Roundtable: what’s your bold prediction for the rest of the season?

With the bye week, we’re looking ahead for the rest of the year.

So with today’s roundtable, we asked our staff about their bold predictions for the remainder of the season.

Have your say in the comments below.

Florida will be great second half of the season and push the Leafs out of a play off spot.
I like the way the Panthers play and I think they are really heating up at the moment. The Leafs look, dare I say, complacent? Florida has a few games in hand and are 11 points back of the Buds. Maybe the playoff race in the Atlantic isn’t over yet…

Mitch Marner breaks out of his goal-scoring slump and finishes the season with at least 20 goals, then doesn’t slow down and goes full 2016 London Knights in the playoffs. All while playing with Auston Matthews and Zach Hyman. Mike Babcock makes the best lineup move of the year.

The Leafs will make it to overtime of game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals against Vegas. With mere seconds left, Brendan Leipsic will bank the cup winning goal off of Roman Polak’s face. Travis Dermott will watch in horror from the press box. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.

The Leafs will make a trade to acquire a defenseman, and they’ll give up one of Marner or Nylander to do it. I’m not really in favour of this (depending on the return, of course) but they made some very obvious ‘going for it’ moves this offseason so I’m not sure how patient they’re going to be. Dermott has looked great so far and his progression is probably going to have a huge impact on whether or not this comes to fruition. If Dermott can cement himself in the top-6, maybe management takes a step back and lets things play out. If Dermott’s hot streak comes to and end, I can see the team making a (probably shortsighted) move to bring someone in.

mitch marner MVP

The Leafs will continue to struggle for a short while after their bye week, but will turn it on and not look back afterwards. This team is too good on paper to be struggling like this, and hopefully the return of Zaitsev coupled with the blatantly poor play of certain players will actually finally force personnel changes. I’m nervous, but optimistic.

Everything carries on as normal. Freddie continues to play too much and everyone nervously thinks about Cam Talbot last year vs. this year. The Leafs make the playoffs, but players like Kapanen, Dermott, and dare I say Liljegren mostly watch from the press box because it’s “heavy playoff hockey” and we “need snarl from veterans like Roman Polak.” The Leafs make the second round then flame out despite a good try, good effort from the buds. The Leafs offer Polak a two-year deal. The fanbase is exhausted. We do it all again next year.