I can tell you how it SHOULD go

 The beginning of trade season has seen one team in particular get very active very early. The Calgary Flames have taken advantage of talent on their roster, a somewhat underwhelming season and a market thirsting for talent infusions and executed a couple of big trades, sending Elias Lindholm to Vancouver and Chris Tanev to Dallas. Noah Hanifin is likely next, and who knows what else is to follow. 

Meanwhile, NHL.com states that the Minnesota Wild "might not [trade Marc-Andre Fleury] if the Wild believe they can make the Stanley Cup Playoffs. They're in the hunt...". Whether or not the Wild trade Fleury likely has more to do with whether or not Fleury wants to be moved. He's had a Hall of Fame career, is on his 4th team and is approaching 40. I can't imagine he's all that willing to be traded again, even to a cup contender, and the Wild are likely willing to let him have his way. 

But calling the Wild "in the hunt" is the really strange part of all this. The Flames, the team that has been jettisoning, and will continue to offload, their top talent, are a point ahead of the Wild, with two games in hand. This is, of course, made worse by the Wild dropping their two most recent games against two teams immediately ahead of them in the standings - the Predators and Blues (who are also, it should be said, ahead of and tied with the Flames, respectively).

The Flames are on a 5 game winning streak right now, and if the Predators weren't in the midst of an 8 game run, they would be right up against the final wild card spot. The Wild have been an uneven mess for most of the season. They haven't had any streaks, except for a brief minute after the all star break, where you thought that they would be making a run towards the postseason.

I'm an advocate for teams always making every effort to reach the postseason. Anything can happen when you get there, especially in this era when the first couple of rounds may be against a rival to help you get your blood boiling, but I also understand the Flames desire to cash in where they are able. The players they are trading away aren't going to be on the roster next year, and they are only at the periphery of the postseason conversation. Surely, they could make it, but also if they don't they would have lost Tanev and Lindholm for nothing.

A bigger gulf between the Flames and Wild isn't the attitude for the postseason. Minnesota just doesn't have the high end tradeable assets that Calgary does. Outside of Fleury, the Wild's other players on expiring deals are names like Connor Dewar and Brandon Duhaime, which will not attract the same kind of attention. 

From a strict performance standpoint, it should be the Wild and not the Flames selling off pieces already. In the end, we might not see the Wild do much of anything while Calgary remains active, because things aren't solely determined by performance. 

Let's pretend I know what I was talking about

 Back in October, I had some thoughts:

The league seems to be very Eastern Conference heavy going into the year, and picking a winner there will be tricky. I'm going to lean into the Florida Panthers, who made a leap last year, and then spent the entire summer firming up their roster. They are going to be good again in 2022, and if my hunch that the Lightning are going to be flat is correct, they should have an inside track on the Atlantic. I don't trust the 'Canes, Rangers or Maple Leafs, so I guess the Panthers are where it's at for me.

 Pretty good, right? I mean, I did say the Panthers were going to win it all in 6, which they can't do, now down 3-1. That's clearly the biggest flaw in this post. 

Well, even in this paragraph, I don't mention the Bruins at all in a post about Eastern Conference contenders. That's not great. They had a pretty decent year. I did pick playoff teams for all the rest though, so I'll take points there! 

Oh, and I didn't include comments about the Western Conference. I highlighted, let's see, the Wild and the Blues. Wow. But I did say the Oilers were going to be good! Of course, I did also suggest that the champion from the Western Conference would be the Calgary Flames.

Not my finest hour. It's fine, I've only been doing this for like 10 years. 

At last, it is hockey season

We made it, everyone. We made it through two pandemic battered seasons, an offseason that saw the demise of the beloved Barry Melrose Rocks brand and headline after headline that exposed the gross underbelly of youth hockey, and even before the season began for everyone, headlines that exposed the grossness of current players. We made it through all that, and this week we will have the most normal seeming season we have had in multiple years. 

It's important to note that we have only made it through the headlines. The reckoning and soul searching will take time, and forgiveness and healing will take longer. Canada seems to be better at coming to grips with it's sordid history of late, and I can only hope that this means an earnest effort to hockey writ large to follow a more generous future for all who encounter the game. 

But along side this area of reformation, we get to enjoy hockey unencumbered by nearly as many world issues. Just think, two years ago, American teams couldn't even play in Canada, let alone in Prague. After the last couple of years with significant structural question marks, we can now ask questions about how the Flames are going to mesh this year, instead of how many Kings can even play the Oilers this weekend. 

I suspect that among the returns to normalcy will be a return to the difficulty in repeating as Cup champions. I would not be surprised to see the Avalanche fall flat this season, not because of a lack of talent but simply because of exhaustion. Similarly the Lightning, who have been diving deep into the postseason with regularity the last several years.

The league seems to be very Eastern Conference heavy going into the year, and picking a winner there will be tricky. I'm going to lean into the Florida Panthers, who made a leap last year, and then spent the entire summer firming up their roster. They are going to be good again in 2022, and if my hunch that the Lightning are going to be flat is correct, they should have an inside track on the Atlantic. I don't trust the 'Canes, Rangers or Maple Leafs, so I guess the Panthers are where it's at for me.

Out West, there simply isn't the high end depth that there is in East. If the Avs are down, as I project, there aren't obvious candidates to take them. The Blues and Wild will be good (though I worry about the Wild and their reliance on youth to surround Kirill Kaprizov) but I don't believe anyone expects deep Cup runs from either. In the Pacific, the class of the conference is in Alberta, with a mish mash of disappointment expected at varying levels elsewhere.

I'm moderately sure that most professional sports are prearranged to encourage better story lines, and if the Panthers are coming from the East, that surely means the Flames will be their opponent. And wouldn't that be something, given the loss of Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk? Panthers in 6.

We have a lot more certainty this season. It is going to happen and be familiar. I will probably be wrong, but only because hockey is hard to predict, Enjoy the games tonight (and through the rest of the season).