Well now that the insanity that is Free Agency is over with, I thought it would be interesting to do a follow up article to see how the landscape has changed in the league after all of the carnage.

Virtually every single team in the league was impacted in some way during the last few weeks that was the FA period either through actual FA signings or trades; be it a straight up ‘regular’ trade or a sign and trade.

There were only four teams in the league that did not see any change to their rosters. There were the Islanders, Golden Knights, Jets and Flyers.

That’s not to say that they didn’t make any moves as they may have made changes to their D or goaltending; but again, defensemen and goalies are not a part of this examination as only SC and PA ratings and only forward DF ratings are taken into consideration.

Once again, here are the rules:

This is an examination of team rosters on an organizational level; there are plenty of teams with guys that have 70+PA or 70+DF stashed on their farms. And while I know some if not all of them will start on the farm when the season starts, it’s still team depth.

Ratings of 90 and above are generally considered ‘elite’ or star player ratings whereas, ratings between 80 - 89 are considered top six player ratings, and ratings of 70 to 79 are generally considered secondary scoring ratings.

One major thing to remember when looking at these charts is that this doesn’t mean that the Oilers have 2 guys with elite scoring and 4 guys with secondary passing abilities. In a lot of these cases, the scorers and passers shown on a team are the same player; i.e. Conner McDavid is a 95 SC and a 99 PA.

Here’s how grading worked:

90+ SC = 3.5 multiplier; 90+ PA = 3.0  multiplier
80+ SC = 2.5 multiplier; 80+ PA = 2.0  multiplier
70+ SC = 1.5 multiplier; 70+ PA = 1.0  multiplier
80+ DF = 1.0 multiplier; 70+ DF = 0.5  multiplier

I.e. the Avalanche have three players with a 90+ SC rating so they got awarded 3 x 3.5 = 10.5, and so on.

Without further adieu, here’s how the league shakes out after FA:

The numbers highlighted in RED in the chart represent some sort of change in the number – be it an increase or a decrease from the previous rankings prior to FA.

The “Diff” column represents the change in overall ranking from the previous rankings.

So what is the takeaway?

Well, about half of the league didn’t see too much change in their ranking with eight teams staying the same ranking as they were previously and another nine teams going up or down one or two spots.

The biggest increase as you can see belongs to Steve and his Habs as he made an impressing 12 point rise in the standings from being ranked at #15 before FA to being the #3 overall team after FA.

The next biggest jumper is no surprise with Rex’s Super Stoners jumping up 9 spots by virtue of him signing two of the biggest fishes available in FA in Bergeron and Malkin.

The biggest ‘loser’? Well that title belongs to Leon and his Oilers who dropped from the #2 spot in the previous rankings all the way down to the #10 spot after FA. I believe most of this was due to the number of unsigned RFAs that he had to move due to a cap crunch which saw him downgrade some of his higher end SC and PA players for picks or younger downgrades.

The next biggest rankings droppers is a tie between the Doc’s Jets and PJ’s Rangers who both dropped six spots respectively by virtue of more or less standing pat and having other teams pass them by who were more aggressive in tweaking their rosters during FA.

Now obviously a lot can and will change over the next few months prior to the start of the season and the waiver draft will see some of the lower end SC, PA and DF depth change teams, but here’s where we stand as of now.