Lyons Look Around the NHL

1 week ago 2

As the year comes to a close and the NHL approaches the halfway mark of the year. I thought it would be fun to take a look back at some of my preseason predictions to see how they are doing at the halfway point (Dec. 30).

Who is in the top three in the Atlantic?

Starting in the East, I had Montreal and Detroit to have middling seasons, with the Canadiens falling out of last year’s playoff picture. As it stands, these are the first (Detroit) and third (Montreal) place teams in the Atlantic Division.

To be fair to myself, neither of these teams have particularly been good this year, with both carrying a negative goal differential. The Red Wings and Canadiens have been riding on the fact that everyone in the East started really slow and are just now starting to heat up. At the end of the season, I think I will be able to look back at these predictions and see that I was closer to being right about them at the end of the year than I am now.

Metro predictions do not look too bad

Overall my Metropolitan predictions look alright. I was a little too high on Columbus and the New York Rangers, having them make the playoffs and a little too low on Philadelphia and the New York Islanders. Overall thought the Metro is a dogfight like I thought.

I have always liked Columbus and my bias of wanting them to be a playoff contender played into me picking them as a playoff team and for the Rangers, how could you not pick them.

The Rangers are not out of the race at all, but the team has been shutout in about 20% of their season, so when it comes down to the wire at the end of the year, I do not trust them to get over the finish line.

Both the Flyers and the Islanders came into the year looking to be in the rebuilding category. The Islanders have been receiving great goaltending from Ilya Sorokin and David Rittich. Also helping the Islanders has been number one overall pick Matthew Schaefer (who I did not think would be this good this early). I think the Islanders have a decent chance to make me eat my words after picking them to finish with 75 points, but the Flyers I am not worried about.

Despite being in the third spot in the division currently, they are such an uninspiring team. Rick Tocchet hockey is only sustainable for so long and the Flyers are one injury away from falling out of contention.

The Central is shaping up to be almost correct

Outside of two teams, Winnipeg and St. Louis, my Central Division predictions are looking pretty good.

I have no idea why the Jets are so bad this season. I understand that they are missing a second line center, but should that really kill a team? The biggest problem for the Jets is that Connor Hellebuyck is not playing good at all. He has posted a pedestrian 9-9-3 record with a .908 save percentage and a 2.53 goals against average. This team is built on Hellebuyck being superhuman, but I do not think anyone saw the Jets being this bad, currently tied for last place.

St. Louis had a monster run to last season and I thought that would carry over to this year, but instead they have regressed to their mean. When I was going my predictions I went back and fourth on if the Blues or Minnesota would regress to their mean, I picked the Wild and so far I have been wrong.

I do not want to even talk about the Pacific

Almost everything I predicted in the Pacific is wrong. The two I want to highlight are Vancouver and Anaheim.

I picked Vancouver to, not only finish third in the division, but make a run all the way to the Western Conference Finals. They sit dead last in the league. Maybe it was my bias as a Canucks fan, maybe every single thing for Vancouver has gone wrong, maybe the hockey gods hate me, who knows? There has not been a single good thing about Canucks hockey this year. Injuries have piled up, star players have been bad, the coaching change did not do anything and on top of it all, the best player in franchise history and a top two defenseman in the league, Quinn Hughes was traded.

Predicting the Canucks to make the playoffs, let alone go to the Conference Final will go down as my worst prediction of all time.

The Ducks on the other hand I picked to finish with 72 points and third last in the division. The Ducks currently have the most win in the Pacific and are two points back of first place. A lot of people had the Ducks making a jump after being a rebuild for the last few seasons, but I did not. I knew they had the talent but I did not want to see them succeed so I picked them to be terrible.

The Ducks have proved me wrong. They are fun and electric and are poised to finish top three in the division.

The Playoffs

By extension of my regular season picks being bad, my playoff matchups look awful too.

As of now, three of my four Conference Finals teams are not in a playoff spot (New Jersey, Toronto, Vancouver) with the Canucks being all the way in last place.

I still have faith in New Jersey to make the playoffs, as they have struggled with injuries so far. The Maple Leafs can certainly make a run into the playoffs, but with the amount of drama around them so far, it is not out of the realm of possibilities that they miss.

My one really good prediction was having Colorado make the Stanley Cup Final. The Avalanche have two regulation losses on the season and do not look to add many more before the playoffs. The one downside to this prediction is that Presidents’ Trophy curse. The last time a Presidents’ Trophy winning team made the Stanley Cup Final was 2012-2013, so it has been a while.

Predictions are so much fun, even if mine stink so far.

There is still half of the season to be played, so maybe my predictions will start to look better, or maybe they will look even worse after game 82.

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