When you go down the list of who spent what on whom in free agency, and what trades were made this summer, you can pretty easily start to pick out the winners and losers. Flexibility-strapped teams had to jettison players, and clubs with a wealth of cap space were, for the second or perhaps third summer in a row, able to bleed them of talent (look at Dallas, and so on).

The wild spending of previous off-seasons, mostly to retain current players rather than woo new ones, led a number of competitive clubs into tough situations. As a result, the talent wealth was spread around a little more evenly.

But when picking winners and losers, the two clubs that seem to have taken the biggest steps forward were the two of the three worst in the league in terms of wins and losses: Edmonton and Buffalo.

Of course, those teams making a ton of hay on the trade market and in free agency is going to give them the chance to take a big step forward, but that comes with the caveat that they were so far behind the pack last year (Edmonton obviously less so) that even a best-in-the-league leap might not be enough to get the job done and actually make a club competitive. However, when it comes to making the right choices in terms of which players to bring in, it's tough to argue that any general manager has done better in the last few months than Tim Murray.

Let's just get the obvious out of the way first: Edmonton added the single most important player that any team has added at least since Sidney Crosby, and perhaps since Mario Lemieux. And that goes a long way toward your “improving” metric right there. The Oilers, however, also brought in Andrej Sekera, Mark Letestu, Cam Talbot, Griffin Reinhart and a few other players who might be able to move the needle. They weirdly also dumped a helpful player or two, but the total gain was overwhelmingly positive.

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It should be noted here that the Oilers weren't nearly as bad last season as the record indicates, and were supremely unlucky especially in terms of goaltending. So that they added McDavid and Sekera and Talbot in particular, then also brought in a very good coach and — for the first time in a while — deeply competent GM, all indicates that this is a team that could be borderline playoff-competitive, especially in their truly awful division. A lot of that depends upon just how good McDavid is, as you might imagine, but the fact that we're even having that conversation says plenty about the steps forward taken under Peter Chiarelli, in the Light of the 97.

But even those huge steps forward pale in comparison with what Buffalo has done this summer. Here are the more notable NHL players they are bringing in for 2015-16 in who didn't play for them last season — including Evander Kane, who was traded Feb. 11, but didn't play a game last season — versus those they lost or jettisoned (and I might be missing one or two here, but you get the picture):

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This obviously doesn't include a few notable players who are likely to move into more significant roles next season (such as Rasmus Ristolainen), nor does it take into account that Ted Nolan, who wasn't a very good coach at this level, was replaced with Dan Bylsma, who is very good and was unfairly run out of Pittsburgh in the first place.

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