Standing Projections, Dispersal Draft Edition

We're rapidly approaching the beginning of the inagural season of the KPHL, and all 32 teams have now filled out the majority of their pro rosters through the dispersal draft, so we're going to take a look at which teams are primed to contend for a Cup, and which are building for contention a few years from now. Before we get to the projections, a quick look at how they were generated:

• All projections were made using JFresh's WAR Roster Builder, which uses WAR data from TopDownHockey.
  • https://twitter.com/JFreshHockey
  • https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/topdownhockey
• Rosters were scraped between rounds 17 and 22 of the dispersal draft, which means that each team had at least 23 players at the time that their roster was collected.
• Rosters were sorted by overall and put in in that order for the forwards and defense. Line combinations will obviously change over the season, but shouldn't have too large of an effect on the WAR projections.
• Starting goalies were put in to start 50 games, which is around league average.
• This tool was obviously made to project real life success in the NHL, and Simon T may have different notions of which teams are actually good.

With all that out of the way, here are the projections for our inagural season:

Pacific Division:

Best Forwards: Edmonton, 17.9 WAR

Worst Forwards: San Jose, 7.9 WAR

Best Defense: Calgary, 4.5 WAR

Worst Defense: San Jose, 0.0 WAR

Best Goalies: Vancouver, 6.9 WAR

Worst Goalies: Anaheim, -0.1 WAR

Central:

Best Forwards: St Louis, 18.3 WAR

Worst Forwards: Chicago, -0.7 WAR

Best Defense: Colorado, 4.3 WAR

Worst Defense: Arizona, 0.2 WAR

Best Goalies: Winnipeg, 6.1 WAR

Worst Goalies: St Louis, 1.8 WAR / Dallas, 1.8 WAR

Metro:

Best Forwards: Pittsburgh, 13.9 WAR

Worst Forwards: Philadelphia, 2.1 WAR

Best Defense: NY Rangers, 4.2 WAR

Worst Defense: Washington, 0.5 WAR

Best Goalies: NY Rangers, 9.4 WAR

Worst Goalies: Philadelphia, 2.1 WAR

Atlantic:

Best Forwards: Boston, 19.5 WAR

Worst Forwards: Buffalo, 6.1 WAR

Best Defense: Tampa Bay, 4.8 WAR

Worst Defense: Montreal, 0.9 WAR

Best Goalies: Tampa Bay, 4.4 WAR

Worst Goalies: Toronto, 0.7 WAR

Western Playoff Picture:

Eastern Playoff Picture:

President's Trophy Hopefuls:

Connor Bedard Hopefuls: