Adam Proteau made five NHL predictions for the 2023 calendar year, and he's doing it again with three bold guesses for 2024 involving the Sabres, Lightning, Coyotes, Rangers and Devils.

At this time last season, this writer posted five NHL predictions for 2023. 

To our credit, we hit the bullseye on a few of them, including predicting accurately that the St. Louis Blues would trade Vladimir Tarasenko, that Toronto would beat Tampa Bay in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs and that the Philadelphia Flyers would finish seventh in the Metropolitan Division and fire GM Chuck Fletcher.

With that said, let’s try something similar and put together three predictions for 2024:

1. The Buffalo Sabres make a second-half push through the Atlantic Division, knocking Tampa Bay out of a playoff spot by the season's end.

We thought the Sabres would be vastly better than they were in 2022-23, but the opposite is true – they’re worse and currently find themselves sitting seventh in the Atlantic Division. That’s the bad news. The good news is they’re just seven points behind the Lightning for fourth spot in the Atlantic, and we suspect Buffalo will flip the script the rest of the season and wind up pushing the Bolts out of a wild-card playoff berth.

Tampa has looked decidedly mediocre this season, going 17-13-5 to this point in the schedule. Another injury or two to the Lightning’s roster, and they could find themselves in a standings freefall – that could open up a competitive window for the Sabres to climb through and make the playoffs for the first time since 2010-11. They’ve got enough talent to turn things around and put major pressure on the lower playoff seeds in the Eastern Conference, and they just might edge out the Bolts in the final few weeks of the regular season and snag a wild-card slot for the next post-season.

It won’t be easy, but stranger things have happened, and we have a hunch this is the year the Sabres finally figure it out and give their fans a taste of what playoff hockey is all about.

2. The Arizona Coyotes trade a slew of veterans but make the playoffs anyway.

We didn’t see the Coyotes as a playoff team when we made our pre-season predictions, but we’ve seen Arizona’s decent performance through 33 games at 17-14-2. It’s time to give the Coyotes credit – they’re a fast, hungry, motivated group that can push an opponent to their limit on a regular basis. They’re presently fifth overall in the Central Division, two points behind Nashville, with one game in hand on the Predators (a team we still have great suspicions about). This could, at long last, be the breakthrough season their fan base has been aching to see.

Now, that doesn’t mean that Arizona GM Bill Armstrong is going to forget about his team’s big picture, and the reality is he has a handful of veteran players in the final season of their current contracts. That means Armstrong could choose to trade those looming UFAs for more young players and draft picks, but at this point, the impetus for the Coyotes should be to end the cycle of failure and give their young core at least a small taste of playoff action. Moving veterans such as Matt Dumba and Jason Zucker won’t do any long-term damage, and the Coyotes could win in spite of moving out supporting roster pieces.

Better times are coming for the Coyotes, and the first steps forward would be them shaking off pressure in the next few months and earning a playoff spot despite altering their roster.

3. The New York Rangers win the Presidents' Trophy but lose in the first round to the New Jersey Devils.

The Rangers were our pre-season pick to post the best regular-season record this year. So far, so good; they’re currently the NHL’s top team in terms of points percentage, and they’re a menace at home (11-4-0) and on the road (12-4-1). The Blueshirts are deep at all positions, well-coached by Peter Laviolette, and have one of the game’s top goaltenders in Igor Shesterkin.

That said, veteran hockey observers are fully aware that most teams that win the Presidents’ Trophy as the best regular-season team in the league rarely convert that achievement into post-season success. And we can see the Devils – a team that has underachieved greatly so far this season – ousting them in the 2024 playoffs, the same way New Jersey did to the Rangers in the 2023 playoffs. The Devils should have star defenseman Dougie Hamilton back from injury by the post-season, and they’re going to have a stacked group with big expectations, so it isn’t as if the notion of a Devils win over the Rangers would be a massive upset.

There’s not much that separates the two Metro Division rivals, and all the Rangers’ achievements could be for naught if they can’t go on a deep playoff run.