Every year, at the very start of a season, I like to take the 10 most hopeless teams in the NHL and try to figure out if there’s any chance we could all be wrong and they’ll actually be good. That’s “good,” as opposed to just “not terrible,” because even an awful team can have a goalie go on a heater for a few months and drag them into the fringe of the playoff race. I wanted to figure out which team is going to be the 2018-19 Islanders or 2017-18 Golden Knights, the underdog expected to finish dead last who instead becomes a Cup contender.

It’s kind of a weird season to be doing this, for two reasons.

First, it’s been a while since we’ve really seen one of these hopeless teams break through. That Islanders turnaround was four years ago now, but you could argue it’s still the most recent example. The Habs’ run in the 2021 playoffs was unexpected, and last year’s collapse made it feel miraculous, but they went into that season with decent expectations. We’re looking for teams that are already being written off before they’ve even played a game, but could be legitimate contenders. Last year’s list did have two playoff teams, the Predators and Kings, but neither won a round, so your contender mileage may vary.

That leads us to our second problem: With the top of the 2023 draft looming, a lot of teams sure seem to want to be hopeless this year. The whole point here is to offer some optimism to hopeless fan bases, but right now Connor Bedard is the optimism for more than a few teams. Am I even helping here? I’m not sure I am.

I’ll still try my best, unlike some teams we could mention. As always, we’re taking the 10 worst teams for this season, based on the season previews from Dom’s model. We’ll start with the 10th most hopeless team and work our way to the very depths of despair.

Four teams — Vancouver, Nashville, Los Angeles and Ottawa — have graduated from last year’s list and into the NHL’s middle class. Let’s try to figure out who might join them, and maybe go even further than that. Hopefully.

Seattle Kraken

The projections say: 87 points and a 27 percent chance of making the playoffs

Why they’re probably right: The Kraken were bad last year, which we probably should have expected. The Golden Knights were Cup contenders right from the start, which shocked everyone and messed up our ability to project the Kraken, but the roster never looked especially strong. In addition to the expected lack of offense, the goaltending was a weakness, and all that’s changed there since is the addition of Martin Jones. I’m guessing that’s not going to solve anything.

But hear me out: Jones isn’t likely to be the answer, but regression might be. There’s a reason nobody saw Philipp Grubauer’s season coming: he’d been a consistently good goaltender for his entire career before arriving in Seattle. Maybe he’s bad now — you never know with goalies, which will be a theme of this piece — but it seems more likely that we can bet on him being better, and maybe even significantly closer to the .920 guy he’d always been.

The roster is already improved with the additions of Andre Burakovsky, Justin Schultz, Oliver Bjorkstrand and (maybe) Shane Wright, and Matty Beniers is a legitimate Calder favorite. If Grubauer is better, there’s a very clear path to the playoffs here. And with cap room and at least a little local pressure on Ron Francis to deliver a better season, who knows where that could lead. Remember, the history of NHL expansion teams that aren’t the Golden Knights is filled with awful first seasons, but teams like the Panthers, Wild and Sharks were all winning playoff rounds pretty quickly after that. It could absolutely happen in Seattle, too.

Convincing, right? I hope so, because the numbers say that was the easy one. Those playoff odds take a big dip as we move to our next team.