Edmonton Oilers Connor McDavid handles the puck against the Florida Panthers during first-period Game 6 action of the NHL Stanley Cup Final on Friday, June 21, 2024, in EdmontonThis in from hockey stats analyst Dom Luszczyszyn of The Athletic, his assessment that of the teams that made the Final Four in the 2024 playoffs, the Edmonton Oilers were the only one that got better during the July free agency period and not worse.
The most improved team, said Luszczyszyn, is the Chicago Blackhawks, which got a score of +51 for adding $26 million in salary with key acquisitions such as Tyler Bertuzzi, Teuvo Teravainen, Ilya Mikheyev, Pat Maroon, Alec Martinez, TJ Brodie, Laurent Brossoit.
The biggest losers tended to be the NHL’s better teams, which also tend to be teams pressed up against the cap and unable to retain all the strong players they had acquired for the 2024 Stanley Cup run
Bottom of the list was the Winnipeg Jets, -32, then Vegas, -28, Dallas, -27, and Florida, -23.
Key losses for Dallas were Joe Pavelski, Chris Tanev, Ryan Suter, Jani Hakanpaa, Scott Wedgewood, with Vegas losing Jonathan Marchessault, Anthony Mantha, Chandler Stephenson, William Carrier, Michael Amadio, Logan Thompson, and Florida losing Vladimir Tarasenko, Kevin Stenlund, Nick Cousins, Ryan Lomberg, Brandon Montour, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, and Anthony Stolarz.
That’s the price of doing deep into the playoffs, success breeding higher contract demands.
