7 NHL Teams That Desperately Need to Have a Good Offseason

There's still some playoff work to be done.

But even though the Stanley Cup has yet to be paraded this spring, each of the NHL's 32 teams has already focused at least some attention on the portion of the league year that'll grind on even after the lights flick off and the ice melts.

And maybe some a little more than others.

The B/R hockey team took a break from its collective postseason frenzy to assess what each team is looking to accomplish from June to October and compile a list of the seven in most dire need of an off-season win based on personnel issues, salary concerns and other factors.

Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought of your own in the comments.

The Carolina Hurricanes won 52 games in 2023-24, finished third in the overall standings, and made the playoffs and won a series for a sixth consecutive season.

So there are plenty of teams that'd like to be where they are.

But it's not all sweetness and light in the corner offices at the PNC Arena.

Though Rod Brind'Amour was locked up with a multi-year extension a couple weeks ago and a handful of 20-something forwards are in the fold for at least another five years, there's still some trepidation when it comes to looking too far ahead in the crystal ball.

No fewer than 13 players are on the verge of free agency—eight unrestricted, five restricted—so there's a chance the roster starting 2024-25 will look significantly different than it did 12 months prior, and a chance, too, that the window for a second title in Raleigh is closing.

Coming to terms with prolific UFA Jake Guentzel and building a bridge with 22-year-old RFA Seth Jarvis are priorities 1 and 1-a for GM Don Waddell, if the intent anyway is to keep the newly retained Brind'Amour as relevant for the next six years as he was for the last six.

It's not so bad to be the Chicago Blackhawks.

They drafted a generational talent in Connor Bedard last summer and watched him produce 61 points in 68 games as an 18-year-old. And they'll presumably add some talent alongside him this summer in the form of the No. 2 selection at the 2024 draft in Las Vegas.

But supplementing with just another teenager won't be enough.

To keep his phenom happy and maintain the favor of a fan base not too far removed from a run of Stanley Cups, GM Kyle Davidson has to use some of the $30-plus million salary cap space at his disposal to give Bedard some higher-end toys to play with.

No disrespect intended to veteran pros like Nick Foligno, but it's going to take more than him and a roster-full of Andreas Athanasiou types to give No. 98 a chance to play in the kinds of games that predecessors named Kane (Patrick) and Toews (Jonathan) made a habit of winning in the century's second decade.

Think Jake Guentzel or Sam Reinhart could be comfortable in the Windy City?

Steve Yzerman has got loads of Detroit street cred.

He scored each and every one of his 692 NHL goals across 1,514 games in a Red Wings uniform and hoisted Stanley Cups with them in the springs of 1997, 1998 and 2002.

He returned as a conquering executive to revive a foundering franchise in 2019 and has been given the patience predictable for a guy so connected to the glory days.

But it's starting to wear a bit thin, don't you think?

Detroit hadn't made the playoffs for three seasons prior to his arrival and it's 0-for-5 since, including fairly significant collapses in the second halves of both 2022-23 and 2023-24.

Forwards Dylan Larkin and Alex DeBrincat are in their prime years and under lock and key contract-wise for the next several years, but the GM has some numbers to crunch when it comes to satisfying recent Calder-winning defenseman and impending RFA Moritz Seider as well as 22-year-old winger Lucas Raymond, who's also an RFA to be.

There are nearly $30 million to play with in terms of cap space, so getting those two deals handled should leave at least some workable cash left over to add another potent piece and officially take the Red Wings off of next spring's "playoff bubble teams" list.

When it comes to teams that a lot of others would trade places with, the Edmonton Oilers are certainly as worthy of the billing as the aforementioned Carolina Hurricanes.

For those unaware, the NHL's resident northern Albertans are among four teams still in the running for a summertime championship parade, largely due to the efforts of the dynamic ice duo of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.

So if they go on to eliminate the Dallas Stars and handle either the Florida Panthers or New York Rangers to win the franchise's sixth Stanley Cup, the to-do list for whomever succeeds a (probably) retiring Ken Holland as GM won't be quite as scrutinized.

But there is still work to be done.

Front and center on that list will be the status of Draisaitl, who'll become an unrestricted free agent one year from this July 1 unless the Oilers are able to get him to agree on a contract extension that'll surely mean a hefty raise from his annual $8.5 million paycheck.

It'll be hard to do that while also making sure there's cash left over for when point-per-game defenseman Evan Bouchard becomes an RFA on the very same day, which makes finding a new home for Darnell Nurse and his bottomless salary pit—$9.25 million annually through 2029-30—the domino that needs to fall to make it all feasible.

Gentlemen, start your calculators.

Being a recent fan of the New Jersey Devils means not being sure of much.

The Devils were among the dregs of NHL society in 2021-22, winning just 27 times in 82 games and finishing 28th overall in a 32-team league. But they were as good in 2022-23 as they'd been bad a year before, adding 25 wins to reach 112 points and a third overall finish.

The glory days, it seemed, had returned to the swamps of Jersey.

Until they hadn't.

Injuries and ineffectiveness were the prevalent buzzwords of a just completed 2023-24 season that saw the Devils revert to previous form while dipping back below .500 and missing the playoffs with a seventh-place finish in the Metropolitan Division.

Springsteen might ask if there's anyone alive out there in the executive offices, and it'll be incumbent upon GM Tom Fitzgerald to hit the off-season ground running now that he's hired ex-Toronto boss Sheldon Keefe as his new full-time head coach.

Defense and goaltending are mandatory for a team that was 18th in shots allowed and 26th in goals-against average, which means the tandem of UFA Kaapo Kähkönen and 33-year-old Jake Allen is on thin ice. Perhaps it's enough to entice Fitzgerald to make an offer sheet play for Boston's Jeremy Swayman, and even if it's not, it's still got to be handled by October.

Include the Ottawa Senators with those teams whose times have come.

The residents of Canada's capital city just wrapped up a seventh consecutive season without a playoff berth, and it was particularly frustrating this time around because the Senators won two fewer games and earned eight fewer points while dropping to seventh in the Atlantic.

Given the (relatively) recent acquisitions of Claude Giroux as a free agent and Jakob Chychrun by trade and the concurrent development of several strong young players—read: Stützle, Tim and Tkachuk, Brady, among others—it really shouldn't be that way.

Respected veteran player Steve Staios took over as GM when Pierre Dorion exited last November and he enters his initial off-season with the happiness of Tkachuk on his mind as the 24-year-old team captain enters his seventh NHL season without a meaningful game.

He's under contract through 2027-28 but he wouldn't be the first signed player to express discontent with a team's direction and begin suggesting a chance of scenery as a remedy. Staios called "B.S." on a rumor that Tkachuk was already on the trade block and insisted the team was actually being built around him.

If that's the case, it'd be wise (read: vital) to seize the narrative and make a big splash this summer by earmarking some of the $12 million cap space on a high-profile running mate.

There's no team quite like the Toronto Maple Leafs.

They reside in Canada's largest and most hockey-mad city. They have a roster that boasts no fewer than four players making at least $10.9 million dollars per season. And, in case you'd not been aware, they haven't won a Stanley Cup since before men walked on the moon.

That's 57 years if you're scoring at home—already three years longer than the interminable drought the New York Rangers finally put to bed in 1994.

So, yeah. There's some urgency.

But the presence of those four eight-figure salaried men doesn't make it easy to patch up other holes, particularly the ones on the blue line and in the goal crease that resulted in the league's 12th-worst goals-against average (3.18) and a middling 17th-place position when it comes to shots allowed (29.8 per game).

Veteran Martin Jones and Ilya Samsonov are unrestricted free agents, making 25-year-old Joseph Woll the leader in the goalie clubhouse for the No. 1 role in spite of just 34 NHL starts and 21 victories. That'll be a "welcome to town" headache-producer for new coach Craig Berube, who was hired to replace Sheldon Keefe on May 17.

It's Toronto. So splashy moves are always possible.

"When you go through a season as we have, everything must be on the table," GM Brad Treliving said. "Everything needs to be looked at. Everything needs to be considered. I think we're at a point where we see this repeatable, and we've got to dig in. The results, sitting here today, when we think we should still be playing, isn't acceptable."