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The Pittsburgh Penguins are big favorites to win the 2013-14 Stanley Cup, at least according to the calculations published in our most recent annual guide, Hockey Prospectus 2013-14. According to our projections, Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and the rest of the Penguins are four points up on second place. That might not sound like much, but teams 2-10 are all separated by just four points, as well.

How did we come to these conclusions? Using a statistical projection engine called VUKOTA, which makes use of the goals versus threshold (GVT) metric. Described by creator Tom Awad as "GVT's most powerful descendant," VUKOTA projects a player's likely future based on the scoring of historically comparable players. It is named after former fringe NHL player Mick Vukota as a play on words of baseball's similar PECOTA system. Awad goes on to describe how it is used to also project the NHL team standings:

"Since team GVT is simply the sum of player GVTs, the sum of the VUKOTA GVT values on a team becomes our projection for the team's goal differential, and consequently, its win-loss record as well, since teams on average record one extra point in the standings for every three goals scored or prevented."

And the results? All but five teams are within three points of a postseason position. Once in the postseason, a team's odds don't stray too terribly far from 15-1. That means that, despite Pittsburgh being our heavy favorite, the race is actually wide open. After all, the Washington Capitals had a huge projection of 105 points for 2011-12 but then had some horrific goaltending performances out of the gate that essentially derailed them.

Here's a look at some of the top contenders for the 2013-14 NHL season, for the Stanley Cup and for the draft lottery.

Stanley Cup contenders

Pittsburgh Penguins (101 points): Everyone will agree that Crosby & Co. are among the perennial favorites, but we might be the only ones to place them on top, particularly so decisively. Last season, they finished atop the Eastern Conference and led the league in goals, both of which they may well do again. They went all-in last season -- acquiring veterans Jarome Iginla, Brenden Morrow, Douglas Murray and Jussi Jokinen at the trade deadline -- but were stopped short in the conference finals when the defensive system of the Boston Bruins neutralized their top lines. Their primary weakness in terms of skaters is a lack of depth, but that is likely to be overcome by their unrivaled top lines.

But what about the goalies? Well, VUKOTA has Marc-Andre Fleury projected at 4.8 GVT over 44 games, with Tomas Vokoun at 5.0 GVT over 32 games. Even if Vokoun misses time because of his recent blood clot issue, the drop-off won't be significant. And, even with goalies performing at a league-average level, the Pens are strong enough on offense to make up for it.

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With the posting of the NHL Future Power Rankings, we're diving a little deeper into my take on one of those four categories: prospects.

I've broken the 30 NHL teams up into tiers based upon the strength (or lack thereof) of their prospect groups, based upon my research, as well as input from scouts and executives. For our purposes, a player is considered a prospect if he played 25 or fewer NHL games last season, or has played 50 games or fewer total. He is an under-23 NHL player if he is 22 or under as of Sept. 15. Both groups are considered for this evaluation. Within each tier, teams are presented alphabetically.

References commonly are made to my Top 100 NHL Prospects list, so keep that tab open to follow along for deeper dives into particular players that I mention.

The top tier

The top three organizations in under-23 talent all seem poised for better results than they've had in recent seasons.

Colorado Avalanche

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One of the most impressive things about the Blackhawks winning the 2013 Stanley Cup was that they became the first franchise to win it twice in the salary-cap era. And they did so in a short period of time.

Today's NHL is driven by a parity-inducing cap, which forces teams to part ways with assets they'd usually prefer to keep. In those conditions, it's hard to stand out season after season when tough decisions have to be made simply because of finances. Dynasties are dead ... or at least that's what we thought before last season.

At least 10 teams could make a strong case at winning the Stanley Cup this season, with the usual factors playing a big part -- health, goaltending, maybe a little luck.

But what goes into projecting success three seasons from now? It's a different formula predicting how strong teams will look in 2016-17. Nevertheless, positioning their teams for sustained success is precisely what NHL general managers seek to do each season. And that begs the question: Which teams are best positioned for the seasons ahead? To find the answer, we now debut the NHL Future Power Rankings.

To construct the rankings, we consulted with former NHL assistant general manager Frank Provenzano, who helped develop our categories -- as well as how they were weighted -- based upon his experience working in the front office for multiple NHL teams.

Then we asked a panel of six analysts to rate every NHL team in four key categories deemed most important to future success: roster, prospects, cap/contracts, owner/GM/coach.

Using a weighted formula -- illustrated in the sidebar to the right -- the final rankings were calculated. What follows is a ranking of the teams best positioned for success from now heading into the 2016-17 season, and analysis on why they find themselves in that position.

The Panel: ESPN Insider Craig Custance; former NHL assistant GM Frank Provenzano; advanced metrics guru Neil Greenberg; prospect analyst Corey Pronman; and Ryan Schwepfinger and Rob Vollman of Hockey Prospectus.

The bar graphs reflect the average points given by the voters for each category.

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