8 NHL Teams Who Took the Biggest L's This Offseason
Not all NHL offseasons are created equal.
In fact, for every team celebrating the arrival of an established commodity or budding star in their city by trade or free agency, there's another team lamenting the one who got away.
And make no mistake, some teams are doing far more lamenting than others.
Of course, that competitive give and take is what revs the engines of the ice hockey writers here at B/R, so we made it part of our holiday festivities to compile a list of teams—eight, in this case—feeling particularly heartsick as they light candles and hang tinsel around a forlorn front office.
Click through to see who we believe is suffering the most, and perhaps take a moment to drop a buoying thought or two in the comments.
8. Boston Bruins
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Let's say it upfront: A lot of teams would like to be the Boston Bruins.
After all, the guys with the spoked-wheel Bs on their jerseys were first overall in 2020's regular season before a playoff flop and bring back two of the league's top six scorers in David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand, who combined for a prolific 182 points in 70 games.
But that doesn't mean it's all lobsters and chowder at the TD Garden.
The Bruins were on the waving-goodbye end of one of the offseason's most jarring departures when stalwart defenseman Torey Krug, who'd logged more than 500 regular-season games and an additional 75 playoff contests in black and gold, pulled up the stakes and headed for the St. Louis Blues as an unrestricted free agent.
Krug signed a seven-year, $45.5 million deal with the Blues and took his 53-points-per-season average from the last four campaigns with him, depriving Boston of a proven blue-line producer and blowing a giant hole in its defensive depth chart.
Only one of the rearguards on the 23-man roster has played as many as 300 NHL games, and even if veteran free agent Zdeno Chara winds up returning to the fold, he'll still be celebrating his 44th birthday two months into the 2021 season—hardly a recipe for a long-term fix at the position.
No, the Bruins won't be a target of leaguewide sympathy, but they do have some concerns.
7. Carolina Hurricanes
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Like the Bruins before them, the Carolina Hurricanes have loads of positive collateral.
They were in the top half of the NHL when it came to 2019-20 offense, were in the ninth-stingiest spot in terms of goals against and are the league's fourth-youngest team with an average age of 28.3 years.
They won a qualifying series in the unprecedented summertime play-in tournament, too.
But there are at least some offseason warnings the Hurricanes ought to heed.
They lost a locker-room rock and a clutch-time gem when 39-year-old Justin Williams announced his retirement in October following an unlikely career that lasted more than 1,200 games and yielded three Stanley Cups—including one with the Hurricanes back in 2006.
They'll enter 2021 with a pair of journeyman-type goalies in James Reimer and Petr Mrazek, both of whom are in line to be unrestricted free agents after the season, after not taking a swipe at a long-term solution in a netminder-saturated free-agency market.
And they've experienced an admittedly subtle but no less impactful depletion on the blue line, where three players in their 20s—Sami Vatanen, Trevor van Riemsdyk and Joel Edmundson—with 1,135 games between them are either unrestricted free agents (Vatanen) or have already signed with other teams (van Riemsdyk in Washington, Edmundson in Montreal).
Lest we forget, too, though Dougie Hamilton is still under contract for this season with a $5.75 million cap hit, he'll also be unrestricted next summer unless the front office gets something done in the meantime.
Don't evacuate just yet, Carolina fans. But it's certainly worth keeping an eye on the forecast.
6. Florida Panthers
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Had this list been compiled a week ago, the Florida Panthers would have fared worse.
But adding a 23-goal scorer from last season, Ottawa Senators free agent Anthony Duclair, for the comparatively inexpensive rate of $1.7 million goes a long way toward soothing wounds.
Nevertheless, the Panthers have still been up there when it comes to taking losses this offseason.
Especially high-profile ones.
Dependable goal-scorer Mike Hoffman, who's averaged 28.2 per season with the Senators and Panthers since the start of 2014-15, is still out there for the taking after deciding he'd become an unrestricted free agent at the end of a four-year deal that paid him $20.75 million.
And while there's still a slim chance the 31-year-old could find his way back to metropolitan Miami, it's too late for Evgenii Dadonov, who got three years and $15 million from the Senators (yes, again) after registering 25 goals and 47 points over 69 games in 2019-20.
It was Dadonov's third straight season of 25 goals or better after consecutive years registering 28 apiece on a contract that was paying him $4 million annually.
Duclair's arrival will mitigate some of the now-absent output, and general manager Bill Zito did manage to pluck a cadre of serviceable players from elsewhere, too.
Still, if remaining forwards Jonathan Huberdeau and Aleksander Barkov don't return to pre-pandemic form—they were down 22 goals and 48 points in 29 fewer games across 2019-20—the headaches created by the Hoffman and Dadonov exits will linger throughout the winter.
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5. New York Islanders
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This one could change from day to day.
The New York Islanders were a playoff revelation in the summer of 2020, erasing a recent Stanley Cup winner (Washington Capitals) and the Eastern Conference top seeds (Philadelphia Flyers) as a No. 6 seed before falling to the eventual 2019-20 champions (Tampa Bay Lightning) in six competitive games.
Problem is, the version of the Islanders that closed 2020 might not be the one that opens 2021.
A handful of lingering questions are surely on the minds of general manager Lou Lamoriello and his staff during the holidays, most notably the still-unsigned status of 23-year-old center Mathew Barzal, who made $832,500 in the final year of his entry-level deal last season and is now a restricted free agent.
Selected in the first round of the 2015 draft, Barzal has averaged 69 points per season at the NHL level and had 17 more points in 22 games during the team's playoff run.
Locking him up for the long term is pressing enough, but more so because the Islanders forfeited another proven piece when they sent 26-year-old defenseman Devon Toews to the Colorado Avalanche in exchange for a pair of second-round draft picks—presumably to clear up additional salary space for Barzal.
Veteran winger Matt Martin and aging defenseman Andy Greene are free agents of the unrestricted variety and would be nice to have back after solid playoff efforts, but New York is particularly hamstrung by the $11.5 million in 2020-21 cash that'll go to Johnny Boychuk and Andrew Ladd, who are 36 and 35, respectively, and combined for exactly three goals last season—including none in the playoffs.
Ouch.
4. Vancouver Canucks
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Is it just us, or were there a lot of flights departing Vancouver in early October?
In fact, in terms of sheer numbers, the Canucks lost as many man-games over a four-day stretch from Oct. 9 to Oct. 12 as any team in the league.
The first day saw defenseman Christopher Tanev and goaltender Jacob Markstrom head northeast to Calgary, where the Flames signed them to contracts comprising a combined 10 years and $54 million.
The two had combined for 786 career games, all but 43 of them for the Canucks.
The next day it was defenseman Troy Stecher, who took off for Detroit and signed a two-year, $3.4 million deal with the Red Wings after the Canucks didn't make him a qualifying offer following 286 games in four seasons and another 17 in the playoffs.
The exodus wrapped up on the fourth day when Tyler Toffoli, who'd been traded from the Los Angeles Kings during the season for two players and two draft picks, ended his brief British Columbia sojourn and joined the Montreal Canadiens on a four-year pact that'll pay him $17 million.
He produced 10 points in 10 games with Vancouver after scoring 139 goals in 515 games with the Kings.
It's a concussive blow for a Canucks team that had climbed a spot in the Pacific Division standings from the previous season and eliminated the defending Stanley Cup champion St. Louis Blues in the 2020 playoffs.
To be fair, the front office rebounded by replacing Markstrom with former Cup winner Braden Holtby and acquiring defenseman Nate Schmidt for a draft pick from the cash-strapped Vegas Golden Knights, buying the team a less-awful spot on this list. But it's still hard to imagine 2021 beginning with the same momentum amid which 2020 ended.
3. Nashville Predators
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In terms of exits, Nashville may have been the stateside equivalent of Vancouver.
Though they'll still be clad in signature yellow, the Predators will be far less recognizable when it comes to the players actually wearing those garish jerseys with the toothy cats.
In the form of four departing players, head coach John Hynes and Co. said goodbye to no less than 29.2 percent of the 212 goals his team scored in 2019-20, a haul that was only 17th-best in a 31-team league.
Winger Craig Smith took his 18 goals to Boston via unrestricted free agency and signed a three-year deal worth $9.3 million with the Bruins. Meanwhile, his fellow unrestricted free agent, forward Mikael Granlund, remains unsigned after scoring 17 goals and 30 points during a season in which he made $6.5 million.
Veteran center Nick Bonino enters the final year of a $16.4 million contract in Minnesota after the Predators traded him, his 18 goals and two draft picks to the Wild in exchange for center Luke Kunin and a pick. And center Kyle Turris is an Edmonton Oiler on a two-year, $3.3 million deal after Nashville bought out the final four years of a six-year pact that would have paid him $24 million.
The series of moves means Filip Forsberg, a 26-year-old winger, is the highest-scoring holdover after netting 21 goals in 2019-20, and no other returning Predators forward scored more than 15 goals. And that's on top of an already anemic power play that tied for 24th overall with a 17.3 percent success rate.
This just in: Pekka Rinne and Juuse Saros are going to earn every penny of their combined $6.5 million this season.
2. Chicago Blackhawks
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Hey, Chicago fans: You remember the summertime giddiness you felt winning a playoff play-in series?
That's a good thing because it might have to last you a while this winter.
The 12th-seeded Blackhawks pulled off the league's postseason shocker when they dispatched the Edmonton Oilers—including MVPs Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl—in four games, but the team that takes the ice at the United Center next month will have some newly sustained roster damage.
Gone for the second time via trade is winger Brandon Saad, who was dealt to the Colorado Avalanche in October as part of a transaction that's been almost unanimously panned by NHL observers.
Saad was drafted by the Blackhawks in 2011 and won two Stanley Cups before he was sent to the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2015. Chicago brought him back in a deal two years later, but in doing so sent Artemi Panarin packing to Ohio. Panarin has scored 264 points in three seasons since the trade and was a finalist for the league's MVP award in 2019-20, while Saad has 115 points in the same span.
This time, Saad left in exchange for hulking defenseman Nikita Zadorov, who's never exceeded 20 points in five full NHL seasons, and Anton Lindholm, a 2014 fifth-round draft pick with zero goals in 66 games.
To make matters worse, they'll also pay $1 million of Saad's salary for the 2020-21 season.
But that's not all.
Veteran goaltender Corey Crawford, whose stellar play helped win the aforementioned playoff series, was unable to agree to a free-agency deal with the Blackhawks and took his two Stanley Cup rings to New Jersey, where he signed a two-year, $7.8 million contract with the Devils.
In his place, the Blackhawks will enter the season with the puck-stopping tandem of Malcolm Subban and Collin Delia, who'll make far less impact on the salary cap—combining for a $1.85 million hit—but have next to no full-time experience with an aggregate 37 wins in 84 NHL games.
1. Arizona Coyotes
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Bless their hearts, the Arizona Coyotes were all-in.
Last December, the league's southwesternmost franchise changed perceptions by assembling a package of three players and two draft picks to acquire Taylor Hall and a teammate from the New Jersey Devils.
The deal gave the Coyotes half a season to make the sort of competitive dent they'd never made and time to sell the soon-to-be free agent on the idea of making Arizona a long-term home—thereby opening the door to other stars who'd maybe never considered such a move.
Let's just say it didn't work out as hoped.
Hall was something less than otherworldly in 35 regular-season games (10 goals, 17 assists), the team was dumped in the first round of the playoffs by the Colorado Avalanche, and Hall decided soon after the postseason ended that he'd be waving bye-bye to the desert to test the unrestricted waters.
The idea that he wound up signing with the Buffalo Sabres—incumbent holders of the league's longest playoff drought—is probably a little rock salt in the wound, too.
Oh wait, there's more.
Have we mentioned the Coyotes failed to consummate a trade for disgruntled defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson, leaving them on the hook for the final seven years of a $66 million contract? And that they were docked a pair of draft picks—including a first-rounder in 2021—by the league for scouting combine violations?
And when they finally did get a pick in the 2020 draft, at slot No. 111 after using this year's first-rounder to lure Hall, they made the choice to take North Dakota defenseman Mitchell Miller but then renounced the selection after revelations that Miller had bullied a Black classmate with developmental disabilities.
So there it is.
And we think you'll agree that when it comes to nightmarish 2020 offseasons, no other team comes close.
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