Whoa, Blues winning the Central. That, sir, is a hot take.

You heard it here first, everyone. Nick Leddy for Norris, coming right up.

I think you're too low on NSH. They're the only team in the Central who got better this off-season. Everyone else got a little weaker (COL, STL, MIN, DAL), remained uncompetitive (ARZ, WPG) or are openly trying to tank (CHI).

Panthers are gonna regress

Losing Marchment, Weegar, Huberdeau, Giroux, and Duclair for most of the year with the potential for Hornqvist being dumped doesnt spell top of the Atlantic. Yes they got Tkachuck but hes a slight upgrade over Huberdeau and yes hes younger but yeah not great.

Got a feeling Tampa is taking top spot. I feel last year was their year and Tampa put them in their place. So while they probs finish ahead of a WC spot dont see them at the top especially with Maurice as HC

You make a lot of good points about what teams did so far in the offseason and you could be right about Nashville. However, they are still unable to compete with the depth of quality teams like Colorado and St. Louis have at forward (even if you think that the resurrections of Duchesne and RyJo will hold this season) and a key injury or two in defense would wreck them hardcore because depth is an overall team issue. Their "next man up"s are less than convincing.

Rofl at the Atlantic. Yikes. Severly over rating Detroit

I don't see NSH being better than COL next season (or quite possibly STL, but I do think NSH may have caught up to them). COL and STL both have less forward depth now (STL losing Perron, COL losing Burakovsky and either Kadri - or having to lose other pieces to be able to afford a new contract for him). They both lost their best goalie from last season, and I'm not overly confident in the replacements either team brought in. NSH looks stronger on paper than MIN though. I wouldn't predict them to finish worse than 3rd in the division.

Duchene could likely come down to earth a bit next season, but I could see Johansen improving on last year's totals now that he has better wingers than Kunin and Tolvanen. I think young players like Glass and Tomasino getting bigger roles will give the Preds better production than Cousins or Kunin provided. I think there's more depth now than there was last season in NSH - I really don't see that as much of an issue.

Overall, I think NSH upgraded all three positional groups this summer. Forwards (Niederreiter > Kunin), defense (McDonagh > Benning), and goaltending (Lankinen can't possibly be worse than Rittich was).

NYR didn't get worse THAT much. Igor will keep them in playoff picture