I'd temper expectations on tampa until we see how they get out of their cap problems

99% chance they're still excellent and mostly the same team (ideally), but things might have to get ugly to unload some of their contracts

they still gotta sign cirelli + cernak and they're $2M over the cap

again, they prob come out fine, they'll figure it out, but idk if they'll still be stacked

Do you see them dropping below anyone but Colorado though?

I'd put Carolina in the middle column

I mean I guess not, but they might have to move out killorn/johnson, they still gotta sign cirelli, stamkos might be on LTIR (which could help their cap, but it hurts not having him) etc. etc.

Rangers are contenders?

Yeah I would switch the rangers and canes. The rangers are still a very young team with shaky goaltending and mediocre defence and offensive depth that also just got swept in the play ins last year by the canes. The canes have a top 5 defence core and a good offence their only weakness is goaltending. People also forget that the canes also just went to the conference finals in 2019.

id put canes under stacked teams.

Okay come on man! You guys have to stop overvaluing the Rangers. They are still bad. They are trusting a rookie to be the starter which I think is a bad idea, isles are smarter for that. And they got Lafreniere and we don’t know how good he is gonna be, and you people think the Rangers are contending!! Have you forgotten what happened last season?

Killorn and Johnson are 2 good top 6 players, but with Stamkos coming back they should be ok with it. They can keep their top,3rd, and 4th lines from the playoffs together and play one of the young guys with Stamkos and Cirelli. That's still better than even Vegas.

had them there but second guessed myself lol

I'm kinda high on the rangers for their potential but they. may be a year or two away....
also kinda low on CAR for their goaltending...and I don't know if they have enough to beat the other great teams...

No doubt the rangers have some great young players, but their team defense is awful and Jack Johnson/Brendan smith will both be regulars.

I think Carolinas goaltending is fine - their forward core is definitely top 5 in the league. A perfect mix of elite offensive players and elite defensive forwards. Svechnikov + teuvo are both top 15 wingers. Staal is an elite 3C. They have two top 15 defenseman and both of them are great defensively.

Rangers won’t even make the playoffs

I’m not, people overvalue them. They won’t be much better than last year, if they will be better.