These are my Top 10 Hot Takes/Predictions for the 2023-2024 season. Some people will agree with, some people will disagree with, some people will think I'm crazy, but that's why they're called hot takes. These are mine and you guys can let me know which ones you might have and how you feel about mine. Here they are:

1) Connor Bedard will be a finalist for the Calder Trophy. Luke Hughes will be the winner and he will win the trophy over Connor Bedard and Logan Cooley.

2) Both Connor Hellebuyck and Mark Scheifele will start the season and stay with Winnipeg. I see Scheifele being traded before Christmas and Hellebuyck will be traded around the trade deadline.

3) This will be the last season Matthews, Marner, Nylander and Tavares all play together in Toronto. 1 for sure will be gone by next season.

4) This will be the year the Carolina Hurricanes win the Stanley Cup. They will win the cup over... the Colorado Avalanche. Colorado will beat Dallas in the Conference Finals and Carolina will beat New Jersey in the Conference Finals.

5) There will be some new teams in the playoffs this year. The Buffalo Sabres and Pittsburgh Penguins will be in the playoffs this season. The New York Islanders and Florida Panthers will miss the playoffs in the east. For the West, the Vancouver Canucks will get into the playoffs and the Winnipeg Jets will miss the playoffs.

6) Even though Trevor Zegras still hasn't signed a contract extension, he will sign one before the season opener. This season, Zegras will get 90+ points.

7) The Dallas Stars will win the Presidents Trophy this season.

8) Even though Chicago just drafted Connor Bedard, they will still finish as the worst team in the NHL. They will get the 1st overall pick for a second year in a row and select Macklin Celebrini.

9) When Patrick Kane is healthy and ready to return, he will sign with 1 of these 3 teams : Buffalo, New Jersey or .... back to the Rangers.

10) Final Prediction/Hot Take. Connor McDavid will not win the Hart Trophy this season. It will instead go to one of the following players : Kirill Kaprizov, Jack Hughes, Nathan MacKinnon, Elias Pettersson or Rasmus Dahlin.

Those are my hot takes/predictions for the 2023-2024 season. You can agree or disagree with these takes, at the end of the day its fun to see what can actually happen during the regular season.

Carolina can't beat NJD in the conference finals unless NJD/Carolina finish as a wild card... But some VERY hot takes

Colorado and one of Carolina/NJ would have to finish as wild card teams for your conference finals predictions to work

Idk where the Jets will finish, do think they'll be more consistent this season, getting rid of Duchois and Wheeler should be good for the room.

As for Hellebuyck and Scheifele trades I'm not so sure they're getting traded at all, could see extensions announced some time soon, not certain Scheifele is staying but do get the sense theres an awful extension in the works for Hellebuyck which will be announced by Halloween.. 🎃

I’d do a hot take for the East, TB, BOS, FLA, NYR all miss the playoffs, BUF, OTT, PIT and…. CLB make it

Chicago can’t win the draft lottery again

Hey! Dallas could be the wildcard team you know

He did list Dallas as the presidents trophy winner though, so in this scenario it would have to be the Avs

gotcha. I missed that.