from Justin Bourne of Sportsnet,

So here we are once again, at the hockey calendar’s natural place to throw a few things at the wall.

More than ever, this is anyone’s year

That piece on a “weird-ass team” winning the Cup was written on the eve of the 2019 playoffs, so for this year I’m rolling it back to the start of the season. (It’s the perfect prediction really – vague but can be retconned as accurate.) The point is this: I don’t see a group of clear favourites like I do before just about every season.

The Avalanche are the defending champs and the team favoured by gambling odds to win the Cup again, but I don’t know: they got at least a little worse this off-season in losing Nazem Kadri and Darcy Kuemper, didn’t they? Their D may be the league’s best, but there are holes up front and the crease is a question mark. Tampa Bay should be really good again, and likely Carolina too. But I mean “quite good” and not unbeatable (Tampa certainly didn’t get better in losing Ondrej Palat, Ryan McDonagh and Jan Rutta).

Who else is in the group of true contenders? Maybe the Rangers, the Oilers, the Leafs? Calgary, Minnesota? The Blues, Vegas, maybe Boston and Florida? How many teams can I go here before you say “no chance?” Would you be shocked by the Penguins, or the Capitals, or the Islanders, or Nashville? There are just so many teams with a legitimate chance this season, and I don’t see a handful of teams that are so far away from the pack that the rest can’t catch them. This is by and large thanks to years of a flat cap forcing good teams to frankly, get less good.

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