Daily Faceoff Staff Predictions for 2021-22 NHL Season
The NHL is back!
After a wild summer, hockey returned in typical unpredictable fashion with the shorthanded Pittsburgh Penguins spoiling the Tampa Bay Lightning’s banner night at Amalie Arena. The NHL continues to be television’s best reality series.
That unpredictability doesn’t scare the newly assembled Daily Faceoff squad. Before the puck dropped, the Daily Faceoff staff sized up each division top to bottom and gave their picks for how the regular season standings will shape up, who will advance to the Conference Final, their 2022 Stanley Cup champion, the league’s individual end-of-season Award winners and a couple fun prop bets:
Atlantic Division
DFO Consensus: 1. Tampa Bay Lightning, 2. Florida Panthers, 3. Toronto Maple Leafs, 4. Boston Bruins, 5. Montreal Canadiens, 6. Ottawa Senators, 7. Detroit Red Wings, 8. Buffalo Sabres.
Metropolitan Division
DFO Consensus: 1. New York Islanders, 2. Carolina Hurricanes, 3. Washington Capitals, 4. New York Rangers, 5. Pittsburgh Penguins, 6. Philadelphia Flyers, 7. New Jersey Devils, 8. Columbus Blue Jackets.
Pacific Division
DFO Consensus: 1. Vegas Golden Knights, 2. Edmonton Oilers, 3. Vancouver Canucks, 4. Los Angeles Kings, 5. Calgary Flames, 6. Seattle Kraken, 7. Anaheim Ducks, 8. San Jose Sharks.
Central Division
DFO Consensus: 1. Colorado Avalanche, 2. Winnipeg Jets, 3. Minnesota Wild, 4. Dallas Stars, 5. St. Louis Blues, 6. Chicago Blackhawks, 7. Nashville Predators, 8. Arizona Coyotes.
Stanley Cup Playoffs
Below, you will see how each of our staff members see the playoffs shaking out, including their four conference finalists, two Stanley Cup finalists and Stanley Cup champion.
DFO Consensus: NY Islanders over Tampa Bay, Colorado over Edmonton/Vegas.
The Colorado Avalanche and Vegas Golden Knights enter the season as PointsBet Canada’s two favorites to win the Stanley Cup and these two teams accounted for half of our staff’s championship picks.
Perhaps the biggest surprise amongst our staff was that there were more votes (two) for the Winnipeg Jets to capture Canada’s first Stanley Cup in 29 years than there was for the Tampa Bay Lightning (one) to three-peat.
DFO Consensus: Colorado Avalanche win first Stanley Cup since 2001.
Major Awards
When it came to forecasting end-of-season award winners, the overwhelming consensus amongst Daily Faceoff’s staff was that Oilers captain Connor McDavid would win the Hart Trophy as league MVP and Colorado’s Cale Makar would skate away with the Norris Trophy as top defenseman.
Where our staff began to differ was when trying to predict the Calder and Vezina Trophy winners.
With the Calder, it was a split between Anaheim’s Trevor Zegras and Montreal’s Cole Caufield, although a pair of Florida Panthers, Spencer Knight and Anton Lundell, also garnered one vote each.
Andrei Vasilevskiy — who won his first Vezina Trophy in 2018-19 — received the most votes to take home the hardware again this season.
DFO Consensus: Connor McDavid for the Hart Trophy; Cole Caufield/Trevor Zegras for the Calder Trophy; Andrei Vasilevski for the Vezina Trophy; Cale Makar for the Norris Trophy.
Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews
Everybody in the group save for Burnside agreed that Matthews will eclipse 50 goals while the majority also sees McDavid popping off for a new career high in points. The highest prediction for McDavid comes from Seravalli, who predicts 151 points, which would be the most since Mario Lemieux in the mid-90s.
DFO Consensus: McDavid nets 138 points, Matthews scores 56 goals.
Make sure to head to subscribe to ESPN+ at the link below where for just $69.99 USD a year, you can catch all the action.
