We have now reached the slow portion of the NHL offseason and while there are still a few interesting players waiting to be signed – Alex Nylander and Oliver Kylington come to mind – and almost certainly a significant trade or two to come – looking at you, Martin Necas – the rosters that we have now are largely going to be the rosters we’re dealing with in September. As a final wrap on the transactions of the last couple weeks, I want to go over the teams that have change my perception with their offseason shuffling. We could call them ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ but that’s a bit too simplistic. Rather, it’s just some thoughts on changes made, what it tells me about the improvements/declines that might come, and looking ahead to the 2024-25 season.

One last caveat: these are just preliminary thoughts. My own rankings won’t be ready for at least a couple months, so a lot will probably change between now and then. For more complete thoughts before then, pre-order your copy of the 2024 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide, which is set for release at the end of the month!

Boston Bruins

The two big additions Boston made were Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov, which is kind of funny because my personal opinion is that they’re two of the more overrated players in offseason signing contention. However, the term ‘overrated’ doesn’t mean ‘bad’, it simply means not as proficient as their public perception.

Regardless, these are clearly upgrades for Boston. Zadorov effectively takes the roster spot of Matt Grzelcyk, and that’s a huge boost defensively for the team. Maybe they didn’t necessarily need to get better defensively, but if they’re not going to be a high-powered offence (they won’t), then tightening things up even more defensively is a good idea.

The same goes for Elias Lindholm. I don’t think he’s a high-end, first-line centre; I also think he’s an upgrade over using Pavel Zacha as the top-line centre, allows the team to use Charlie Coyle in a third-line role, and provides flexibility for how they want to use Matthew Poitras. This is a team that really was one of the best in the East and whether they are good enough to really surpass a team like Florida is fair to ask, but even while losing Jake DeBrusk and Linus Ullmark, they are better now than they were three months ago.

Boston’s offseason certainly is tremendous news for anyone with Jeremy Swayman in dynasty leagues. Ullmark is gone and this should be a top-5 defensive team in the league. Imagine Swayman’s ratio stats but with 55 starts instead of ~40.

Nashville Predators

Perhaps no team did more to shake up the roster than Nashville. They shipped out Ryan McDonagh, added Brady Skjei in his place, and shored up a second scoring line by signing Steven Stamkos and Jonathan Marchessault. If there was one Achilles heel for this team in 2023-24 – something that kept them from being among the upper-echelon of the West – it was a lack of depth scoring. They have that now, and may even have a productive third line when looking at names like Luke Evangelista, Cody Glass, and Philip Tomasino. I am not ready to say they’re in the Colorado/Dallas/Edmonton tier of teams yet, but they’re certainly above the mushy middle of teams like Minnesota and St. Louis.

The real question for me is how good this team will be defensively. Neither Stamkos nor Marchessault are defensive stalwarts, guys like Glass and Evangelista aren’t that yet, and Skjei is a mixed bag, at best. In 2023-24, Juuse Saros had the worst save percentage of his career. If this team declines even just a bit defensively, from a fringe top-10 team to the middle of the league, it’ll make Saros’s rebound season a little bit of a higher hill to climb.

Washington Capitals

It seemed pretty clear that Washington was at the very bottom of the playoff teams and needed some luck to even get there. I was curious if they were going to pull the plug and go full rebuild; they did the opposite.

The addition of Pierre-Luc Dubois allows the Capitals to run him and Dylan Strome as their top-6 centres, push Connor McMichael into a third-line role (if they don’t use him on the wing), and leave Nic Dowd in his very useful fourth-line role. Trading for Andrew Mangiapane gives them a legitimate second-line scorer that the team desperately needed, as Matt Roy gives them a much-needed defensive boost to their top-4 defencemen. Throw Jakob Chychrun into the mix and this goes from a team that may have found themselves at the bottom of the division in 2024-25 to one that may be in playoff contention again.

It should be stated just how far Washington needed to go to be competent offensively. Their 2.6 goals per 60 minutes in 2023-24 finished 28^th in the league, but they were closer to teams like Seattle and Anaheim than they were to teams like St. Louis and Montreal. If they were to improve their goal scoring by 20% – a huge single-season jump – they’d be a middle-of-the-road roster. Washington is better, but they have a long way to go.

Utah

Back in May, when I did a dive into then-Arizona’s season, the one thing that stood out was that changes to the blue line were necessary. Well, they traded for Mikhail Sergachev and John Marino, and they signed Ian Cole away from Vancouver. JJ Moser went to Tampa Bay in the Sergachev deal, but now they have half of a new blue line to add to Sean Durzi, Juuso Valimaki, and their depth. The one thing that needed an overhaul indeed got that overhaul, and replacing Mathew Dumba and Josh Brown with Sergachev and Marino is a massive upgrade.

This is a fascinating team. In that dive, I said they’re probably only a couple of years away from playoff contention. I stand by that, but if they get solid goaltending, improve the penalty kill, and young players like Logan Cooley, Matias Maccelli, and Dylan Guenther keep improving, they can make some noise in 2024-25. They might not be a playoff squad, but they’re much closer to teams like Los Angeles and Nashville than they are to San Jose and Chicago.

New Jersey Devils

There is a big shift going on in New Jersey considering they fired head coach Lindy Ruff, traded John Marino, and added Brett Pesce and Brenden Dillon on the blue line. Injuries decimated New Jersey’s rearguards last year, and that’s not a concern that goes away, but it’s clear the team is shifting from a fast-paced, counter-attacking squad to one that should play a bit more of a controlled game and try to make life easier on new goaltender Jacob Markstrom. It is good news for Markström, at least.

Had the team just run it back, it would be hard not to be bullish on top guys like Jack Hughes, Jesper Bratt, and Luke Hughes. There are still plenty of reasons to be bullish on those guys for fantasy purposes, I just wonder if a stronger team-wide commitment to defensive play doesn’t lower the ceiling of their top stars. To be clear: a stronger defensive commitment doesn’t mean neuter fantasy value, as the Edmonton Oilers have shown recently and Tampa Bay Lightning a few years before that. However, we don’t need to look much further than teams like Buffalo and Florida to see how a commitment to defence can lower the fantasy value of top players. Florida won the Stanley Cup, and that’s what matters to them, but guys like Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk also had three-year lows in points per game (and Tkachuk a three-year low in points per minute). They just transferred some of that offence to Sam Reinhart, I guess.

This could be one of those situations where New Jersey improves significantly in real-world terms, but it doesn’t necessarily translate to elite fantasy success (just a healthy team may have done that anyway). There is still a lot of upside for their top players, but maybe it’s not as high as it would be if they had just added Markström and stood pat elsewhere, both on the ice and behind the bench.

San Jose Sharks

The Sharks lost the Connor Bedard sweepstakes, but they now have both Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith to go with William Eklund and Quentin Musty. Those four should be a Core Four forwards for this team for years to come. None of them have proved that yet, but it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising to see them be offensive forces ranging from very good-to-elite for the next decade-plus. They signed Alex Wennberg and Tyler Toffoli while also bringing in Jake Walman and Carl Grundstrom. Whether all of Celebrini, Smith, and Musty are in the lineup for the entire 2024-25 season remains to be seen, but even just two of those three, plus the veteran signings, make this a much better roster in 2024-25 than what we just saw. They are nowhere near a playoff team, but they won’t be a complete doormat.  

I will be very interested to see who is in camp and what their lineup looks like come September. There may be some guys I think will be on the roster that head to the AHL, they may still add to the blue line, and there are still players that need to prove they belong. All the same, this feels like an exciting time to be a Sharks fan and they will likely have some value at fantasy draft tables when the time comes.