- Daily Faceoff has Washington as the East’s biggest offseason winner after the Alex Tuch signing
- Florida lands second on the strength of the Brady Tkachuk trade
- Read below for where Toronto and Montreal landed on the list
The Washington Capitals did more than anybody else in the East this summer.
That is the verdict from Daily Faceoff’s Anthony Di Marco, who put the Capitals at No. 1 in his ranking of the conference’s biggest offseason winners on Wednesday, ahead of Florida and Toronto.
Alex Tuch is the reason. Washington handed the best forward on the open market an eight-year deal at a $10.5 million cap hit after missing the playoffs, the second time in three summers the Caps have gone shopping right after a miss.
Boone Jenner deepens the bottom six and Vincent Desharnais gives the third pair some weight behind Jakob Chychrun and Rasmus Sandin. Di Marco also flagged 20-year-old Ilya Protas as the wild card, a kid who could push his way into the top of the lineup over a full season.
Florida checks in second. Bill Zito sent three first-round picks to Ottawa for captain Brady Tkachuk, then filled in around him with Garnet Hathaway, Lars Eller and a six-year contract for Radko Gudas.
Goaltending is the gamble in South Florida. Jacob Markstrom is back after rough stretches in Calgary and New Jersey, and healthy returns from Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk function like two more additions.
Brad Marchand’s surgery makes those Hathaway and Eller signings look bigger than they did in June.
Toronto sits third. John Chayka spent heavily and had a first overall pick waiting on top of it, with Gavin McKenna slotting in beside Auston Matthews at a spot that has been a revolving door since Mitch Marner left.
Take a look at McKenna in the No. 92:
Darren Raddysh at $68 million is a heavy price for a 30-year-old defenseman, though his right shot fills a power-play hole the Leafs have lived with for years. Sergei Bobrovsky and Anthony Stolarz give Toronto its best goalie tandem of the Matthews era, at least on paper.
Montreal grabbed an honorable mention for what it did not do. Kent Hughes locked up Ivan Demidov for eight years and $73.2 million, re-signed Kirby Dach at $3.6 million for a year, shipped Brendan Gallagher to Vancouver and left the second-line center and right-shot defense openings to Oliver Kapanen and David Reinbacher.
Di Marco already ran the other side of this exercise, with the Red Wings topping the East losers list and the Ducks heading the West. The Western Conference winners are up next.
