NHL Power Rankings: Stanley Cup Champion Pittsburgh Penguins Begin the new Season on Top, While the Basement Dwelling Toronto Maple Leafs Start at the Bottom. With an 82-Game Roller-Coaster Ride Ahead of us, Don’t Expect Either to Stay in Those Positions for Too Long.

Welcome to our first NHL power rankings of the 2016-17 season. We plan to present them every seven days over the next 28 consecutive weeks until the Stanley Cup Playoffs begin.

Competition got off to an early start this year thanks to the World Cup of Hockey. It seemed to captivate fans at first, but the long drawn out tournament eventually led to a disappointing finish in which tickets for the Final were being sold for fractions of their original price.

It didn’t take long for our attention to shift to NHL training camp/preseason. Several intriguing storylines have developed (especially in recent days) as teams were forced to get under the cap with their 22/23 man rosters before the 5pm (EST) deadline on Tuesday.

On a bit of a side note, It’s important that we don’t read into preseason records too much. Don’t forget, the NFL’s Detroit Lions mustered up a perfect 4-0 preseason record back in 2008 before making history with a 0-16 record during the regular season. So, while a 6-0 record for Colorado is an encouraging sign under new bench boss Jared Bednar, we must take the performance with a grain of salt.

5 Intriguing Storylines From the NHL Preseason

1. A boat load of Coyotes rookies wound up cracking the opening night roster. We had an inclination that Dylan Strome and Christian Dvorak would begin the year down in the Desert; however, we did not anticipate D Jakob Chychrun and F Lawson Crouse to join them. You could include Laurent Dauphin in that mix as well – which makes you wonder, “how long will the kids stick around?”

2. Russian defender Ivan Provorov was given a high likelihood of cracking the Flyers roster this Fall. Few expected Travis Konecny to emerge the way that he has. At this point, there’s no reason to believe that either are headed back to junior in 2016-17 – in fact, expect both of these guys to challenge among Calder Trophy nominees.

3. The Toronto Maple Leafs are making the youth movement shift. They made a sneaky good waiver claim to grab Seth Griffith, and also welcome prospects Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Zach Hyman, Connor Brown, and Mitch Marner.

4. Edmonton will have a different look in 2016-17. They sacrificed star winger Taylor Hall to help shore up the right side with D Adam Larsson. They also welcome 4th overall pick Jesse Puljujarvi, who will seemingly replace the recently traded Nail Yakupov. Perhaps the biggest surprise of all though was a quiet college free agent signing, Drake Caggiula. His preseason performance made GM Peter Chiarelli’s job much more difficult, but it’s one of those problems you like to have as a General Manager because it gives you a bit of versatility to make moves.

5. After spending over a quarter-billion dollars ($250 billion-plus) in the offseason, the Florida Panthers are off to a shaky start. They lost Nick Bjugstad for a month late last week and received even worse news on Sunday morning when it was revealed that Jonathan Huberdeau will miss the next three-to-four months. Can someone like Jared McCann or Jonathan Marchessault step up to replace those massive voids? Time will tell.

The first edition will be fairly straightforward with only a few surprises. At the top are those teams that finished last year off on a high-note, which means the 30th place Toronto Maple Leafs start at the bottom (although we don’t necessarily expect them to stay there).

Make sure to stay tuned with us here at Puck Prose every week to see which teams are the biggest movers and shakers!