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

General Losers

I think both Nashville and Washington are losers for their misguided approaches to roster building around old star players.

I think Chicago is a loser for not realizing the advantage of having Connor Bedard on an entry-level deal providing probably 10-15 million in value this year. You have to try to win while your franchise players is so cheap and they aren't.

The Kraken sound like they were smoking Kraken when they signed Chandler Stepheson to that insane contract that is like $2 million annually too high.

The Vancouver Canucks inexplicably re-signed Tyler Myers and then made the exact moves that you would expect a team that would do that would make.

Jake DeBrusk and Danton Heinen are the kind of mid-range additions that are expensive and tend to hurt more than they help. Both are nice players, but I'm better their combined salaries prove to be a huge mistake. The defense after Quinn Hughes and Filip Hronek is pretty suspect and when half of your blue-line is Myers, Deharnais and Forbert, well good luck with that.

Vancouver also lost Nikita Zadorov which will prove regrettable.

The Colorado Avalanche have a huge wide-open window to win another Stanley Cup, but they aren't helping themselves much with such a bad off-season. They lost Sean Walker and on one they brought in is replacing him.

But the biggest loser? The NHL team that had the worst summer?

Do you even have to ask?