The peril of preseason rankings: Do they really mean anything?

But it goes well beyond the eventual Stanley Cup Champion. Ranking teams in order…man…that is so difficult. And I agonize over it. I’m such a perfectionist that even a fun assignment can turn into a massive research project. I want to get every pick right. And I’ll end up spending way too much time deliberating between teams.

It’s not even a street cred thing. I just can’t handle being wrong. And the problem is – I’m wrong a lot. In life. At work. As a parent. It’s the nature of being human. But when your opinions are out there in public, it really pays to be right.

People ask me all the time: “Who’s going to win?” And I never want to answer. Because really, unless you are Biff Tannen from the movie Back to the Future II, how could you know? I don’t. You don’t. We’re all just making an educated guess.

Anything can happen in one game. So those are hard to predict. A full season should be easier. I think it’s safe to assume the Tampa Bay Lightning will be a playoff team. And it would take a miracle for the Chicago Blackhawks to finish the season outside of the basement.

But really, the middle of the pack in the NHL is a crapshoot. There are always surprises both good and bad. And I really think people undervalue what a coaching staff can do. Of course rosters are important. An NHL team can’t win without the horses. 

But look at what Gerard Gallant was able to accomplish in his first year as head coach of the New York Rangers. That team had talent to start the 2021-22 season, and the NHL’s best goaltender in Igor Shesterkin. But depth and experience wasn’t there. Gallant was able to overcome those hurdles by fostering a winning culture that led the Rangers to the Eastern Conference final.

Before the season began, I took the Rangers as my sleeper pick to overachieve and predicted a second-place finish in the Metropolitan Division. I liked New York’s young talent and thought Gallant was the perfect hire given his past success with the Florida Panthers and Vegas Golden Knights. Both were massive underdogs when he took over behind the bench. He won the Jack Adams Award in 2017-18 with Vegas and was a finalist in 2015-16 with Florida.

But even with Gallant’s track record, I was guessing. Even as a former goaltender myself, I couldn’t have predicted the season Igor Shesterkin was going to have in net for the Rangers.

I looked good with that pick. But I also had some colossal misses. Like, again, the Jets winning the Stanley Cup. Lesson learned on that one.

Looking back, I think my disdain for predictions stems from playing NCAA hockey. Every year, before any team has taken the ice, national ranking polls come out.

Like, how? Why?

No one knows how a team will perform, especially in college hockey. Every school has an entire class of incoming freshmen. There’s no backlog of performance for those players. It’s not like the NHL where most rookies get a taste of action while on recall from the AHL. Even a small sample size can provide insight into what a player will be capable of over the course of an entire season.

I remember my freshman year at St. Lawrence when the 2001-02 NCAA preseason rankings came out. I know we received some votes and were within striking distance of a top-15 ranking.

Out of 12 teams in the ECAC, we finished ninth. Our record was 11-21-2. We had no business being ranked.

But because St. Lawrence won the ECAC tournament the previous year, it was expected that we’d be able to continue the success. Nevermind the loss of talent due to graduation.

I do think the NHL is a little easier to gauge than college hockey. Information is more readily available and in my mind, there are fewer variables. But it doesn’t make the job of assigning preseason rankings any easier.

At the end of an NHL season, it is fun to look back and see how my preseason rankings panned out. Maybe do a little happy dance for the selections that proved to be wise. And wince for those that weren’t.

It’s all in good fun, right? I keep trying to tell myself that.