from Ryan Dixon of Sportsnet,

...the purpose of today’s exercise is to identify the teams that could conceivably skate off with the 2021 Cup. We’ve highlighted three no-doubters, six clubs that could catch a wave to do it and a bunch more that — no matter how hard you squint — don’t have an in-focus path to a parade....

Tier One: Hard Yes
Colorado Avalanche: Locked and loaded. Questions about a crunch-time goalie duo of Philipp Grubauer and Pavel Francouz are fair, but not nearly enough to besmirch this club’s standing as one of the very best in the league.

Tampa Bay Lightning: The salary cap clouds have cleared and even with recent scoring champ Nikita Kucherov shelved for the regular season, there’s more than enough torque here to land a cushy Central Division playoff spot. This team won the Cup without Steven Stamkos in the lineup; if Kucherov comes back from hip surgery at some point in the post-season, the 2021 Bolts could be a superior squad to the one that lifted the Cup three months ago.

Vegas Golden Knights: While the Knights belong in the top tier, we’ll draw a faint line between them and the two clubs listed above only because Vegas’s centre depth doesn’t match up with Tampa or Colorado. That said, the Golden Knights landed the biggest UFA fish in Alex Pietrangelo and are getting after the ’21 Cup as hard as anyone.

read on