The NHL regular season kicks off next week, and it’s time to take a stab at where the teams will end up.
The Atlantic Division is one of the NHL’s more intriguing groups, there are a couple of powerhouse teams – led of course by the back-to-back champion Florida Panthers. Tampa and Toronto have been very strong teams in the recent past (in the regular season, at least) and then there’s a large grouping of teams that have been rebuilding and piling up young talent for the better part of a decade in Ottawa, Montreal, Detroit and Buffalo that all have been looking to make their way up a level into being secure playoff teams (with Ottawa and Montreal making strides last year to qualify for the playoffs in a full-season since 2017 for both clubs). Finally, there’s a team in a bit of disarray and falling off in Boston.
All of these teams have some level of hopes and expectations to be competitive this year, which means some are going to be bitterly disappointed. Usually that has been Buffalo, Detroit and Ottawa who have been left without a chair when the music stops, though the Senators as mentioned have advanced beyond that.
How’s the crystal ball look? In 2024-25, all the Atlantic Division teams together secured 737 points, a healthy average of 92 points per team in a division that had no teams truly bottoming out. The year prior in 2023-24, the total was even higher at 748 total points – courtesy of having three 100+ point teams (and another with 98). For this projection, we’ll split the difference and go with 740 total points for the Atlantic to acquire, split out as follows.
2024-25 Atlantic Division Predictions
Tampa takes the cake as our division winner, due to having superior offensive firepower and having goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy back in dominant form. More than anyone, Tampa knows the key to their season is to avoid the dreaded 2 vs. 3 first round matchup in the Atlantic, which usually means facing a 100+ point team (or close), and also serves to avoid seeing the Panthers in the first round. That focus will drive them on to staying ahead of the pack and setting up a slightly easier bracket out the gates.
All eyes are on Toronto in the post-Mitch Marner era, they should be able to remain a top club with their own depth and skill. One less cook in the kitchen shouldn’t take the wind out of the sails too much, and maybe they can even avoid some distraction and coalesce more as a group now. Of course, being Toronto, there’s a new circus around every corner but we’re still seeing a solid season ahead.
Florida has an Aleksander Barkov-sized hole in their lineup, which will make for an impossible task to replace that type of player/leader as he recovers from a knee injury. More than all, the Panthers know they don’t have to live and die with each regular season game and go all out or prove anything to anyone. All they need to do is qualify for the playoffs and try to peak when it matters most, and they’ve proven exceptional at that.
Ottawa will have some staying power due to the goaltending of Linus Ullmark and an ascending young core (Stutzle, Sanderson, Tkachuk, Cozens, Pinto) that is figuring out how to become one of the better teams in the league. With 95 points they should easily clear a playoff spot, and this projection is close enough to push Florida a little bit.
Then comes the blender, which we’re giving Detroit the smallest of edges over Montreal due to..what exactly? There’s more projection than fact to go on here, but John Gibson on a real NHL team again might be the boost the Red Wings have needed. Being a point apart indicates a virtual coin flip, but it will be the tightest of races down the stretch to see which one ends up ahead. As for the Canadiens, well last year they had terrible underlying defensive numbers and picking up Noah Dobson isn’t going to be much of a boost to that area. Young players like Ivan Demidov could fuel their growth back into the playoffs but they stressed their goalies last year, who responded with an incredible saves above average (to the tune of fourth best per Advanced Hockey Stats). We’ll project a little regression in net, which admittedly may or may not be an accurate call.
Buffalo could well be in that blender for a while, but they are missing that certain something to feel good about having them end up in serious playoff contention, likely scoring depth past Tage Thompson and Alex Tuch. Until proven wrong, I’ll just keep predicting Buffalo towards the bottom of the standings. And with all due respect to Lindy Ruff, who has been an NHL head coach almost continuously since 1997 and had a long, great career but the coaching inputs for him lately have been stale and don’t look like the right answer. We’re not thinking the old dog has any last new tricks to salvage with this lineup.
The Bruins are put at the bottom, but I tell you I’ve less confidence in this placement than perhaps any other. Last year was a disaster, Jeremy Swayman missed training camp with his contract negotiation and that proved costly to never really get him settled in, their free agents flopped, they fired a good coach in a panic move after a slow that backfired and then it became a lost season. Boston has added some players in the last six months (Casey Mittelstadt, Viktor Arvidsson, Tanner Jeannot) and will hope that they get more than 67 total games out of Charlie MacAvoy and Hampus Lindholm to improve their defense. I think there’s a realistic chance Boston finishes higher, perhaps even making some waves late in the season gunning for a playoff spot. But someone has to finish last and if they aren’t competitive, we saw this team pull the plug on effort and make a late-season slide like last year which leaves an impression for what could happen again this time around in the last 10-20 games to sink to the bottom.
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We’ll save the playoff predictions for the upcoming post on the Metropolitan Division, though it’s no secret that 95 points for Ottawa will carry the day and put them into the postseason. Last year our educated guesses for the Atlantic were very strong — with an average error of 10.25 points per team. That may sound like a lot but it was better than the full league errors of all the major advanced statistical models (who were in the 10.4 – 11.5 range) and the Vegas over/under point totals, which were 10.6 points off. Those differences also go to show the trouble and unpredictability of an NHL season- some teams might be close, a few could do 20 points better or worse than projected. At this point all you can do is take a stab at what could make sense and hope for the best.
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