{"id":2304,"date":"2026-06-19T23:40:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T23:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=2304"},"modified":"2026-06-19T23:40:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T23:40:06","slug":"ice-cold-an-audit-of-my-worst-nhl-prediction-season-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=2304","title":{"rendered":"Ice cold: An audit of my worst NHL prediction season yet"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Every year during the NHL preseason, I make a series of bold predictions for the upcoming regular season.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=2302\">Elder Bednar encourages families to be \u2018focused on remembering who they are\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cBold\u201d is the key word. It\u2019s no fun to make safe predictions.<\/p>\n<p>This season, though, I may have been too bold \u2014 which is all part of the fun.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s an audit of perhaps my worst prediction season yet.<\/p>\n<h3>The hits<\/h3>\n<h4>Utah Mammoth make the playoffs<\/h4>\n<p>In a loaded Central Division, it was anything but guaranteed that the Utah Mammoth would make the Stanley Cup Playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>And thank goodness they did, for my sake. I don\u2019t cheer for the team, but if they had missed the playoffs, I wouldn\u2019t have gotten much right this season at all.<\/p>\n<h4>Vegas Golden Knights make the Stanley Cup Final<\/h4>\n<p>OK, the full prediction was that the Vegas Golden Knights would beat the Toronto Maple Leafs in the Stanley Cup Final, with Mitch Marner taking home the bragging right against his former team.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ll call the glass half full.<\/p>\n<p>The Golden Knights did not win the Cup, but they fell just two games short. Marner played a massive role in their playoff success, commanding a 7-point lead over the second-leading playoff scorer and placing fourth in Conn Smythe voting for playoff MVP.<\/p>\n<p>As for the Maple Leafs, they went the opposite direction, winning the draft lottery instead.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<p>A NATURAL HAT TRICK IN THE SPAN OF 6:10?!<\/p>\n<p>MITCH MARNER JUST DID THAT \ud83e\udd29 #StanleyCup <\/p>\n<p>Powered by @Verizon pic.twitter.com\/dyf1qGPOzW<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 NHL (@NHL) June 7, 2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h3>The misses<\/h3>\n<h4>Sam Rinzel wins the Calder Trophy<\/h4>\n<p>I saw Sam Rinzel as this season\u2019s Lane Hutson, to the extent that he\u2019d win the Calder Trophy as the rookie of the year.<\/p>\n<p>Both players:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Were drafted later than most Calder Trophy winners.<\/li>\n<li>Are offensive defensemen.<\/li>\n<li>Scored at high rates in the single-digit number of games they\u2019d played the previous season.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It didn\u2019t work out that way for Rinzel. He split the season between the NHL and the AHL, and wasn\u2019t anything particularly jaw-dropping at either level.<\/p>\n<p>By no means does it mean Rinzel is a bad player, but perhaps he won\u2019t turn into Hutson.<\/p>\n<h4>Evgeni Malkin gets traded to the Florida Panthers<\/h4>\n<p>The Pittsburgh Penguins were supposed to be the only team actively trying to get worse this year, yet they somehow made the playoffs. And on the flip side, the back-to-back Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers somehow missed the postseason.<\/p>\n<p>Given that they were in the race down the stretch, the thought of the Penguins trading any of their stars was out of the question, and the Panthers just weren\u2019t in a position to go all-in again.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=2300\">Despite Christian Pulisic\u2019s absence, US beats Australia 2-0 to advance to World Cup knockout round<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Malkin and the Penguins have since come to an agreement on a one-year contract extension to keep him in Pittsburgh next season. The deal does stipulate, though, that Malkin is to submit a three-team list in January of teams to which he can be traded, so depending on where the Penguins stand at that time, it\u2019s not out of the question that a move like this could happen for the reasons that I speculated before the season began.<\/p>\n<h4>Clayton Keller scores 100 points<\/h4>\n<p>I\u2019ve missed by 10-12 points on this prediction two years in a row now. The laws of jinx dictate that as soon as I stop predicting it, Clayton Keller will score 100 points.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t worry, Mammoth fans. I\u2019ll get out of his way for next season.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t a failure of a season by any means, though, for Keller. He maintained nearly identical offensive numbers to last year while improving significantly on the defensive side of the puck \u2014 not to mention leading his team to the playoffs and winning Olympic gold during the break.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<p>CLAYTON KELLER CALLS GAME \ud83c\udfaf <\/p>\n<p>He absolutely rips one in @Energizer overtime! pic.twitter.com\/SBmbMEYRN3<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 NHL (@NHL) April 8, 2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h4>Mikhail Sergachev finishes top 5 in Norris Trophy voting<\/h4>\n<p>With Mikhail Sergachev taking on a much bigger role since being traded to Utah, he seemed like a prime candidate to hit the 80-point plateau and establish himself as a top five to 10 defenseman in the world.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s undoubtedly a No. 1 defenseman on a playoff team, as he proved this year, but the Norris Trophy race is always insanely competitive. Perhaps his ceiling is a little below that threshold.<\/p>\n<p>As I said with Keller, though, he\u2019s probably going to do it as soon as I stop predicting it.<\/p>\n<h4>Logan Cooley scores more points than anyone else born in 2004 or later<\/h4>\n<p>Logan Cooley missing almost three months of the season with an injury makes this one hard to judge.<\/p>\n<p>No, he didn\u2019t score more than everyone his age or younger, even if you average it out on a points-per-game level. But had he had the ability to keep his momentum going for a full 82 games, who knows where he would have ended up?<\/p>\n<p>For context, 15 of his 24 goals this season came in games wherein he scored more than once. When he\u2019s on a roll, there\u2019s no holding him back. If he stays healthy the entirety of next season, he could be one of the most productive players in his age bracket.<\/p>\n<h3>Thoughts?<\/h3>\n<p>Did you make any NHL predictions this year? How\u2019d you do? Do you have any for next year?<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=2298\">Opinion: An argument for the divinity of the U.S. Constitution<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Join the conversation in the comment section!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who won the Stanley Cup in 2026? Did the Utah Mammoth make the playoffs this year? Is Clayton Keller a good player? How good is Mikhail Sergachev?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Ice cold: An audit of my worst NHL prediction season yet - American Movers Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=2304\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ice cold: An audit of my worst NHL prediction season yet - American Movers Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Who won the Stanley Cup in 2026? 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