NHL Roundtable: Offseason Winners and Losers

To be a winner, you have to look at who the team lost, and who the team was able to pick up. Neither team lost a key component that was relevant to their past season's success, but both added to strengths. Detroit was able to retain Brad Stuart and Andreas Lilja, while they only lost Dallas Drake and Dominik Hasek to retirement. They were also able to add Marian Hossa, who will only make Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Filppula and Samuelson more dangerous—whether it's from him making them better directly or indirectly (ie. drawing the oppositions top defenders during his shifts).

Chicago won because they were able to add a good (not great) starter in Huet, which made Nikolai Khabibulin expendable—offering them the chance to parlay him into draft picks or players if need be. They also picked up Brian Campbell, and we all know what he brings to a team—a great, crafty, puck-moving defenseman.

A team who may go under the radar as improved will be the Phoenix Coyotes, who will be able to allow Daniel Carcilloto score a little more with the addition of Todd Fedoruk and Brian McGratton, while Oli Jokinen can provide some extra scoring for Peter Mueller, Shane Doan, Martin Hanzal and Kyle Turris, and they replaced the defensemen they deal to get Jokinen (Keith Ballard and Nick Boynton) with the underrated Kurt Sauer and David Hale.

Toronto hasn't done too bad of a job either, but then again I'm biased.

The two worst teams in my opinion this off season have been the New York Islanders and the Tampa Bay Lightning.

I once wrote about how the Lightning's moves were starting to resemble the Philadelphia Flyers' attempts to improve themselves last season—then the Lightning traded away their only competent defensemen (Well...aside from Filip Kuba and Paul Ranger) and sign 16 more forwards. Steven Stamkos can only do so much if he's playing six minutes a game, and with Gary Roberts, Mark Recchi, Ryan Malone, Radim Vrbata, Adam Hall, Ryan Craig, Chris Gratton, Vaclav Prospal, and Brandon Bochenski signed to contracts, ice time is a premium for the Lightning.

That and a may-as-well-be rookie head coach in Barry Melrose.

The New York Islanders meanwhile, were last in the league in goals for, and 23rd in goals against, so they signed Mark Streit and Doug Weight. Streit will definitely help out, but adding an aging Weight to this team doesn't make sense, when one of their younger guys could be getting ice time.

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