What's more important than our pick to win the Stanley Cupâ€”more on that laterâ€”is that everyone understands how the new playoff system works. It's complicated, and probably unnecessarily so, but that's beside the point now. Gotta work with the cards you're dealt, even if the hearts and diamonds are replaced with infinity signs and smiley faces.

This is all a function of NHL realignment, which went from two, three-division conferences, each with 15 teams, to two, two-division conference, one with two eight-team divisions and the other with two seven-team divisions.

MORE PREDICTIONS: Atlantic | Metropolitan | Central | Pacific

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The top three teams in each division will make up the first 12 teams in the playoffs. The remaining four spots will be filled by the next two highest-placed finishers in each conference, based on regular-season points and regardless of division. It will be possible, then, for one division to send five teams to the postseason while the other sends three

The seeding of the wild-card teams within each divisional playoff will be determined on the basis of regular-season points. The division winner with the most points in the conference will be matched against the wild-card team with the fewest points; the division winner with the second-most points in the conference will play the wild-card team with the second fewest points

The teams finishing second and third in each division will play in the first round of the playoffs. The winners of each series will play for berths in the conference championship series.

The winners of the conference championships advance to the Stanley Cup Final.

That â€¦ is a lot of text. Let's use our divisional predictions as the example.

EASTERN CONFERENCE

Atlantic: 1. Boston; 2. Ottawa; 3. Montreal; 4. Detroit

Metropolitan: 1. Pittsburgh 2. N.Y. Rangers 3. Washington 4. N.Y. Islanders

Notes: Detroit is in the fourth spot not because it's the fourth-place team in the Atlantic, but because it's the first wild card. I'm saying the Wings will have more points than the Islanders, which would put them against the lesser division winnerâ€”the Bruins. â€¦ The Devils could easily jump the Isles, but that's not really the point.

WESTERN CONFERENCE

Central: 1. Chicago; 2. St. Louis; 3. Minnesota

Pacific: 1. Los Angeles; 2. San Jose; 3. Vancouver; 4. Phoenix; 5. Anaheim

Notes: I think Anaheim, fifth place in the Pacific, will have more points than the fourth-place team in the Central, which means that both wild-card teams will come out of the Pacific.

So, the bracket is setâ€”and, go.

The Chicago Blackhawks, set to repeat as Stanley Cup champions and become the first to complete that feat since the Detroit Red Wings in 1997-98. Congrats to Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews and Co., who triumph over the low-payroll, high-yield Ottawa Senators in six games. Regards to owner Eugene Melnyk. Just another 100-percent guaranteed, irrefutable prediction from Sporting News.