The 2022-23 NHL season is a few games in, but that won’t stop us from making some early predictions for who will be the next Stanley Cup champion.
The Colorado Avalanche are the favorites to repeat at +380 on DraftKings Sportsbook, but there’s no guarantee they’ll hoist Lord Stanley once again in June.
There are a lot of strong teams that will be in the hunt and anything can happen when the playoffs roll around. NESN.com’s “experts” gave their best shot at predicting who the next Stanley Cup champ will be.
Lauren Willand — Colorado Avalanche over New York Rangers
I correctly predicted last year’s final and winner so we’ll see if the Avs and I can also repeat.
The Avalanche, despite the loss of goalie Darcy Kuemper to the Washington Capitals and Nazem Kadri to the Calgary Flames, are still a stacked team that will be very hard to beat in the playoffs. They have a complete lineup and still boast a slew of young talent including last year’s Conn Smythe winner Cale Makar, Nathan MacKinnon, Gabriel Landeskog, Mikko Rantanen and Valeri Nichuschkin. Even though they’ll be without Landeskog to start the season due to a lower-body injury, the Avalanche showed in their season-opening win that they have no intention of slowing down.
The Rangers, though, are no team to write off. Igor Shesterkin will be an X-factor for New York all season plus with the veteran addition of Vincent Trochek to provide some added depth behind Mika Zibanejad and Filip Chytil, the Rangers will be a very tough opponent this season.
Keagan Stiefel — Colorado Avalanche over Florida Panthers
Is it dumb to pick a team to repeat? Maybe, but the Tampa Bay Lightning just did it so I’m all in on Cale Makar and the boys once again in 2023. Colorado’s playoff run in 2022 was that of a team who was better than its opponent in almost every way. Sure, there’s a question in net, but you’ll need to get the puck past the blue line for that to matter. The Avalanche have enough talent at every level for me to feel confident in riding what I saw last season.