That means the door opens for some non-playoff teams to make it back to the dance.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at a couple of Eastern Conference teams who could bounce back and make the playoffs in 2018-19.
Carolina Hurricanes
Every year, the Carolina Hurricanes are a popular sleeper pick to make the playoffs.
Every year, they disappoint in large part due to horrendously bad goaltending.
They didn’t do much to fix it this summer – replacing Cam Ward with Petr Mrazek is a pretty marginal upgrade – but I’m going to go right back to the well again.