I think no. 1 is the canuck, but let me take a look at the sharks for a second. I swear in a few weeks, they are now a team full of grit and power forwards; exactly what wasn't present last May.
OUT: Sturm, Stuart, Primeau, Langfeld, Dimitrakos, McCauley, S. Thornton, Ekman, Preissing, perhaps a goalie soon.
IN: Thornton, Nieminen, Grier, Brown, Bell, and Bernier and Carle joined down the stretch of the season.
Canucks easily, I live in Van and am shocked at this team, this team looks like a farm team/grinders with a little talent sprinkled in the mix. We have no scoring wingers other than naslund, the chemistry with carter/sedins is gone. Look at the canucks top 4 dmen----ohlund, salo,mitchel, bourdon? Salo is made of glass, bourdon is unproven, yikes...the canucks are going to have to play the trap and rely on luongo to steal them 15 games. they should of hired J LeMaire as coach...nasty just nasty..........we have no depth either since half the farm team is playing on the big team lol....
Every time I turn around, someone else wants out of Edmonton, or is signing somewhere else. Aren't they up near a dozen people leaving?
Nah, people are overeacting because of the Pronger thing. The Edm team from the season start last year is very close to this year.
Yes they lost the late season pickups in Samsonov(basically benched in the final series), Spacek, and Tarnstrom(benchwarmer). But this is the same thing as other teams. I don't see anyone here screaming Carolina is now doomed because the rental players of Weight, Recchi, Cullen bolted out of Raliegh faster than a speeding bullet.
Edmonton did lose Pronger which hurts but the rest are fine to say goodbye.
1) Dvorak underavchieved with injuries all year. (didnt play in the playoffs except 1 game)
2) Ulanov finally got put out to pasture as he didnt fit into the new NHL. (Never saw the ice in the playoffs)
3) Peca was a target all year as an underperfomer at 4 million. He played awesome in the playoffs but he is welcome to leave.
Really it's not that many changes but people will always have fun making jokes at Edmontons expense. It's okay, we might be a sleeper this year again, just the way I like it. The funny thing is we needed Peca and pronger out just to pay our new salaries to get players wrapped up for multi year deals. The core is set for several years. If Pronger stayed we would have lost a couple players.
