Canucks 9th in the West. This will be their last year of competing for a playoff spot for a while. This is that "We don't need to rebuild" year that teams go through before they crash out completely.
Flames 13th in the West - I don't think they'll be that much worse, but I think that this will be the rock bottom year before they start to climb towards respectability as their prospect pool begins to graduate.
Oilers 14th in the West - I don't like their centers, LD is going to have to be an impact player this year or the Oilers are in huge trouble. They added bit parts on defense in Fayne and Nikitin who are the equivalent of redshirts in Star Trek, in other words their teams could survive without them. What they needed to fix their defense was legitimate top defensemen and not more bottom half guys being forced to play top minutes. I predict that Scrivens and whoever else plays goal in Edmonton is going to be in for a long year and probably drop from exhaustion at the halfway point. The culture of that team is sour, I don't think that Ramsey coming in is going to change the fact that the core of the Oilers doesn't care and knows that Eakins is on the bubble and they don't have to play for him. The Oilers are still defensively terrible, Poulliot with a long term big money contract is just going to expose how lazy and heartless he is, and Purcell is way past his best before label. The only question is, will this be the year that Katz finally grows some balls and cleans house like he should have 3 years ago.
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