Are the Maple Leafs really the NHL’s top team? Will Matthew Tkachuk win more games playing in Sunrise, Fla., this season than his old teammates do in Calgary? Which teams are due for the sharpest rises and declines in 2022-23?
The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn has answered these questions with his point-projection model and gone deep on each result in our annual team previews, along with Shayna Goldman, Sean Gentille and Hailey Salvian.
Now let’s go to the reporters who know each team best and see what they think of the projections.
Toronto Maple Leafs
Projected points: 110.5
This seems about right to me. The core of the team that set a franchise record with 115 points last season is still here. Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner are only getting better, and they were pretty freakin’ good last season. The supporting cast around them has changed slightly, but Michael Bunting is still around to crash the net and enrage opponents, and Nicolas Aube-Kubel and Zach Aston-Reese figure to make the bottom six more useful. The defense is solid, if aging.