't have.

 

On 4/29/2022 at 2:48 PM, spartacat_12 said:

Most of the post-expansion draft reactions were something like this:

 

IDK who Andrew Berkshire is, but I recall most hockey people thinking Vegas would be 'not awful' thanks to goaltending and defense and would have four solid lines without any glaring holes. Greg Wyshinski comes to mind as a guy who was early on them. It was not a consensus that they'd be terrible. Was I surprised that a team who was assembled through a draft that by rule meant they'd collect all depth turned out to be pretty good in a league where depth is like 80% of winning? No and I recognized we had a problem about 6 games into the season. 

 

On 4/29/2022 at 2:48 PM, spartacat_12 said:

Seattle having the same expansion draft rules and finishing 30th in the league, despite being more aggressive than Vegas in free agency, should kill this false narrative for good.

 

It's A. not even close to a false narrative and B. the two drafts didn't happen under the same conditions. Vegas' success 100% contributed to Seattle's problems. Maybe nobody thought they'd go to the final, but they did, and they were built through an expansion draft, which means for multiple reasons, both deliberate and accidental, the league handed them a fantastic roster. 

[Sport]

Hurricanes, Rangers, Lightning, Panthers, Flames, Oilers, Wild, Avalanche

[spartacat_12]

2 hours ago, Sport said:

Bolded: yes they were and you go on to explain how throughout your post how. Bolded Italicized: The Blue Jackets traded a pick to Vegas so they'd take William Karlsson instead of Josh Anderson. A lot of other teams made similar mistakes. Those side deals didn't happen with Seattle because GMs learned it was better to take your medicine and lose one guy instead of two. So Vegas actually both stockpiled picks and prospects and also took established guys like....

 

Because the cap meant good players were available. They took said good players, and then either intentionally or accidentally won. Not really a good point to use when trying to claim they weren't handed a good team. Even if they were better than they thought they were still "handed a fantastic roster".

 

Using Vegas as a way to dump contracts is also different from the 98, 99, and 00 expansion drafts when the teams didn't worry about a cap. Vegas benefitted from the most generous expansion draft rules ever in terms of how many players teams had to expose, but they also benefitted from a cap system that Nashville, Atlanta, Columbus, and Minnesota didn't have.

 

IDK who Andrew Berkshire is, but I recall most hockey people thinking Vegas would be 'not awful' thanks to goaltending and defense and would have four solid lines without any glaring holes. Greg Wyshinski comes to mind as a guy who early on them. It was not a consensus that they'd be terrible. Was I surprised that a team who was assembled through a draft that by rule meant they'd collect all depth turned out to be pretty good in a league where depth is like 80% of winning? No and I recognized we had a problem about 6 games into the season. 

 

It's A. not even close to a false narrative and B. the two drafts didn't happen under the same conditions. Vegas' success 100% contributed to Seattle's problems. Maybe nobody thought they'd go to the final, but they did, and they were built through an expansion draft, which means for multiple reasons, both deliberate and accidental, the league handed them a fantastic roster. 

 

Hindsight is 20-20. Looking back now obviously it's clear that teams made mistakes when it came to who they exposed and/or what side deals they made, but not many people were saying that immediately after the expansion draft. Just look at the point totals of some of their top players in their last season before Vegas compared to the Knights' inaugural season (which happened to be a career year for all of them):

 

Marchessault: 51 points --> 71 points

Smith: 37 points --> 60 points

Haula: 26 points --> 55 points

Perron: 46 points --> 66 points

Karlsson: 25 points --> 78 points

 

Sure, Seattle didn't get the opportunity to take the other clubs by surprise, but the cap stayed flat for them which meant more quality players were exposed. Vegas never had the opportunity to take someone like Tarasenko or Duchene.

 

Did the league want to ensure the new teams could be competitive relatively quickly? Yes, and that just makes sense when you consider what a disaster teams like Atlanta & Nashville were in their 1st decades. Was it some sort of tin-foil hat conspiracy to gift the city of Las Vegas with a Stanley Cup contender? No.

 

If Quebec City had gotten an expansion team that went to the Cup Finals in their first season I highly doubt people would be this upset.

[Sport]

19 hours ago, spartacat_12 said:

Was it some sort of tin-foil hat conspiracy to gift the city of Las Vegas with a Stanley Cup contender? No.

 

Never said it was, but simply by virtue of making the finals you cannot claim they were not "handed a fantastic roster". Whether it was accidental or deliberate or a combination of both, they made the finals with that roster so they were. Period. 

 

The real false narrative around that team was the lazy idea that it was a Cinderalla story of castoffs and misfits. It was a group of good players who their previous teams would've happily kept had VGK not come along and had the league not granted them the most generous expansion draft rules in league history. 

 

19 hours ago, spartacat_12 said:

If Quebec City had gotten an expansion team that went to the Cup Finals in their first season I highly doubt people would be this upset.

 

Probably, but I don't think it's for the reasons you're thinking. There's a dumb thing in sports about fans having to "earn" a championship. Vegas fans hadn't done anything and got to see their new team in the finals right away, which is irksome and invited some jealousy. QC fans, however, suffered through some bad years, tough playoff losses, and had their team ripped away right as they were getting good and then also have been teased with relocation dreams ever since their team left. I think people would've felt happy that Nords fans got to experience that right away after all they've been through. If Seattle or another new city had gone to the final in their first year I think people would've been just as upset for reasons that have nothing to do with the desert or being a non-traditional hockey market. 

 

 

[spartacat_12]

41 minutes ago, Sport said:

The real false narrative around that team was the lazy idea that it was a Cinderalla story of castoffs and misfits. It was a group of good players who their previous teams would've happily kept had VGK not come along and had the league not granted them the most generous expansion draft rules in league history. 

 

Going into their inaugural season their Stanley Cup odds were 500-1. Maybe you had a crystal ball and could see that they were a Cup contender off the bat, but to the majority of the hockey world they were pretty much the definition of a Cinderella. None of the top Knights from that season have even been able to replicate the stats they put up that year.

[Sport]

1 hour ago, spartacat_12 said:

 

Going into their inaugural season their Stanley Cup odds were 500-1. Maybe you had a crystal ball and could see that they were a Cup contender off the bat, but to the majority of the hockey world they were pretty much the definition of a Cinderella.

 

I'm talking about the "castoffs and misfits" narrative. Those are the operative words. They weren't castoffs and misfits. They were guys who got taken because the generous system made them available, not because their previous teams didn't want them. It was the "look at this ragtag group of losers tossed away like trash by their previous teams banding together and scratching their way to the finals through sheer determination and gumption even though they're all terrible at hockey" narrative that was so incorrect and tiring. 

 

They made the finals because the depth afforded them by the expansion draft, afforded them by teams dumping good players to get under the cap gave them mismatches down the lineup and they didn't have any glaring weaknesses. It was a very simple hockey reason that people ignored in favor of chasing the more fun, but less true story. 

 

Again, forget what people thought about the team going into that season, forget what happened with Seattle. It's immaterial. You said they weren't handed a fantastic roster, but they went to the finals with the roster they were handed ipso facto it was a fantastic roster. 

 

1 hour ago, spartacat_12 said:

None of the top Knights from that season have even been able to replicate the stats they put up that year.

 

It's still a good roster though. The seasons after 2017-2018 weren't played under the same conditions and they had to combat the same roster machinations that every other team deals with. Cap issues were coming to a head, expiring contracts were coming up so decisions and trades had to be made. The thing that made them work in year one hasn't been there since year one. But they've still gone to the playoffs every year until now, they made another conference final, and they won a playoff series a year ago.  The fantastic roster they were handed in year one didn't fall off a cliff, it allowed them to make moves to continue to be one of the best teams in the league, and acquire Jack Eichel. If they weren't one of the most injured teams in the league this season they would've made the playoffs again. 

[The_Admiral]

On 5/2/2022 at 1:37 PM, spartacat_12 said:

If Quebec City had gotten an expansion team that went to the Cup Finals in their first season I highly doubt people would be this upset.

 

The tide has turned and now everyone hates Canada and loves meme teams. People would be more upset.

[habsfan1]

Vegas lost the Cup.

They didn't experience a Championship victory, during their expansion year, despite Gary Bettman giving his Golden Knights every advantage that he could hand them.

 

 

In the following 2 years after their Cup final run, they blew series 2 straight times in epic fail fashion. Once where San Jose scored 4 straight goals, after the Cody Eakin major penalty. The other was the Marc-André Fleury late blooper goal against Montreal, which sparked momentum into the Habs, who would have been on the brink of being eliminated.

 

They got rid of important pieces of their roster and they gave away valuable prospects, to try to win it now, which they didn't. The Golden Knights remain Cup-less. They are in shambles, right now.