Under the Bucket: Deaner Makes 2016 Predictions with His Crystal Balls

(Editor's note: Welcome to Under the Bucket, where Deaner from the classic flick Fubar tackles all things NHL for VICE Sports. You can follow him on Twitter and read previous installments here.)

Everyone knows I had a run in with ball cancer and that my nutsack is filled with prosthetic stones. But what people don't know is that I got actual CRYSTAL fucking BALLS, and can tell the future. Basically, I'm Nostradamus, so I'll tell you what's going to happen in the NHL in 2016.

Boston: Zdeno Chara puts on his stompin' boots and crushes all the bridges that lead to the island of Montreal into rubble. But Brad Marchand (who is riding on his shoulders), jumps into the Saint Lawrence River and bangs the French Sea Goddess Poseidonette. Out pops a full grown love child with a fucking fish tail and the Bruins finally have a goalie who can beat the Habs.

Buffalo: A new year and the Sabres are suckin' wind at the bottom of the standings. Lookin' for inspiration, they see the Predators got them dangercats shoveling the ice at commercial breaks and they been doin' good. So Buffalo hires some Sabre Kitties to shovel, and play improves right straight away.

Detroit: The Red Wings have been havin' one of them yoyo seasons—a couple wins, a couple losses, and that's gonna keep happening. They play against Montreal or Boston in the playoffs and we get one of them battle of the deadliest Original Six logos. Swedish players score and there ain't a single fight, and the beat goes fuckin' on.

Florida: I ain't got nothing against the players—there's just something really fucked about seeing fans show up for games on Segways in flip-flops. And it's gonna get worse in February when the BB&T Center in Sunrise unveils its brand new fan initiative "Nudist Concourse" where everyone from snowbirds to shithawks can drop their drawers at the gate and cheer on the Flapanthers dressed in their birthday suits. Cover your fuckin' eye holes.

Montreal: During the All-Star break, P.K. Subban convinces the team to go out for sushi at a super expensive restaurant but wants to split the bill equally even though he ordered a bunch of them disgusting straight up fish with no rice deals that nobody in their right fuckin' mind would touch. A fight breaks out and P.K. goes blind when Andrei Markov flips and grinds a baseball-sized wad of wasabi in his eyeballs.

Ottawa: The Senators go on a deadly ten-game winning streak, but the nightlife is so boring that the team starts to look deeper and deeper into the underground for some way to celebrate its on-ice success. They wind up at a bar called "The Grotto" deep in the ancient sewer system of the city. Erik Karlsson gets worshiped by a race of rat people who live down there and becomes their king.

Tampa Bay: See Toronto.

Toronto: Steven Stamkos buys a $10 million condo in Toronto and people start going crazy, but it turns out it was just a hot real estate tip. But it's too late, the Leafs organization already printed the jerseys and started up the ad campaign. MLSE secretly buys the Lightning through a Chinese holding company and trades Stamkos, Ben Bishop, Nikita Kucherov and Victor Hedman to the Leafs for Byron Froese. The Leafs don't make the playoffs, or win the lottery. Tampa wins the Cup when Froese scores 24 times in the playoffs, including six game-winning goals. His hometown of Winkler, Manitoba, drinks all the Pilsner in the world.

Carolina: The Hurricanes are kinda like that old whorehouse that used to be everybody's favourite because there was some nice young gals doin' their thing on the stage. But now that the gals got older, all the locals have moved on over to The Sweat Shop down the street. A sweet prospect is gonna change things for them in 2017, and the Staal brothers get deadly again.

Columbus: Nobody knows what's wrong with the Blue Jackets, so they try something new with the anthem. The guy currently banging out the stars and stripes is Leo Walsh. He's a fine young man who curdles your cream with his deep fuckin' baritone, but they hire Columbus' finest ACDC cover band to do a "For Those About To Rock" version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" complete with them huge guns firing at the end. Things start lookin' up.

New Jersey: On the last day of the regular season, needing only one point to clinch a playoff spot, both goalies get hurt and coach decides to put in Marty Brodeur, who was givin'r in the box seats. He pitches a deadly shutout until he has one of his Sean Avery Acid Flashbacks and lets in the winning goal.

New York Islanders: The young guns of Brooklyn all grow beards to be cool, and by the second round of the playoffs the face mops are outta control and everybody looks the fuckin' same and coach can't tell who's who. Line changes are all fucked up and a too-many-beards-on-the-ice penalty is called, costing them the game and the series.

New York Rangers: King Henrik doesn't let a single goal in during February and March but then gets called back to Sweden to fight in the Viking Fashion Wars. Guys in suits and short-cut beards with slicked-back hair battle in Stockholm to save the country from a bunch of tourists in yoga pants and hoodies.

Philadelphia: Wayne Simmonds gets so fucking tired of trade talk that he gets a full Flyers jersey tattooed on his upper body. He gets traded the next day.

Pittsburgh: Sidney Crosby chugs from the fountain of youth and nets a 30-goal season, but it's not enough to make the playoffs cuz Phil Kessel and Evgeni Malkin are too distracted with their new restaurant "The Greasy Wheel and Vodka House." Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux are invited to the grand opening, but only Mario shows up cuz Marty McSorley was in Barbados.

Washington: Alexander Ovechkin approaches 70 goals when coach puts big boy Tom Wilson on his line who protects his captain just like the old days. But Wilson gets suspended when the NHL finds out he was using concrete-filled sticks for extra lower back-destroying crosschecks and Ovi ends up with 69. Ovi starts a vodka company called Magic 69.

Chicago: The Blackhawks have been a force since 2008, and usually that would make me want to see 'em fail, just for fun, but they missed the playoffs the entire run of Beverly Hills 90210, so they kinda deserve to be good for a little longer. The Hawks win one more Cup and then suck forever again.

Colorado: Patrick Roy puts on another freak show. An Avalanche goalie gets run and Roy charges out onto the ice and starts throwin' haymakers. When security comes out, Roy grabs the goalie stick, puts on the goalie mask, and starts swingin' around so hard he helicopters his way out of the Pepsi Center and back to Quebec where he's finally fed a few poutines and calms the fuck down.

Dallas: These guys are fuckin' fine. I really want them to do well in the playoffs so more coaches go balls out with the offence. Dallas trades its best defenceman for a sniper who doesn't know what backchecking is, and win the Western Conference finals.

Minnesota: The Wild have so many players from Saskatchewan that slowly the whole team starts to talk like me. And on a road trip to Edmonton, Justin Fontaine takes them to his family home in Bonnyville and the fuckin' team vanishes. Five days later, a janitor finds the whole gang in an abandoned bowling alley plowed out of their fuckin' minds halfway through an epic ten-pin tournament. Thomas Vanek, the only member of the team who doesn't bowl, is behind the bar like Tom Cruise in Cocktail, wearing just a bowtie and old Cooperalls.

Nashville: The fairytale regular season will be complete when the Predators finish third in the Pacific and make the playoffs. But she all comes crashing down when the Elvis impersonator they got to sing the national anthem gets attacked by the REAL Predator who thinks it's actually Elvis back from the dead. Jerry Lee Lewis writes a song about it called "The King and the Hunter."

St. Louis: Vladimir Tarasenko legally changes his name to Wayne Gretzky and completely fucks with all the record books when he gets four goals and seven assists against the Hurricanes. The real Wayne Gretzky gets pissed, signs a one-day contract with the Rangers, and scores six goals and eight assists, also against the Hurricanes. Tarasenko is forced to change his name by the NHL, and he goes with Flip Scoreszim.

Winnipeg: Tired of always losing players cuz they can't afford 'em, the team starts buyin' lottery tickets and it fuckin' wins $10 million in the MegaBucks Draw. But instead of a big free-agent signing, or trying to bring Andrew Ladd back, they give it all to Dustin Byfuglien cuz he said he'd crush everyone in practice if they didn't. Back to square one.

Anaheim: The Ducks are like your totally wasted buddy who dresses good and has sweet hair. He looks good to the ladies, but when it's time to score, he passes out and pukes all over the place. See the LA Kings for what happens in the future.

Arizona: Coyotes are common in Arizona, which is why they are ranked 28th in the league for attendance. Like, I get it—I see leafs all over the fuckin' place in my yard so why would I pay $180 to go to the Air Canada Centre to see the big ones blow around the ice? In 2016, Arizona trappers make the coyote an endangered species and ship them all to Nebraska. All them people in Scottsdale miss the real coyotes so much that they start showin' up for hockey games and discover hockey is a deadly sport.

Calgary: The team is more shame than flame this year, and it decides to add some fuel to the fire. Yah, I'm talkin about a gigantic defenceman who can lay the body and clear the net with one sweep of his mighty paw. They tried gettin' Chara, but wound up with Andrej Sustr, (6'8" 220 pounds) from Tampa. He's 663rd overall in turnovers, but coach tells him never to touch the puck again and that seems to work good except for breakouts.

Edmonton: Connor McDavid comes back from injury and the team goes on an insane tear and the NHL's only LEON—that's right, Leon Draisaitl—winds up with 60 assists. They make the playoffs and challenge for the Stanley Cup. Haha, fuckin' eh, just kiddin! Nope, the Oilers are gonna just barely miss the playoffs, win the draft lottery, and wait for that No. 1 pick to mature into a good general manager and solve their problems.

Los Angeles: If you live out East you probably don't know this but the Ducks and the Sharks really hate the Kings. Probably for the simple fact Sharks can't skate and Ducks are pretty dumb animals (seriously, you can go "duck hunting" in downtown Calgary with a bag of peanuts and hammer). Well, in 2016, the two underachieving SoCal clubs get so fed up with losing that they decide to fuse together to make one team, the Mighty Shucks. They don't win, either, but their jersey is fuckin' deadly.

San Jose: Right before they fuse with Anaheim and become the Mighty Shucks (see L.A. Kings for more), the Sharks' Joe Thornton scores four goals, rips his cock out of his jock strap and starts strokin' it. But there's a coach's challenge and the goal is waved off. Joe's cock gets suspended. No one knows what that means, and no one ever finds out.

Vancouver: Canucks unveil their new slogan for 2016, "No shirt, booze first, no fear, shit faced." The fans are fuckin' stoked cuz they were doin' that anyway, and the Sedin twins are cool with takin' their shirts off, but don't really know how to do the other three things. Derek Dorsett and Dan Hamhuis lead the way by backing up a truck filled with Pilsner—and through the magic of Pil Power, the Canucks make the playoffs.