In anticipation of Tuesday's start to the regular season, our NHL preview ends with the important question: who is going to hoist the Stanley Cup at year's end? Each of the last two seasons have ended the same way, with the Tampa Bay Lightning being crowned champions. No one has won three straight Cups since the dynasty Islanders won four straight from 1980-83.
History suggests they are unlikely to three-peat, but Tampa Bay nonetheless is among our five favorites to win Lord Stanley's Cup once again come June:
5) Toronto Maple Leafs: First, the good news. The Leafs have one of the best goal-scoring attacks in the game, Auston Matthews is a Hart Trophy contender and there are a lot of pieces around him to strike fear into anyone over the course of a seven-game series.
Now the bad: the goaltending duo of Petr Mrazek and Jack Campbell isn't the most inspiring combination in the league (though it could be worse), the blue-line still has plenty of questions. And, oh yeah, it's a Maple Leafs team with high preseason expectations, which generally always ends in incredible disappointment.
4) New York Islanders: The Isles know their identity and play to it with more consistency than maybe anyone in the league. They have a bonafide star in Mat Barzal, four complete lines and a rock-solid defense with talented goaltenders in Semyon Varlamov and Ilya Sorokin, and they'll be bolstered by the return of captain Anders Lee, who tore his ACL last year. After losing to the Lightning in each of the last two Eastern Conference Finals and bringing back the same core, there's no reason to expect a drop-off on Long Island.
3) Vegas Golden Knights: It's not too often a team can basically give away the reigning Vezina Trophy winner for free and still be a Cup contender. Alas, that's the situation Vegas finds itself in after shipping Marc-Andre Fleury off to Chicago because of salary cap constraints. The team is still loaded after tying for the league lead with 82 points a year ago, led by a top line of Mark Stone, Max Pacioretty and Chandler Stephenson. If depth acquisitions Nolan Patrick and Evgenii Dadonov work out, this could arguably become the best 1-12 forward group in the league. There will be plenty of pressure on Robin Lehner in net, though, given who he is replacing.
2) Tampa Bay Lightning: On paper this is still probably the best team, especially considering they'll get a full year of Nikita Kucherov, who missed the entire regular season with a hip injury. So basically the Lightning re-acquire a former MVP to go along with Ondrej Palat, Brayden Point, Steven Stamkos, Victor Hedman and Andrei Vasilevskiy. They had to replace some bottom six depth, but not bad, right?
Again, though, history. In the salary cap era not only has nobody won three straight Cups, nobody has made it to three straight Finals. In fact, no one has come that close. Pittsburgh exited in the second round in 2018 after going back-to-back the two years prior. The Pens and Red Wings met each other in consecutive Finals in 2008 and 2009, but both were bounced in the second round in 2010.
1) Colorado Avalanche: So the favorites are the co-Presidents Trophy winner from last year in the Avs, who took an early exit in last year's postseason against Vegas. They have the best non-Conor McDavid player in the league in Nathan MacKinnon and the best young defenseman in the league in Cale Makar. There are questions about who will score beyond the top line, and they have a new goaltender in Darcy Kuemper, who was hurt last year and only played in 27 games. But when he's been healthy he's been excellent, and will have a much better defense in front of him than what he had in Arizona.