Winners, Losers and the Toronto Maple Leafs: Evaluating the NHL Off-Season

General Winners

The Oilers, obviously, but other teams have had good summers too.

The Winnipeg Jets, I mean the Phoenix, excuse me, Arizona Coyotes....er Utah Coyotes had a very nice summer adding arguably the single best player who changed teams in Mikhail Sergachev.

It's a loser move to call them the Utah HC but you can't go wrong whenever you add a top pairing, number-one defenseman to your team. Adding John Marino doesn't hurt either.

The Sabres had a quite and solid summer adding Ryan Mcleod and players like Zucker and Lafferty that will make their bottom-six a lot better. I think they are on the verge of competing and would have liked to see a bigger addition, but they have $15 million in cap space and can add in-season, like I advocated the Leafs to do because there are always unexpected star players available at the deadline while waiting allows you to audition your prospects and see what you have.

Ottawa, adding Linus Ullmark on the cheap was a brilliant move that makes up for giving Chychrun away for nothing. You can't help but be a winner when you add a top goalie.

The Devils added Jacob Markstrom (and Brenden Dillon and Tomas Tatar and Brett Pesce) and are obviously a way better team because of it.\

Boston added Nikita Zadorov who was my biggest hope for the Leafs, and I think that's really going to prove to be a genius signing.

Now, on to the losers.