Every year, at the very beginning of a season, I like to take the 10 most hopeless teams in the NHL and try to figure out if there’s any chance we could all be wrong and they’ll actually be good. That’s “good,” as opposed to just “not terrible,” because even an awful team can have a goalie go on a heater for a few months and drag them into the fringe of the playoff race. I wanted to figure out which team is going to be the 2018-19 Islanders or 2017-18 Golden Knights, the underdog expected to finish dead last who instead becomes a Cup contender.
It’s kind of a weird season to be doing this, for two reasons.
First, it’s been a while since we’ve really seen one of these hopeless teams break through. That Islanders turnaround was four years ago now, but you could argue it’s still the most recent example. The Habs’ run in the 2021 playoffs was unexpected, and last year’s collapse made it feel miraculous, but they went into that season with decent expectations. We’re looking for teams that are already being written off before they’ve even played a game, but could be legitimate contenders. Last year’s list did have two playoff teams, the Predators and Kings, but neither won a round, so your contender mileage may vary.
That leads us to our second problem: With the top of the 2023 draft looming, a lot of teams sure seem to want to be hopeless this year.
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