Storylines to follow for the 2020-21 NHL season

This season is going to look very different with a temporary division alignment and a shortened 56-game season. This will be the fourth time since 1994 that the NHL will play a shortened season for one reason or another. In this setup, teams will only play the other teams in their division which will put rivalries and matchups in the spotlight. 

The temporary division alignment also means a temporary playoff format that could produce some unique Stanley Cup Final matchups. Here is how it will work: The top-four teams in each division will qualify for the playoffs. Within each division, the matchups will be 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3, with the winners of each series playing each other in the second round. The four winners in the Second Round will move to the Semifinals where they will be reseeded 1-4 based on their regular-season point totals. That creates the possibility for normal conference rivals to play in the Stanley Cup Final. Think Boston vs. Toronto. Toronto (and John Tavares!) vs. New York Islanders. Colorado vs. Edmonton. All of them, and many more, are on the table. 

The most intriguing of the new divisions for this season is the North Division, or as it is more likely to be known, the Canadian division. Due to travel issues at the moment the NHL has put all of its Canadian teams into a single division. The rivalries here are going to be great with more Toronto-Montreal and Calgary-Edmonton matchups than ever before in a single season. That is to say nothing of the playoff possibilities. But it is also exciting because most of these teams are pretty evenly matched. Toronto and Edmonton seem to be the favorites on paper, but it is there for the taking for any of them. 

Joe Thornton's Hall of Fame career is missing just one thing -- his name on the Stanley Cup. In an effort to get there he left San Jose this offseason to join the Toronto Maple Leafs. The trouble: The Maple Leafs have not won the Stanley Cup since the Original Six days (1967) and have not made it out of the First Round of the playoffs in two decades. 

The Tampa Bay Lightning have been the NHL's best team for six years now and finally won the Stanley Cup with this current core. If they are going to repeat they are going to have to do so without their top offensive player, Nikita Kucherov, for the entire regular season. Kucherov underwent hip surgery just before the season and will be sidelined for the duration of the regular season. It should not stop the Lightning from making the playoffs -- the team is still loaded all over the roster -- but that is still a significant player absent from the best team in the league. 

Laine is one of the best young goal scorers in the NHL and the biggest star on the Jets. But he seems to want out of Winnipeg and will be a restricted free agent after this season. Will the Jets trade him? And if so, can they get a package of players and draft picks back in return that will make it worth it? They might be able to get a couple of players and assets back to fill other areas of need on the team, but the downside is it means you no longer have a player like Patrik Laine. 

The 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs were a breakout stage for Dubois, and now he seems to want a bigger stage to play on. Even though he signed a two-year, $10 million contract just before the start of the season, the fourth-year center reportedly wants a change of scenery. This is tough news for a Blue Jackets team that has had a difficult time retaining star players. Dubois is the best overall forward on the roster and now he seems to want out. 

The Avalanche are going to enter this season as one of the top Stanley Cup favorites in the NHL. Maybe even the favorite. They have a trio of stars on their top line, led by Nathan MacKinnon, great forward depth, and an outstanding young defense led by Cale Makar. On paper, there is no weakness anywhere on this roster. The Avalanche are not only set up for contention this season, but they are also positioned to be a powerhouse in the Western Conference for years to come. 

It was just two years ago that the San Jose Sharks were in the Western Conference Final, playing for what would have been their second trip to the Stanley Cup Final in four years. Then last year everything went wrong and resulted in one of the worst records in the league and one of the worst records in franchise history. They still have some high-end talent on the roster, but it is getting older and they still have some major question marks in goal. 

Last year's Rookie Of The Year race was dominated by defensemen. This year's group features talent all over the ice, with a couple of New York Rangers -- No. 1 overall pick Alexis Lafreniere and goalie Igor Shesterkin -- leading the way. Quinton Byfield (Los Angeles Kings) and Trevor Zegras ( Anaheim Ducks) also figure to be preseason favorites. Shesterkin might be the odds-on favorite at the start given how well he played in a limited role a season ago. 

Will anybody beat Alex Ovechkin outright in the goal-scoring race? David Pastrnak and Auston Matthews seem to be the best contenders, but if Ovechkin can win it again it would give him 10 goal scoring crowns in his NHL career. That would be more than any other player in league history. Assuming he stays healthy, he should be in the top-five, and perhaps even the top-four, on the all-time goals scoring list by the end of the regular season. 

The Sabres enter the season having missed the playoffs nine years in a row and are desperate to avoid a decade. They spent the offseason loading up on big-name, one-year veterans like Taylor Hall and Eric Staal. The problem for the Sabres: Even with those additions this is still an extremely flawed team, and they are also playing in the best division in the league. To make the playoffs they need to finish with a better record than five of these teams:  Pittsburgh, Washington, Boston, New York Rangers, New York Islanders, Washington Capitals, and New Jersey. Are they good enough for that?

The Canucks took a big step forward a year ago, putting themselves into position to make the playoffs and then eliminated the defending Stanley Cup Champion St. Louis Blues in the First Round. It was a lot of progress, but what is next? The Canucks have an outstanding trio of young stars in Elias Pettersson, Brock Boeser, and Quinn Hughes, and made some big additions over the offseason with Nate Schmidt and Braden Holtby. The Canadian Division is wide open and it could give them a path to make a nice run in the playoffs.

With Matt Murray now in Ottawa, the Penguins are set to open the series with Tristan Jarry and Casey DeSmith as their two goalies. Neither one is a proven NHL starter. Jarry certainly has the potential to be a good starter, but in parts of four seasons, he has only played well for a very limited stretch of games (the first half of the 2019-20 season). The Penguins have two great forward lines and the potential for two strong defense pairings, but the goaltending is going to be the game-changer for their season. 

By re-signing Lehner and not trading Fleury, the Golden Knights have the most unique goalie situation in the NHL. Both goalies are legit NHL starters, and both are going to want to play. We already saw in the playoffs which goalie coach Peter DeBoer trusts the most (it is Lehner) and it was a decision that led to some off-ice drama involving Fleury's agent. These are two outstanding goalies, accounting for $12 million in salary cap space, and only one of them can play at a time. Will Lehner keep the job he got in the playoffs? Or does Fleury reclaim ownership of the crease he owned from the beginning of the Golden Knights franchise?

Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin was one of the busiest executives in the league this offseason, completely reshaping his team's depth. He added Tyler Toffoli, Josh Anderson, Jake Allen, Michael Frolik, Joel Edmundson, and Corey Perry to the roster. This comes after the Canadiens shocked the hockey world by beating the Penguins in the play-in round of the Return To Play. The Canadiens entered that series as the 24th ranked team in the NHL. Was that just a fluke? Or the starting point of a quick turnaround that can be boosted by the offseason additions. Keep an eye on young forwards Nick Suzuki and Jesperi Kotkaniemi to take a big step forward and potentially become top-line players. 

With Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, the Oilers have two MVP winners and two scoring champions on their roster. They are two of the best offensive players in the league, bonafide superstars, and should be in the running for the scoring title for the foreseeable future. The problem has always been the talent around them. The Oilers had a pretty strong offseason with low-cost additions of Tyson Barrie, Kyle Turris, Dominik Kahun, and Slater Koekkoek to address those depth issues. Goaltending will be the big question, but when you add in young players like Kailer Yamamoto and Ethan Bear this might be the best supporting cast the McDavid-Draisaitl duo has had. 

The Blackhawks made the announcement to their fans that they are officially rebuilding, and the first year of it is already off to a shaky start. Kirby Dach and Alex Nylander are both going to miss most of the regular season if not all of it. The Dach injury is especially frustrating because he is their top young player and was injured at the World Junior Championship. Then they found out Jonathan Toews will be sidelined for an unspecified period of time due to health reasons. The defense is not good, they have no proven goalie, and the forward depth is as thin as it has been in Chicago in years. They could find themselves with really high lottery odds at the end of the season. 

The Flyers ended up with one of the best records in the league a year ago and made it to Game 7 of the Second Round, giving their fans some hope that they could be a Stanley Cup contender this season. Especially if Carter Hart continues to develop as their starting goalie. The one big X-factor this season could be Nolan Patrick. The 2017 No. 2 overall pick missed the entire season due to a migraine issue. He is back on the ice for training camp, and if the Flyers can get something from him this season that would be a significant boost to their young core. 

There are a lot of new faces in the NHL this season and two of the most intriguing are Kirill Kaprizov in Minnesota, and Ilya Sorokin with the New York Islanders. Both teams have been waiting for years for these prospects to arrive, and they could make significant impacts this season and beyond. Kaprizov gives the Wild a potential star forward (something they have desperately lacked) while Sorokin could create a long-term goaltending rivalry in New York with the Rangers' Shesterkin.