I feel like the only hot part about the Flyers take is that they’ll actually decide to fire anybody lmao that franchise is bonkers and the team sucks

Byram being a Norris contender when he’s potentially starting out on the 3rd pair and even through rose-tinted glasses is at best the #3 D on his own team right now is spicy, I like it

Since it is hot take season here goes:

Matt Murray turns into an absolute stud and is in Vesina contention, only to suffer a career ending injury just after the trade deadline (which saw the leafs acquire Max Domi). Samsonov rises to the occasion, posting respectable numbers, to take the leafs to the Stanley cup finals. The leafs lose in game 7 overtime to the Calgary flames, with Nazem Kadri getting the OT winner.

McDavid is first in points, no surprise, but second is Sebastian Aho, who also wins the Hart trophy (65 goal Matthews wins the Ted Lindsay). Jaccob Slavin wins the Norris, and the Hurricanes win the presidents trophy.

Patrick Kane ends up on the Penguins, who are struggling mid season and want to make the playoffs. Due to Kane absolutely sucking and Crosby being injured, they miss the playoffs by one point.

Jake Sanderson wins the Calder and the sens make the playoffs.

Juuse Saros wins the Vesina.

Patrice Bergeron DOESN’T win the Selke (but he retires after the season and the NHL renames it in his honour).

The coyotes arena situation is terrible, Tempe rejects them and they lose so much money that the owner pulls out mid season, forcing the NHL to take over operations and look for a new home for next season. Someone in Quebec offers to buy them, but Bettman tries to put them in Atlanta instead. No one from Atlanta has interest in buying the team so Bettman sells them to the owner of the Houston Rockets, and the team plays out of Houston for 2023-24.

Love this, this is exactly what hot take season is all about 🤙

My only correction would be that Auston Matthews will actually score exactly 66 goals, giving him the undisputed best goal scoring season of the salary cap era. And also there’s zero chance the Coyotes relocate to Houston. The next expansion fee will likely be a billion dollars or more, and the prospective Houston owner has pockets deep enough to pony up that kinda money, the owners would crucify Bettman for turning down that kinda cash injection, as the Coyotes would probably be sold for half of that at BEST. Forbes valued them dead last in the league at $400mil a year ago, and I think that’s generous tbh, and should have gone downhill since then. If they relocate it will likely be to Quebec, because they probably won’t be able to afford the billion dollar ticket, but do have an NHL ready arena and a fanbase that will sell out every game for at least the first few years.

I'm not sure but does a team relocating count as an expansion team? Seems pretty dumb to me.

I get why expansion teams have such a staggering bill for them to deal with as they start from the zero and need to prove themselves able to perform in NHL's standards, but a team relocating from a state of failure in an attempt to rescue to franchise seems off to me. Or at the very least counterproductive - why would you load so much money to save a sinking ship if it's almost impossible to net anything from it?

Thanks! I decided to go hotter than I normally do and make it fun, since it is hot takes.

Like @justaBoss said, I don’t think that’s how relocations work. I don’t really remember Atlanta moving to Winnipeg and I wasn’t alive for any other relocations so I’m not an expert on this by any means, but I’m pretty sure when a team relocates, it just moves, no expansion fees. After all, it’s not a new team coming out of nowhere, it’s a team moving. I could be wrong, but im pretty sure there is no expansion fee. I’d love to find out the answer to this, if you have a source.

Why does everyone think Ty Smith makes the Penguins over POJ?

Ty is waiver exempt; POJ not.
POJ has been in organization/system development for 3 years; Ty has been for 3 weeks.

I see Ty as an injury call-up only from the AHL with POJ making the team on the 3rd pair with Rutta.

Sending Ty smith down would be terrible for his development, he just had a sophomore slump and will likely be a much better player than POJ next season

They traded top 4 D for smith, I doubt the plan is to bury him in the AHL

POJ hasnt proven much and Ty Smith has established himself as an NHLer trade out POJ for a wing whose waiver exempt and play Ty Smith

They dumped cap space AND got Ty Smith; not exactly the same thing.

Agreed, Ty Smith is more "proven" in the NHL; but he also has proven to be a fairly one-dimension player; Penguins might want him to develop better defensively.

And until they make a transaction it's either one of them goes down to AHL (making POJ subject to waivers) or Ruhwedel.

I don't really care one way or the other but Pittsburgh has had high hopes and value on POJ for 3+ years now and he just turned in his best AHL season.

Sullivan will change that. Look what he did for ceci and Mathewson. Turned them from awful to useable and that's saying something. Ty Smith about to become a 2 way monster

https://theathletic.com/3590441/2022/09/15/nhl-player-rankings-connor-mcdavid/

Kassian snubbed.

I may be mis-interpreting what @Alfie11 is saying here, but I believe the thought was that the NHL would persuade/force any prospective Houston owner to become an expansion team instead of a relocation, since the NHL is looking to expand and expansion fees will make the owners quite a bit of money.

Though, if this scenario was to occur, I would think the NHL would leave Arizona where they are as I doubt they would want a 33 team league, and could then look to the east for a matching expansion team from a prospective city like Quebec.

Hot takes:
Florida, Vegas, Minnesota miss the playoffs.
Vancouver, Ottawa make it

Ottawa will knock Florida out of playoff contention

I bet Montreal fans would love that

Kerfoot and bunting are better than the whole team

Daniel Sprong would be your best player

If TFW doesn't clear waivers, i would be very unhappy. That's our short king!

Are teams generous with height at development camp? Reason why I’m asking is isles prospect Ruslan Iskhakov has been listed as 5’7 almost everywhere since he was drafted and he’s listed as 5’9 by the isles.

Leafs will embarrass Ottawa in the first round if they play each other

I’ll tell you one thing. If Ottawa is on its way to the playoffs, they’ll acquire a solid Dman at the deadline. And idk if I trust the leafs goaltending as much as I would Ottawa. Ottawa wouldn’t be favoured to win so Ottawa would have a good chance to win

I agree with you. Sens if they upgrade on d. They have the edge on the leafs. Take back what you said about sprong. Also would demelo be a good target for the sens

Ok, that makes sense.