(Ed. Note: Puck Daddy Power Rankings will return next week. But now, here's Ryan Lambert with a look at the 10 NHL teams that improved the most in the Summer of '14.)

Every summer, there are many teams that take at least some sort of step forward in terms of overall quality through drafting, signing, and trade acquisitions. This summer in particular it seemed, weirdly, as though a lot more teams in the league than usual were able to do so.

More troubling for the have-nots in the NHL, though, is that it was mostly teams that were actually good already which took the biggest steps forward.

Doesn't seem fair, but that's life.

But what good would all those changes be if we couldn't rank them arbitrarily?

10. Los Angeles Kings

It's tough to be sure the Kings really and actually count for this list, but let's say they do anyway. They didn't add anybody, but more importantly, they really didn't lose one guy in particular either.

They're a team that won the Stanley Cup and therefore had few changes to make. In the end, the barely did that: They traded center Linden Vey — who's good but was unnecessary in Los Angeles — to Vancouver (for a second-round pick; nice pickup), and re-upped Jeff Schultz. Really simple maintenance on what was already a finely tuned machine.

Oh, and they also re-signed Marian Gaborik for seven years with an AAV of just $4.875 million, giving him the fifth-highest cap hit among Kings forwards, and he took a substantial paycut because he liked all the winning he was doing. This ensured that the price Dean Lombardi paid for the rental was more than worth it. That's a pretty solid deal for a guy who was dominant alongside Anze Kopitar in the playoffs. A full, potentially injury-free season together (not that I'd go betting on that) seems like it could follow.

For a team that needed little to no help, ensuring they didn't lose Gaborik's services was key. The big knock on the Kings has always been that they didn't score a lot at 5-on-5 in particular, but this might sort that problem out pretty well.

9. Chicago Blackhawks

This is another team that didn't really need the help, but made two more tangible changes.

The first was offloading Brandon Bollig on Calgary in exchange for a third-round pick. Bollig is bad and he made the team worse when he was on the ice. Getting rid of him — and his confusingly high $1.3 million-per-for-three-years deal — is addition by subtraction in perhaps its purest sense. Does his absence mean they clear some roster space for Teuvo Teravainen?

But then they went out and added Brad Richards to replace Michal Handzus as the team's No. 2 center. The tires are certainly getting a little bare for Richards, but he'll be asked to do far less in Chicago than he was in New York, and at $2 million and one year — a bargain at 1.35 Bolligs — the risk is basically non-existent. If he can find any kind of chemistry with Patrick Kane, this could pay off in a serious way, and make them an even bigger Cup threat than they already were.

8. Minnesota Wild

Finally, we come to a team that actually needed more improvement to be competitive. One of Chuck Fletcher's biggest problems last season was that the depth on this team wasn't really there, particularly when it comes to scoring.

His solution to the problem, then, was to go out and get some depth and scoring. Thomas Vanek alone would have made for a pretty good offseason (as long as you ignore the looming calamity in net, barring a legendary coming of age for Darcy Kuemper), but tacking on Jordan Schroeder was a decent enough bet.

Vanek adds a lot more credibility to a top-six that kind of lacked it last year; the Wild were 24th in goals for last season (below Calgary!), and Vanek will certainly help there. So, too, will the continued maturation of some of the teams very promising young forwards, including Justin Fontaine, Jason Zucker, Charlie Coyle, Mikael Granlund and Erik Haula.

As for Schroeder, again, this is low-risk, because he's signed on a two-way deal for $600,000. He's a former first-round pick and Minnesota native AND former Minnesota Golden Gopher. If nothing else, they'll sell a bunch of Schroeder jerseys. Maybe he just needed a change of scenery.

Pity about the goaltending, though.

7. Edmonton Oilers

It's fair to say that the Oil took a bit of a risk in some regard this offseason, but nonetheless the roster today is better than it was last season.

Story continues