Just bought Forecaster, which has been my favorite magazine for the past 6-7 years. This has been their most deceiving edition so far.
First of all, on top of having the traditional depth chart, they added their "projected lines", which are often pretty random. They also added a useless "who connects with who" for every team, to know how many points each player got along with other players. I wouldn't mind too much about that if the direct consequence was not to cut severely the amount of players who are being given an in depth analysis (which has always been the strenght of this magazine). So for every team, you only have 10 or 11 forwards that are being analyzed, along with 3 to 5 defensemen. It used to be a lot more and that's what I liked, to read about every player of every team. Now you don't get any words on many up and coming prospects who might have an impact in the NHL this year.
If I take the Habs for example, you get no word on Hudon, Jerabek, Sherback, McCarron, Morrow and De La Rose. If you want to know how they project Hjalmarsson or Hainsey to perform this year with their new teams, well you'll have to look somewhere else. I'd much rather have this than a useless "projected lines" that won't matter anymore while training camps start.
Secondly, some of their projections are pretty bizarre this year. Top 4 scorers?
1- Malkin
2- Kucherov
3- McDavid
4- Tavares
I understand they're trying to be different, but come on... McDavid is the safe bet and there's no reason to believe Malkin would suddenly surpass Crosby after all these years. Also, they predict a massive rebound year for Ovechkin (55-36-91). I really don't see that... Massive rebound year for the Sedins too, at 37 years old...
Thirdly, there's a very annoying Leafs homerism. So apparently, growing pains are already over in Toronto. Each of their player will reach their ceiling as soon as this year and they will make the Stanley Cup final. Yeah, sure...