Trevor Smith on hockey

It seems like only yesterday when New Jersey's Jason Arnott slapped the game-winner past Dallas goaltender Ed Belfour to give the Devils their second Stanley Cup in five years.

It's actually been 116 days, the shortest off-season for any of the major sports.

The coolest game on earth is expected to live up to that this season, and the teams from the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference should do their part.

The defending champion Devils have the unenviable task of repeating and will have to do so without Claude Lemieux and Vladimir Malakhov. Devils head coach Larry Robinson will need to keep his team focused for an entire season, a much more difficult take than last year, when he was awarded the team with seven games to go in the regular season. When the Devils won the Stanley Cup in 1995, they missed the playoffs in '96. Don't look for that to happen this year. The Devils will be there in April.

Another team that should improve on last year's performance is the underachieving New York Rangers. Gone are G.M. Neil Smith and head coach John Muckler. Now running the team is G.M. Glen Sather and coach Ron Low. Sather won five Stanley Cups while in Edmonton and has already done the unthinkable - brought back Mark Messier. The fans in New York will expect Messier to single-handedly improve the team and the players around him. A tall order for a man pushing 40 years of age. The Rangers should improve, but they will need to have an exceptional coaching job to win the Stanley Cup.

The soap opera that is the Philadelphia Flyers continues. Eric Lindros refused a one year, $8.5 million contract and had likely seen his last day with the Flyers. G.M. Bobby Clarke is a fool for alienating Lindros and will need something special to occur if his team is to challenge New York and New Jersey. Clarke has brought in Kevin Stevens in an attempt to rejuvenate his career. John LeClair is not signed after this season and will not negotiate during the season. I don't know which dictator Clarke is attempting to be by driving his team apart, but I'm sure he wrote Mein Kampf.

The Pittsburgh Penguins have a new coach in Ivan Hlinka, only the second European head coach in the NHL. Jaromir Jagr is still the big gun, but as usual, he has very little around him. Don't look for the Penguins to scare anyone come playoff time.

The people of Long Island haven't had a playoff team in six years and I doubt they will again this season. However, they have improved and if everything goes according to plan, the New York Islanders may find themselves vying for a playoff spot come April.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are good enough to win the Northeast Division by 20 points. The Ottawa Senators and Buffalo Sabres may have something to say about that, but will have to play flawless hockey to beat the Leafs. It all starts in goal for Toronto with Curtis Joseph and even though "Cujo" has been injured, look for him to make a serious run at the Vezina (top goaltender) and league MVP.

The Buffalo Sabres are another team that will go as far as their goaltender allows them to go. With no talk of retirement from Dominik Hasek this year, the Sabres should end up as a fourth or fifth seed come playoff time, and have added something that every team needs - cash. The new owners promise to spend some money if the Sabres are in playoff contention. However, with what they have in Doug Gilmour and newly acquired Dave Andreychuk, the Sabres may need to make an immediate move for some offense.

The Ottawa Senators have improved greatly in the last two years, but will take a step back this season for a couple of reasons. First, Alexei Yashin is back. Yashin sat out the entire 1999-2000 season due to a contract dispute and the fans in Ottawa are going to eat him alive. Somehow, Yashin will have to block all of that out and become the scorer that he once was. The Senators lost Joe Juneau, Kevin Dineen and Tom Barrasso to free agency. Those three spots may cost the Senators a trip to the playoffs.

My favorite G.M. in the league is at it again. Boston Bruins knucklehead Harry Sinden has once again let his team down by not signing key players until right before the regular season. Sergei Samsonov and Joe Thornton have signed new three-year deals, but will now take three weeks to get in game shape. Team MVP Anson Carter is unsigned and Sinden isn't likely to budge. It could be another long year in Boston.

The Montreal Canadiens are going to be tuck on 23 championships for a long time. This team has nothing with the exception of head coach Alain Vigneault. Vigneault was considered for coach of the year last season solely for the fact that he kept his team in contention for the playoffs despite losing the most games to injury than any other team in the league. Montreal has lost some key players to an already bad team. It will be a long, cold winter in Montreal.

The Southeast Division is the worst in hockey from an excitement standpoint. The Florida Panthers have Pavel Bure and have acquired Igor Larionov to give Bure even more scoring chances than last year. That is the extent of anything interesting in the Southeast. The Panthers blew a huge lead last year to Washington before losing to New Jersey in the first round.

Some things to watch for in the Eastern Conference as the season goes by:

n Will Mark Messier lead by example or be more of a player-coach?

n Can Theo Fleury get back to scoring 50 goals as he did when he was in Calgary?

n Will the Flyers deal for another big-name player to offset the loss of Eric Lindros?

n Can Dominik Hasek stay healthy and help Buffalo make another run for the Stanley Cup?

The Eastern Conference has major parity and therefore should create a ton of excitement. My pick to reach the Stanley Cup finals out of the East is the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Next week, a look at the Western Conference.

Trevor Smith is the Nevada Appeal hockey columnist.