Some comments to make:
Ville Leino signed by Buffalo for 6 years/$27 million... idiotic. He scored a career-high 19 goals last season playing with some pretty talented linemates in Philadelphia.
James Wisniewski signed by Columbus for 6 years/$33 million... even more idiotic. No way is he worth over $5 million a year.
Some other overpriced contracts, but those are the two that really stick out and are long-term as well.
Trading a first-round pick and a second-round pick for Semyon Varlamov!?!?!?!?!? What are the Avalanche thinking? Varlamov is worth one second-round pick. That's it. Especially since they signed Jean-Sebastien Giguere to a two-year deal as well.
Dallas made some great moves by signing Michael Ryder and Radek Dvorak. Sheldon Souray is probably going to be useless (I seriously hope so), but for one year/$1.65 million, it's a small price to pay for the risk.
The Panthers signed and traded for some good players, but they overpaid on Ed Jovanovski (4 years/$16.5 million) and Scottie Upshall (4 years/$14 million). Adding Brian Campbell, Tomas Kopecky, and Jose Theodore will help, but this team still isn't that good. At least they're trying.
Erik Cole is a hero and he's joining a team of heroes in Montreal.
The Maxime Talbot contract is awesome for the Flyers. The guy is a great player and they locked him up long-term for cheap, you don't see that too often.
The Steve Sullivan signing by the Penguins was pretty good. He is a sick dangler and was once a premier scorer.
Joel Ward and Roman Hamrlik are great additions by the Capitals. They finally have some players with some playoff ability.
Brad Richards got his. Too bad the Rangers are still light years away from being a Stanley Cup contender.
By far the biggest winners so far this offseason are the Los Angeles Kings. They just signed Simon Gagne today and they added Mike Richards earlier in the offseason. Their forwards are going to be stacked, Drew Doughty is one of the league's best defencemen, and Jonathan Quick is a superb goaltender. As of right now (obviously there's a ways to go before next season) they are my pick to win the Cup.
Now, as for my Edmonton Oilers, I love the moves we made. Trading Kurtis Foster (good riddance) for Andy Sutton was a great move. Ben Eager for 3 years/$3.3 million is a great signing, he is a fourth-line player who can actually play hockey (unlike Zach Stortini and Steve MacIntyre). Eric Belanger is an awesome face-off guy and penalty killer. Cam Barker was a much-needed solid defenceman. And all of these contracts were the right amount of money, we didn't overpay. It seems like Steve Tambellini actually had a plan this offseason, which our GMs haven't ever seemed to have.
Our forward lines are going to be formidable. Defence is still lacklustre, but we might be able to remedy that at some point. It has yet to be seen if Devan Dubnyk can be a starting goalie in the NHL, but I hope we give him a chance to start the season because Nikolai Khabibulin can kick rocks, in my opinion. Most importantly, we have that leader that we need in Ryan Smyth. He will lead by example and the whole team will go back to playing like they did back when we had him before, as if each game is their last. This is a team with a legitimate chance to make the playoffs. It would be overachieving if we did, but we used to overachieve every year back in the day with Smytty leading the way.
