BOLD PREDICTIONS:
- Pageau is on our 3rd line by the end of the year.
- Neil is shopped at the deadline, traded to a top West Conf team for a late 2nd rounder & a "mid-tier prospect" based on his reputation and not his actual recent play.
- Michalek has a Cy Young stats line (more goals than assists - 25g, 20a), finishes with a respectable +/-. People will still say he's overpaid.
- Cowen has a bad start to the year, turns his game around by December, but no one here will notice because they'll have already made up their mind about him
- Similar to Cowen, Phillips will have a nice little rebound year and look fine in the #4/5 role, but no one will notice because everyone has already made up their mind about him.
- Lazar is returned to the Oil Kings after getting a brief audition at the beginning of the year. Team decides that 22+mins a night in the WHL + the WJC is better for his development than 11 minutes/ night in Ottawa.
- Derek Grant plays 25+ games with Ottawa
- Zibanejad breaks 40 points for the first time in his career, but suffers from extreme streaky-ness and his ice-time is all over the place as a result (17 mins some nights, 13 others, etc...)
- Legwand's calm presence is a huge benefit to young forwards - put up ~40-45 points (16G, 26A, 42pts) with solid 2-way play and a huge influence on settling down & teaching a lot of younger forwards, but people will say he was a bust signing because he didn't get 50pts and he's over 34 years old.
- Bobby Ryan is going to be ridiculous good, and he'll be re-signed in early December: 5 years, $7.6mil per.
- Greening continues to underwhelm -> we trade him at the deadline for an even worse player whose contract is expiring at the end of this season just to get out from years #2 & 3 of Greening's deal.
- Condra will play 65 games, be an excellent possession player, and earn a 1-year extension at some point during the season for ~$900k-$1mil.
- Turris plateaus with a ~30G-35A-65pts season, and continues his fine 2-way play. His all-around game continues to be ignored by everyone else in the country outside of the Ottawa city limits.
- MacArthur regresses a touch (to the tune of 3-5 points), but is still a huge impact player for us nonetheless.
- Methot ends up re-signing at some point, and we end up regretting the deal 2-3 years from now (just a gut feeling here, not based on anything but blind pessimism)
- Zack Smith continues being Zack Smith - a guy who has ~20 GREAT games for us, and ~55 games where you wonder what the heck the hype was ever all about.
- Gryba spends the year on the 3rd pair, where he is good enough that the only people who complain about him are the people who are upset that Wiercioch got traded and "now we have no choice but to play Gryba".
- Wiercioch gets traded. Wier goes on to have a very Chris Campoli-like career with his new team.
- Mark Stone struggles, plays most of the year on the 3rd and 4th lines.
- Chiasson plays better with Legwand than Zibanejad (more chemistry, to the tune of a 20g-28a-48pt season), and as a result the 2nd and 3rd lines are in a state of flux all season: we essentially have a 2A & 2B scenario, where Zibanejad fans are angry at the "coaches misuse of Zibby" because he's still not the clear-cut #2 guy (as far as TOI is concerned) in January.
- Ceci plays better than is (reasonably) advertised, is anchoring our 2nd pair by December.
- Hoffman is not in the starting lineup at the end of the year.
- Claesson plays ~5 games with the big club, but only plays an average of ~12 mins a game with very managed icetime, so it's impossible to really gauge anything from that small sample size.
- Karlsson scores 25 goals and is just a shade under a PPG, but it's still obvious he's not as explosive as he was during his Norris year. 3rd in voting for Norris at the end of the year.
- We make a trade early-midseason (possibly including Wiercioch going the the other way) for a winger whose name is not Chris Stewart, when it becomes obvious that Zibanejad is our new Spezza - a center who we have a hard time finding wingers to play with/ mesh with.
