Nobody understands the Sabres, and other lessons from the NHL prediction contest

We’re barely a week into the NHL season, and you’ve already seen my team tiers, my oddly specific predictions, my most intriguing players, and my first batch of power rankings. Oh, and hopefully you’ve signed up for the newsletter.

Are you sick of me yet? You should be. So I’m taking the day off.

Instead, this post is about you, and what you think. Specifically, it’s about the 1,258 of you who entered this year’s prediction contest. That number was the highest in the contest’s seven year history, by the way, so thanks to everyone who spread the word.

It’s obviously way too early to start keeping score. It’s only been a week, and history tells us that most of your entries won’t be completely dead in the water until it’s been two weeks. But one of my favorite things about the contest is that it doubles as an informal survey of what hockey fans are expecting. There are usually some interesting insights to be found in there.

So today, we’re going to dive into those 1,258 entries and see what they tell us about what expectations look like among the smartest hockey fans out there. And also you.

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NHL weekend rankings: We're back, it's too early, and the Oilers are being weird

Welcome back to the Weekend Rankings. How was your summer? Go anywhere interesting? Do anything fun? Demand any trades? Cool, cool, let’s get back to business.

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The 2026-27 NHL All-Intrigue roster: One name from each team to watch this season

It’s time to build my annual all-intrigue team – the names and stories I’m most interested in following as we head into the new season. Some of them will be obvious picks. Others might feel off the board. But each has a reason for some extra attention over the next (remembers the schedule is longer this year) 14 months or whatever it is now.

As always, we’ll do this roster style – two goalies, six defensemen and 12 forwards, plus a coach and a GM and a handful of honorable mentions. The two ground rules are that we can only use one name per team, and we can’t repeat anyone from last year’s list.

And of course, we build from the net out...

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Every NHL team wants a strong start, but these are the 10 teams that need one

We’re five games into the 1,344-game NHL season. Have you torn up you preseason predictions and completely changed your view of a few teams yet?

You should have. After all, that’s your job as a fan, not to mention what makes the first few weeks of a new season so much fun. We watch a team play a handful of games, and then we re-evaluate. And by re-evaluate, I mean we all freak out.

It works that way for every team. But some have even more riding on the first few games this year. The narrative comes for us all, but it spends more time chasing some teams than others. And that’s true no matter how many smart people remind us about small sample sizes.

So let’s mark the start of the new season with a look at 10 teams who have the most riding on a strong start to the season. We’ll cover all the narratives – the ones the team is facing to open the year, the one they’ll hear if they start strong, and the one that will haunt them if they don’t. And we’ll even sneak a peek at their starting schedule, to see if it offers any clues about which side the early-season coin might land on.

In no particular order, here are 10 teams with a lot on the line over the next few weeks.

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It's time to make ridiculous and oddly specific NHL predictions for all 32 teams’ seasons

The prediction game can be a thankless one.

You know the drill. When a writer puts their predictions for the season out into the world, like I did last week, there’s one of two ways any particular pick can go. If they’re wrong, they’re an idiot, and should have to hear about it all year long. But if they’re right, well, big deal – everyone knew it was going to play out that way.

It’s rough. But over the years, I’ve come up with two ways to counter it. The first is the reader contest, which launched last week. That gives you a chance to make your picks, which gives me the chance to make fun of you when you’re wrong. Remember, you don’t get to dunk on my picks if you didn’t enter the contest. (Which you still have time to do before it closes this afternoon.)

And then there’s today’s column: The annual set of oddly specific predictions. These are the picks where I get so ridiculously precise that it flips the script. If I’m wrong, well, of course I was. But if I successfully predict a 30-year-old defensive defenseman’s first career goal in the exact game it happens, then you’re never going to hear the end of it. (I did that, by the way. Did you know that? It happened. It was years ago, sure, but it still happened.)

Or at least, that’s the idea. You’ll probably still dunk on me. Just know that if any of these hit, I will be insufferable about it.

One oddly specific pick per team, in alphabetical order. Here we go…

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