BREAKING NEWS: Hockey is Back!

The NHL and NHLPA have made an agreement to move forward with the 2020-21 NHL season. This includes a shortened 56 game season that will start on January 13th, 2021. The league has also confirmed that they will go with four divisions. Here is how they divided it up.

Teams to take advantage of the Newly Aligned Divisions

Colorado Avalanche

A Stanley Cup favourite going into this season, the Avalanche will have to take advantage of the West Division. St. Louis and Vegas are the only two teams they will need to worry about, but the rest should be easy wins. With the last-minute change with adding Minnesota into their division, this gives Colorado a huge advantage to win a few more games. Originally it was Dallas who eliminated Colorado from the playoffs last year.

The Avalanche have one of the best offensive lines in the NHL lead by Nathan Mackinnon, who is arguable one of the best players in the game today. With line mates Landeskog and Rantanen, these three will give a lot of defensive cores a hard time when they are on the ice. On top of a strong first line, they have Kadri, newly acquired Saad, and Burakovsky which makes it hard for coaches to match second lines. Overall, Colorado will be a hard team to match lines with and this is why they are a Stanley Cup favourite going into this season.

Tampa Bay Lightning

Coming off a Stanley Cup victory, the Tampa Bay Lightning look to defend their title in 2021. Looking at the Central Division, Tampa has a huge advantage over those teams. One of their best players in Steven Stamkos didn’t play in the playoffs except for the one game for 3 minutes and they still won the Stanley Cup. This shows how deep Tampa is. They have: Victor Hedman, who is a Norris Trophy winner, Nikita Kucherov, who won MVP two years ago, Brayden Point, who is one of the most exciting upcoming players and Andrei Vasilevskiy, who is one of the best goalies in the league. If Tampa is 100% healthy, don’t be surprised if they end up with the President’s Trophy at the end of the season and give a good run at going back to back titles.

Toronto Maple Leafs

A disappointing finish for the Blue & White last year, losing to Columbus in the play in series in five games. Kyle Dubas needed to make a change in order for Toronto to be a tougher team. During the off season, he picked up Wayne Simmonds, Joe Thornton, TJ Brodie, and Zach Bogosian. I would say this is pushing Toronto in the right direction to compete in the All-Canadian Division. Everyone knows the Leafs are a highly offensive team but lack on the blue line. With the additions of Brodie and Bogosian on the blue line, you are bringing in bigger bodies that can help defend in front of the net. I believe Toronto is one of the Canadian teams that you could argue to win the division. The only other teams that the Leafs will have a hard time against is Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Edmonton. Montreal and Ottawa are basically in a rebuild and Calgary hasn’t looked the same since they were knocked out in 5 games in the 2019 playoffs after winning the conference. Maybe it’s time to move big pieces like Johnny Gaudreau or Sean Monahan.

I like Toronto’s chances at making the playoffs for 2021 especially if four teams from each division make it. Here is my prediction on who makes it to the playoffs.

Playoff Predictions

Comment below and let us know your predictions for the 2021 season!