NHL season predictions are usually a fruitless cause — hey, this guy had Boston missing it last year and they only went on to have the best regular season in league history. If most models come within an average of being off by 11 points per team, it would be among the best, and several even well-meaning and seemingly intelligent guesses tend to be off by 20+ points. All that to say that projecting 82 games is a humbling exercise and surely bound to go wrong in many ways, but let’s give it a go anyways.
The Atlantic Division is one of the NHL’s more intriguing groupings of teams this season.