Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.

Well, the season is starting about four-and-a-half months later than any of us would have liked, but at least it's starting. For most hockey fans, who have come to the NHL in waves since the Rangers won the Stanley Cup way back in 1994, this will be their first (and hopefully last ever) look at what an abbreviated schedule looks like.

We're constantly being told these days that anything can happen in a 48-game season. It's such a small sample size and teams can get weirdly hot or cold irrespective of their actual quality. Detroit, for instance, would have won the Presidents' Trophy through 48 games last season, but in the end didn't even win its division. Plus, you have to consider the fact that these 48 games are being played in an absurdly compacted schedule that's sure to screw with results even more. Lots of teams will make a nasty habit of playing three games in four days throughout the year, and that opens up room for fatigue, injuries and more to skew results in the weirdest ways possible.

Chaos for the league this year. Fun, exciting, hilarious chaos.

You can still bank on a lot of things happening as they would have in an 82-game season, of course. Evgeni Malkin will still be great. The Jets will still stink. Scott Hartnell will still fall down all the time. But overall, guessing how things go this year will be a lot tougher.

[Also: Winners & losers in NBC Sports' 2013 NHL TV schedule]

So why wouldn't I want to trot out, for the fourth year in a row somehow, 20 Bold Predictions for the upcoming NHL season?

1. Caps miss the playoffs. Leafs make it. In both cases, goaltending is the reason why.

2. Erik Karlsson will take a big step back production-wise.

3. We'll find out that all the time in Switzerland did Patrick Kane a lot of good, and he has a career year.

4. With Zach Parise and Mikko Koivu on his line, Dany Heatley starts to kind of resemble the motivated, really good Dany Heatley of old. Like, if you squint a little bit.

5. Dallas' strategy of signing a bunch of old guys whose bodies can't take an 82-game season pays off because they only have to play 48. Stars in the playoffs, led by Jamie Benn and Jaromir Jagr.

6. Cam Atkinson is going to win the Calder Trophy. Sorry, Nail Yakupov.

7. Shea Weber, not Ryan Suter, will be the one who doesn't look so hot without his ol' runnin' buddy.

8. Jonathan Quick will win the Vezina he should have won last year.

[Also: Play Fantasy Hockey on Yahoo! Sports]

9. One of Anaheim's big three forwards gets shipped out. I mean, it's probably Bobby Ryan but you never know.

10. That Jordan Staal contract will start to look real bad, real fast.

11. Evander Kane puts up another great season, but no one in Winnipeg will stop vilifying him.

12. Nine guys will break the 20-goal barrier this year. Rick Nash won't be one of them.

13. No one will actually complain about hockey being played in late June.

14. The Lightning will win the wide-open Southeast. Steven Stamkos will push 40 goals.

[Also: Finally healthy, Sidney Crosby eager for NHL return]

15. Jiri Hudler and Dennis Wideman will both make a real strong case for "Dumbest Jay Feaster signing of the summer." Hudler wins by a slim margin.

16. Detroit will barely squeeze into the playoffs because their defense is terrible, and then get routed in the first round. Jimmy Howard looks decidedly human all of a sudden.

17. This will be Teemu Selanne's last season in the NHL, and he still goes a point a game.

18. The Oilers' power play will be the only good thing about the Oilers, but man, it's gonna be really, really good. Top three in the league.

19. Buffalo will prove it did indeed get tough, but having done so won't help them become a better hockey team. They miss the playoffs.