This is my final Ramblings before the beginning of the 2022-23 season and it still feels hard to believe we're approaching the first puck drop in mere hours. Doesn't feel like it was very long ago we were watching a dominant Colorado roster steamroll the playoffs before dethroning the twice-defending Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning. Is this what getting old is like?

Yesterday, my Ramblings covered 10 hot takes for the upcoming season. When I do these, I try to keep them reasonable. There is no sense in saying Jack Quinn will put up 90 points or Arizona is going to win the Central. Maybe "reasonable" and "hot take" shouldn't be in the same sentence but that's how these Ramblings operate.

Today, there are 10 more hot takes to offer. In my recent effort, the hot takes were of a positive nature. Whether players setting career-highs, teams making playoffs, or players winning awards, we wanted to look at the bright side of life. Of course, there is another side to the coin, and not everything goes according to plan.

To that end, here are 10 more hot takes, but of players/teams/situations that will fail to meet expectations. Feel completely free to throw these back in my face in April when most of them actually do meet expectations.

One caveat is I'm going to leave goaltenders out of this because we all know how goaltenders are and either I'd have to get real silly – Ilya Sorokin isn't a top-25 goalie – or just hope variance hits. That is no fun, to me.

Finally, for more prognostications, be sure to check our Dobber Panel predictions from our writers/editors going over division winners, award winners, and more.

Patrice Bergeron Does Not Reach 60 Points

This isn't that extreme considering he reached just 65 points in 2021-22 but he is still being drafted highly in a lot of leagues. His ADP on Underdog Fantasy is a top-15 centre, and ahead of names like Roope Hintz and Elias Pettersson. Especially now with Jason Robertson signed, Hintz could be one of the better multi-cat values to go inside the top-100 this season (more on that later).

But back to Bergeron, the reason this feels like a hot take to me is how highly I'm seeing Boston ranked in a lot of spots. The Athletic has them as a 104-point team, HockeyViz as likely a high-90-point squad, and Evolving Hockey has them at 108 points. There are range of outcomes to consider but a lot of smart people I often read all seem very high on them. If Boston is, say, a 105-point team, it would stand to reason that a big part of it is a stellar two-way performance from Bergeron. Combine that with his high-ish ADP in some spots, and it seems a lot of people are very bullish on Boston.

My personal view is the injuries make things way too uncertain. I have discussed it ad nauseum so there's no reason to re-litigate it all, but my contention is that these severe injuries are going to impact this team much more than anticipated. It will only take a few months to see this unfold so buckle up.  

Nashville Doesn't Have A 30-Goal Scorer

The Predators had two forwards surpass 40 goals last year so this would represent a big decline. I have often said that it was a year in which everything broke right for the team and a few of their veterans either had career years, or their best performance in several seasons. Relying on that to repeat itself is something that, for me, is hard to bet on.

Both Matt Duchene and Filip Forsberg set career-bests in shooting percentage. The former shot 18.9% (three-year average of 13.1% prior) while the latter shot 18.6% (three-year average of 11.2% prior). If Duchene posts 225 shots and shoots 13%, he won't reach 30 goals. If Forsberg lands 250 shots but shoots 11%, he also won't reach 30 goals. If they fail to crack that plateau, can someone else on the roster do it? Maybe, but I really don't think so.

Nashville does seem to have more depth this season than last but can that depth help their stars come close to repeating their performance last year? It's a tall order and why we have this hot take here.

Pittsburgh Misses Playoffs

In my eyes, there's no team that has a wider range of outcomes this year than the Penguins. If June 2023 rolls around and Sidney Crosby is lifting his fourth Stanley Cup, it would not surprise me. If April 2023 rolls around and the team is on the outside of the postseason looking in, it also would not surprise me. The simple fact is a lot of key members of this team are over 30 years old: Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, Jeff Carter, and Jeff Petry are all in their age-35 season or higher, with Bryan Rust, Jason Zucker, and Brian Dumoulin all at least in their age-30 season. That is a lot of, erm, elder statesmen that the team is relying on for another Cup run.

Letang has managed to be considerably healthier the last couple seasons than most prior to that, but can he keep that up? Carter is already dealing with injury problems and Zucker has missed over 40% of Pittsburgh's games over the last two seasons. A few lengthy key injuries and this team could be in a world of trouble.

Philadelphia and Montreal don't look strong, but a lot of the bottom Eastern teams from 2021-22 improved significantly in the offseason. If the Penguins go long stretches missing a few stars simultaneously, things could spiral out of control fast.

Neither Matt Boldy nor Marco Rossi Hit 50 Points

One offseason change that I think is being kind of hand-waved is the loss of Kevin Fiala. Over the last three seasons, he had a higher goals impact at even strength (according to Evolving Hockey) than names like Sebastian Aho, Aleksander Barkov, and Alex Ovechkin. He was the engine of the Minnesota offence whenever Kirill Kaprizov wasn't on the ice and they're asking two guys with fewer than 50 total NHL games between them to fill the void. It is a lot to ask.

Reasons why this could work out is if Minnesota breaks up its top line and sends Kaprizov to skate opposite Boldy, or put Kaprizov on Rossi's wing. The question then becomes whether it's in the team's best interest to do so, considering the explosiveness it would take away from Mats Zuccarello's line. But maybe they need to, in an attempt to have two balanced scoring lines, with neither being as productive as last year's top line.

What will help at least one of them is one of the two youngsters should end up on the top power play. But what if Minnesota constantly changes its non-core pieces like they did last year? There is a lot of uncertainty for me and that's the reason for the pessimism. As someone who enjoys watching this Minnesota team, though, I hope I'm wrong.

Johnny Gaudreau Doesn't Crack 80 Points

In a season of great seasons, it really is hard to overstate just how unbelievable the top line for Calgary was. They scored 4.5 goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 and skated nearly the entire season together. They were also just north of 10 goals per 60 minutes on the power play, again skating most of the season together. It really just all came together for all three forwards, and we saw the results.

Gaudreau has moved on to Columbus and that team has just one lineup combination that A) played at least 200 5-on-5 minutes together and B) scored north of 3.0 goals per 60 minutes. It was Laine-Jenner-Nyquist (according to Moneypuck) and they were at 3.2. The team was also in the bottom-10 of the league in power play scoring per minute and was tied for 25^th in power play opportunities. Gaudreau is going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting to produce anywhere near the level he reached last year.

The new Jackets winger should see an ice time increase and that'll help mitigate the drop. How far the point total falls is the real question and if things start going sideways for a team that is still not a contender, things could go south quickly. Gaudreau is one of the top playmakers in hockey and he'll have to show every ounce of it to be a monster point producer again.

Montreal Does Not Produce A 60-Point Forward

As the resident Habs fan, all told, I'm kind of looking forward to this season. It reminds me of Ottawa's team last year: almost certainly going to finish poorly in the standings but could be a lot of fun to watch. Seeing the kids progress through the season, combined with good winger depth, should make for entertaining games. There are concerns when it comes to actual point production, though.

Nick Suzuki had a big turnaround after coach Martin St. Louis was hired. He posted 34 points in 38 games but did so while skating in excess of 21 minutes a night. Montreal was a deeply flawed and injured team in 2021-22. Since the end of the regular season, they added Kirby Dach and Sean Monahan, re-loading the centre depth to go with Christian Dvorak. It seems very plausible more minutes are allocated to the second and third lines than what they did in March/April of 2022. To compound the issue, Montreal doesn't really have much for puck-moving defencemen. This is an issue for both even strength and power play scoring.

We should see growth from the young stars on this roster but there could be issues out of their control that temper production. Should be entertaining nonetheless, however.

Victor Hedman Is Not A Norris Trophy Finalist

Saying any single player won't be a trophy finalist may not seem like a very hot take, but Hedman has finished top-3 in Norris voting for six straight seasons. It is an unparalleled run for the salary cap-era NHL, but all good things do have to come to an end.

My concern is two-fold. The first is injury, as both Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos have had their fair share of issues at times in the last 5-6 years, while Anthony Cirelli is starting the season on the injured reserve. Combine the injury issues with the loss of Ryan McDonagh and maybe this is the season we see Tampa slip a bit? Certainly still a playoff team but not a juggernaut.

Hedman has turned himself into the NHL's top blue liner since the retirement of Nicklas Lidstrom (Cale Makar is on his way, surely) but there are loads of top-end blue liners in the league now. Hedman could still be great and not be a Norris Finalist.

Winnipeg Is A Bottom-3 Western Conference Team

There are a few things that could plague this roster. The first is Rick Bowness, a coach I'm not overly fond of. The second is the possible trades of both Pierre-Luc Dubois and Mark Scheifele. It seems Dubois could be traded at any time while Scheifele has one year left on his deal after 2022-23 at a very reasonable $6.1M AAV. Could we see both guys traded by the trade deadline? Depends how the season goes. Thirdly, this is a full season without Andrew Copp; he had done a lot of heavy lifting on the third line over the years and there's no one to immediately replace him. Fourth is that second line that will be relying on Cole Perfetti and Blake Wheeler on the wings, a rookie and an aging vet with rapidly declining impact. There are a lot of issues at play here.

What should keep Winnipeg competitive is elite goaltending from Connor Hellebuyck. What if he doesn't turn in a Vezina-calibre season, though? Things could get ugly, fast, in Winnipeg. I hope not – I have a few fantasy rosters relying on their production – but I'm nervous.

Aleksander Barkov Does Not Reach 30 Goals

Losing Jonathan Huberdeau's prowess on the power play is something to monitor in Florida. There is no one that can replace him and how it all works without him is an open question.

To that end, nearly one-third of Barkov's goals over the last four years have come with the power play. He is also coming off a season where he shot a career-best 18.2%. If he shoots 14% last year instead, he ends up at exactly 30 goals. Now, that is in 67 games, but it's not impossible that there are declines in scoring in all areas, especially if he's split from Matthew Tkachuk.

My concerns about Barkov's production aren't really significant, but I do wonder if a new coach and being sans Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weegar changes the situation more than we think. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Timo Meier Is Not A Top-50 Fantasy Skater

Last year, Meier was probably my favourite draft value, and things paid off handsomely. I do wonder if we've come so far around him that he's overvalued? This is still a San Jose team with a good chance to finish last in their division, lost Brent Burns in the offseason, and is relying on an oft-injured Erik Karlsson for all their puck-moving needs on the blue line.

What works in Meier's favour is his peripherals. He shoots and hits a lot, and that means he doesn't need an 80-point season to be very valuable in multi-cat leagues. But if the lack of puck movers means the team has trouble sustaining offence, does the Swiss winger have a few more extended slumps? I hope not because he's one of my favourite players to watch but I am still unsure here.

Alright, those are my 10 pessimistic hot takes. Any thoughts?  

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We had a significant change in the expected Ottawa lineup in practice on Thursday:

Senators will flip top two centres tonight — Stutzle with Tkachuk and Batherson and Norris with DeBrincat and Giroux

— Ken Warren (@Citizenkwarren) October 6, 2022

Tim Stützle and Josh Norris have different skill sets so it'll be interesting to see if these stick for very long. The thought of having a better playmaker with Brady Tkachuk is one that gets the brain turning.

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In the good news department for Boston:

Taylor Hall and Matt Grzelcyk (both non contact) are practicing.

— Fluto Shinzawa (@FlutoShinzawa) October 6, 2022

Being cleared for contact is the next step but if both guys only miss a handful of games, that'd go a long way to stabilizing Boston's injury calamity.

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Some interesting Carolina power play configurations:

PP1: Aho, Teravainen, Jarvis, Kase, Burns
PP2: Kotkaniemi, Svechnikov, Necas, Stastny, Coghlan

— Cory Lavalette (@corylav) October 6, 2022

To me, this looks like a setup where both units are used relatively evenly. That could be great for the team but could be very bad news for the fantasy values of the top-end guys we're drafting like Aho and Andrei Svechnikov. Something we need to keep an eye on.

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Staying with power plays, here's San Jose:

#SJSharks power play units at practice: Karlsson-Meier-Hertl-Couture-Kunin, Benning-Ferraro-Bonino-Lindblom-Labanc

— Sheng Peng (@Sheng_Peng) October 6, 2022

That is Luke Kunin skating both on the top line and top power play unit. There is no Alexander Barabanov but this is a fascinating wrinkle early in the season for the former Predator.

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We will have to see how things actually shake out but Matthew DeFranks, a Dallas beat writer, tweeted that we could see Jason Robertson and Roope Hintz on separate lines now that the former has signed. This could be a big boost for Tyler Seguin, if that's the case, and it could help elevate Mason Marchment's production. It is a bit concerning for Hintz, but we'll have to wait and see how things shake out when the dust clears.