Pens, Rangers and even Buffalo I think will finish ahead of the Islanders.

I also think Winnipeg is going to be better than people expect. How they fair against Edmonton will determine if they are 5th or 4th.

I don’t understand all the love for Montreal. They made some good moves, but they had a worse winning percentage than the Buffalo Sabres last year

I can see where you're coming from because they didn't look good on paper statistically. However, Montreal has a depth advantage on almost every team in their division. If they get hit with an injury, it won't affect them as badly as it would a team like Winnipeg for example. We roll our lines almost evenly so if one player is out, we have 3 other lines that can step up and fill those minutes and if Price is on his game, not many teams will beat him. We also have like 8 players that could score 20 goals.

I just think way too much is being taken from that play in round victory. I think if that didn’t happen there would be a way different perception. Again, I like their off season, but I think people are surprised to find out they had a worse winning percentage than the Sabres, who are viewed as trash.

Devils will be lucky to win 5 games in that division, that's a tough spot. There's no really weak teams there, aside form the Devils. Poor NJ fans, good for draft lottery purposes I guess.

I don't think people are necessarily basing this off of the play-in round, granted it did obv change some people's opinion on us. However, it's more the progression that I've seen from players that convinces me that we will be very good this season. Suzuki and Kotkaniemi for example made huge strides during lockdown and came back as great up-and-coming centremen. Rested Price was practically unbeatable and was probably the best or very close to the best goalie in the bubble. I would also say that we showed how well we can play against top teams like Philly. We actually put up a very good fight against a very deep team in Philly. Overall, I think we will be very good in a challenging divsion.

Then why did they have such a horrid regular season?

Because we were a super inconsistent team, with a horrendous PP, an exhausted goalie, and unfortunately bad injuries. Now, we've brought in Toffoli, who is a very good PP player, and will play on our first unit. Anderson is also an above average net front presence on a second or first unit. Allen is going to be one of the best backups in the league. And we now have the depth to fill in those spots for injuries.

What position do you play? With all this “we,” and “our,” talk you must be on the team.

Just kidding around.

In all seriousness, I do like the habs off season, but it just seems like adding a backup goalie, a power forward who managed a whole goal last year, and toffoli makes the difference between a winning percentage lower than the Sabres, and second in a division.

Ik it sounds crazy, but that can literally be the difference between being bad and good. It happens for teams with much less than this, because those three pieces are actually great pieces to add.

Big big big gamble that Anderson bounces back. The habs also lost domi. I know he fell out of favor, but personally i think thats a net loss.

Unpopular opinon: Domi actually made us worse. His attitude was clearly dragging our team down and it was kind of demoralizing.
I also trust that Berge has done his hw to make sure that Anderson is 100% healthy because he has done a great job w trades in the past few seasons.

The habs just gave a guy that scored 1 goal last year like 40 mill.

That doesn't mean much lol. Also, Anderson was injured practically the entire season. He had 27 the year before.