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NHL Power Rankings: Highs and lows of the summer

By Jeremy Tuch

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA - JUNE 21: (L-R) Kaapo Kakko, second overall pick by the New York Rangers, Jack Hughes, first overall pick by the New Jersey Devils, and Kirby Dach, third overall pick by the Chicago Blackhawks, hold up their fingers of their pick order in front of the stage during the first round of the 2019 NHL Draft at Rogers Arena on June 21, 2019 in Vancouver, Canada. (Photo by Jeff Vinnick/NHLI via Getty Images)
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA - JUNE 21: (L-R) Kaapo Kakko, second overall pick by the New York Rangers, Jack Hughes, first overall pick by the New Jersey Devils, and Kirby Dach, third overall pick by the Chicago Blackhawks, hold up their fingers of their pick order in front of the stage during the first round of the 2019 NHL Draft at Rogers Arena on June 21, 2019 in Vancouver, Canada. (Photo by Jeff Vinnick/NHLI via Getty Images) /
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Welcome back to hockey season! It’s time to start talking hockey again, and the weekly highs and lows are back in our weekly NHL Power Rankings.

Happy Wednesday, hockey fans. We are ready to start the hockey season and we will celebrate by starting our new weekly NHL power rankings with a preseason ranking of how each team is projected to do.

Also, the highlights and lowlights are back, but because nothing happened yet this season, we will simply highlight and lowlight something from the summer. This week’s rankings are based on a couple of different projection models being mushed together, so the real stuff is coming next week.

More from Puck Prose

Look for this column every Wednesday this season, and keep up to date with how your favorite teams are doing.

NHL Power Rankings

1. Tampa Bay Lightning

Highlight: Getting Brayden Point under a very reasonable bridge contract.

Lowlight: Took quite a while to get to that point. OK, no more puns.

2. Toronto Maple Leafs

Highlight: Dumping a few bad contracts on the Senators so they could re-sign Mitch Marner.

Lowlight: Either trading a first-round pick to get Patrick Marleau’s money off the cap or the entire Marner saga.

3. Boston Bruins

Highlight: Getting Brandon Carlo and Charlie McAvoy under contract despite the cap crunch.

Lowlight: Not being able to do anything else because of that cap crunch.

4. Vegas Golden Knights

Lowlight: Having to trade Colin Miller, Erik Haula, and Nikita Gusev for peanuts due to a tough cap situation.

Highlight: Hey, at least they found a sucker for David Clarkson!

5. St Louis Blues

Highlight: Partying all summer long.

Lowlight: Hometown hero Pat Maroon left in free agency.

6. Nashville Predators

Highlight: Finally getting that first-line center named Matt Duchene they have been longing for.

Lowlight: It ultimately cost them P.K. Subban getting traded away for pennies on the dollar.

7. Pittsburgh Penguins

Highlight: Making Evgeni Malkin a little happier for a change…

Lowlight: By trading a point-per-game player in Phil Kessel.

8. Carolina Hurricanes

Highlight: Signing Sebastian Aho to a very friendly contract at the expense of the Montreal Canadiens’ dignity.

Lowlight: Aho signed an offer sheet with another team in the first place.

9. Washington Capitals

Lowlight: Having to trade away Andre Burakovsky to get under the cap.

Highlight: They made it to opening day with cap space, somehow.

10. Dallas Stars

Highlight: Landing Joe Pavelski from the Sharks to help secondary scoring.

Lowlight: There’s a little bit of ongoing drama with Julius Honka that doesn’t look good.

11. Calgary Flames

Highlight: They managed to unload James Neal’s bad contract, and on the cross-province rival Oilers, no less!

Lowlight: Now they’re stuck with Milan Lucic.

12. Colorado Avalanche

Highlight: Landing Nazem Kadri to go along with bolstering the secondary scoring with Joonas Donskoi and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare.

Lowlight: Mikko Rantanen’s situation took a lot longer than anyone would have liked.

13. Florida Panthers

Highlight: The goaltending situation looks much better with Sergei Bobrovsky signed long term.

Lowlight: Seven years? $10 million per season? He’s how old? Oh boy…

14. San Jose Sharks

Lowlight: Team captain Joe Pavelski was forced out of town by a lousy salary cap situation.

Highlight: At least they got a slightly beaten up Erik Karlsson under contract for *checks notes* eternity… and at a great price point!

15. Winnipeg Jets

Lowlights: The Jacob Trouba trade, Dustin Byfuglien leaving the team to consider his future, free agency taking Tyler Myers, Kevin Hayes, and Brandon Tanev off the team, oh, and Patrik Laine and Kyle Connor taking forever to sign.

Highlight: Summer’s finally over.

16. New Jersey Devils

Highlights: Landing Jack Hughes and PK Subban at the draft, Wayne Simmonds in free agency on a short term deal, and Nikita Gusev later on.

Lowlight: Taylor Hall is still not under contract past this season.

17. Philadelphia Flyers

Highlight: Kevin Hayes signed long term, giving them a solid middle-six center.

Lowlight: They overpaid to get him, which Hayes said was the only reason he signed in Philadelphia. That’s encouraging!

18. New York Islanders

Highlight: They managed to retain all their big free agent skaters, like Anders Lee, Brock Nelson, and Jordan Eberle.

Lowlight: Vezina finalist Robin Lehner left for Chicago, and in his stead, they signed Semyon Varlamov.

19. Minnesota Wild

Lowlight: Anything GM Paul Fenton did.

Highlight: Firing GM Paul Fenton.

20. Montreal Canadiens

Highlight: They got a big-time star, Sebastian Aho, to sign an offer sheet with them.

Lowlight: The Hurricanes matched it, laughing as they did it.

21. Chicago Blackhawks

Highlight: They made tons of moves, overhauling a good chunk of their depth positions.

Lowlight: No one’s sure if it really will help.

22. Arizona Coyotes

Highlight: The Phil Kessel trade.

Lowlight: That Clayton Keller contract is a huge risk, all things considering. It could be great value… but it could also not be.

23. Vancouver Canucks

Highlight: They went shopping, landing Tyler Myers, Micheal Ferland, and JT Miller.

Lowlight: The price was what in the end? Oh.

24. New York Rangers

Highlights: Jumping into the second spot in the draft to land future franchise winger Kaapo Kakko, a night after landing Jacob Trouba for Neal Pionk, and a week before signing Artemi Panarin to a mega-deal.

Lowlight: There are still holes on the roster, namely anywhere those acquisitions aren’t.

25. Columbus Blue Jackets

Highlight: Signing Gustav Nyquist to a nice little deal.

Lowlight: He’s got shoes to fill, based on who left the team in free agency.

26. Anaheim Ducks

Highlight: Corey Perry’s contract is off the books.

Lowlight: Ryan Kesler’s career is cooked due to injury. You hate to see it.

27. Edmonton Oilers

Highlight: They managed to unload Milan Lucic’s bad contract, and on the cross-province rival Flames, no less!

Lowlight: Now they’re stuck with James Neal, who is probably better, but we don’t know yet.

28. Buffalo Sabres

Highlight: Retaining Jeff Skinner with a long term deal.

Lowlight: The rest of the division is still way, way better than them. Well, most of the division, anyway.

29. Los Angeles Kings

Highlight: A solid haul from the draft, with Alex Turcotte leading the way. helping revamp the farm system.

Lowlight: That won’t help them this year…or next (probably).

30. Detroit Red Wings

Highlight: Steve Yzerman is back in Hockeytown!

Lowlight: Nothing else happened.

31. Ottawa Senators

Highlight: Their insanely deep farm system will get plenty of NHL ice time.

Lowlight: Their insanely deep farm system will get plenty of NHL ice time.

NR. Seattle TBN

Highlight: The arena roof is currently held up with support beams over a giant hole in the ground. It’s actually pretty cool.

Other highlight: No lockout yet, so the team’s looking good to start on time!

Team of the Week

Here’s a new feature this year, it’ll be called the team of the week. It’ll go to the team that had the best week, regardless of where they are in the power ranking. For this week, we’ll give it to the team of the summer. That would be the New Jersey Devils.

Yes, it took a little bit of luck to land Jack Hughes, but picking off teams with salary cap issues is something general manager Ray Shero’s been very good at (see Kyle Palmieri, for instance), and that’s no accident. There’s a lot of hype surrounding the Devils this year, and while it remains to be seen if this edition of Devils is playoff-worthy, they’ll be about as fun to watch as they’ve ever been.

Next. Opening Night Power Rankings. dark

The Anti-Team of the Week

This is the exact opposite of the above. Self-explanatory. For the summer, this belongs to the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Look, we’ve given credit to GM Jarmo Kekkalainen for pushing his chips all in and going for it. No shame in that. It just stinks to lose all that talent, like your top center, scoring winger AND starting goalie, for nothing.

It’s really tough to bounce back from, even if you don’t replace them with anyone new, much like what actually happened. So while last year was big-time fun for Columbus, this year may not be.

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