Seven biggest offseason storylines

Hear that creaking sound? That's the welcome sound of rust being shaken off around the NHL. Sure, the vast majority of players have been working out for weeks, but we still like the image of a rebirth of sorts: the notion that when training camps began Thursday, it was be the equivalent of 30 bears emerging from a reverse summer hibernation, growling with hope that for each the future is enticing, like an unblemished sheet of ice. What's to come? Heartbreak. Despair. Joy. Unexpected success and crushing disappointment. Isn't that why we tune in, after all?

Here's a look at seven significant offseason changes and what they mean for the coming season:

1. Penguins cooling off? The happy, comfortable place that used to be the Pittsburgh Penguins underwent a major overhaul this offseason after losing for the fifth straight year in the playoffs to a lower-seeded opponent. Last spring, the Pens inexplicably blew a 3-1 lead against the New York Rangers in the second round, and that set off a chain reaction that ultimately saw GM Ray Shero and head coach Dan Bylsma fired and sniper James Neal traded to the Nashville Predators. Brooks Orpik and Matt Niskanen, two of the team's top defenders, signed with the Washington Capitals (see below) and new GM Jim Rutherford deftly navigated difficult salary-cap waters by signing Christian Ehrhoff, Thomas Greiss and Steve Downie, adding Patric Hornqvist and Nick Spaling in the Neal trade. The biggest move might have been the addition of veteran junior coach and former NHL assistant Mike Johnston as the new bench boss. There was lots of angst over this as the Penguins had earlier tried to land Willie Desjardins, who inexplicably decided he didn't want to coach Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin and took the job in Vancouver. Johnston is highly regarded and the Pens are still loaded, yet with all the talk of a lack of character and leadership, one wonders how they will respond to the first major overhaul since winning the Cup in 2009. And some hockey folks are wondering if things will get worse in Pittsburgh before they get better.

2. Capitals feeling the heat: Speaking of clearing the decks, the Capitals, poster boys for underachievement in the East, fired head coach Adam Oates and longtime GM George McPhee. New GM Brian MacLellan was promoted from within and longtime Nashville Predators head coach Barry Trotz was hired the same day, and Washington added the top free-agent defensemen in Matt Niskanen and Brooks Orpik to help redefine the team's defensive identity. Did McLellan overpay and give too much term to the two former Pens defenders, who landed a combined 12 years and $67.75 million in contract? Sure he did. But will it work, at least in the short term? We think this team is about to get a lot more difficult to play against. But what of Alex Ovechkin? After winning the Rocket Richard Trophy with 51 goals but finishing with an embarrassing minus-35, Ovechkin remains very much a player without a true identity. Or at least an identity that might realistically help the Caps achieve any kind of lasting playoff success. We're guessing that's about to change under Trotz, who has told Ovechkin he wants the Caps to play an up-tempo style but has also suggested Ovechkin has areas of his game that need to be refined, including less gliding and more skating in both directions. As usual, these are interesting times in the nation's capital, especially with the 2015 Winter Classic set for Nationals Park on Jan. 1 against the Chicago Blackhawks.

3. Sharks attacked: After their historic collapse in the first round against the Los Angeles Kings, during which the San Jose Sharks sailed to a 3-0 series lead only to implode in staggering fashion, losing four straight, the Sharks did little but engage in a postseason of embarrassing in-fighting and back-biting. Although it was clear GM Doug Wilson and head coach Todd McLellan would have liked to have moved either Joe Thornton or Patrick Marleau (or both) -- this after extending their contracts last season -- it didn't happen. So, the Sharks did the next best thing and that was to try to shame the two veterans by stripping Thornton of the captaincy and taking away Marleau's "A" as an alternate captain. The fact McLellan didn't really tell Thornton this was going to happen was a nice touch and added to the widely held impression there is a giant disconnect within the organization about how to change the Sharks' fortunes. To top it off, the Sharks further embarrassed themselves by signing mega-pylon John Scott, the kind of player who just seems to be the last player a cerebral guy like Wilson would want on his lineup (not that it's imaginable that he'll play much, but we digress). The bottom line? This is still a solid, playoff-caliber team, even with Brent Burns being repatriated to the blue line and with Alex Stalock looking like he could take a run at the starting goaltending job. Who knows, maybe all this acrimony will lead to the team's first Cup championship. Stranger things have happened, even if strange has become the norm in San Jose, another team that will host a marquee NHL event with a Stadium Series contest against the Kings (of course) in the new year.

4. West keeps getting better: We're going to spend an awful lot of time again this season talking about the preponderance of power in the Western Conference because that's where almost all of the elite teams reside. "Tough" doesn't begin to describe the road to the playoffs, let alone getting to the Stanley Cup finals, through the Western Conference. But one thing the Los Angeles Kings have proven in winning two Cups in three years is that you've got little hope unless you are deep, deep, deep down the middle. The offseason saw Western Conference foes heeding that advice as Brad Richards, a former Conn Smythe winner as playoff MVP, was signed by the Chicago Blackhawks to add depth down the middle. The Nashville Predators added Mike Ribeiro and Derek Roy to help shore up their middle and are hoping that at least one can resurrect his career. The St. Louis Blues brought home Paul Stastny with the hope of measuring up against the big boys with the highly sought-after pivot. But no team made the kind of move that the Anaheim Ducks did in acquiring Ryan Kesler at the draft from the Vancouver Canucks. Head coach Bruce Boudreau, who was given a two-year contract extension heading into training camp, told us he's never coached a team that's had two bona fide No. 1 centers (assuming both Kesler and Ryan Getzlaf are healthy) and it's going to give the Ducks the opportunity to be something special. Special enough to dethrone the Kings and advance to the Cup finals? All the pieces are there, that's for sure.

5. Draft makeover: It's been many years since so much attention will be paid to who finishes at the bottom of the league standings. That's because at the end of the 2015 draft rainbow is a player considered a can't-miss superstar: Connor McDavid. Jack Eichel, one of the best American prospects to come along in years, is a close second, but rebuilding (or just plain lousy) teams are salivating at the thought of landing McDavid next June. But the road to the No. 1 overall pick and that golden prospect is different than it was a year ago, thanks to innovative changes made this offseason by the NHL that widens the odds for all teams that don't make the playoffs to potentially land the first overall pick. It also lessens, at least slightly, the odds for the 30th overall team to snag the top pick. And starting in 2016, the process will be employed three times to determine the top three picks in the draft, even further opening up the possibility that teams that finished higher in the standings could land a top pick. The message the league is sending is clear: don't bother tanking -- something some GMs had grumbled about in relation to the Buffalo Sabres -- because that doesn't guarantee you anything (other than a weekly trip to the bottom of the ESPN.com Power Rankings). Our guess as to the three teams that'll have the best shot at McDavid: Carolina Hurricanes, Winnipeg Jets and the Sabres.

6. Expansion bridge: Reports in the weeks leading up to training camp that the NHL was poised to expand into Las Vegas and a host of other locales around North America were categorically denied by league officials. Still, the discussion of expansion is not going to go away anytime soon and it will be interesting to see what kind of airing of the issue takes place at the board of governors' annual meeting in early December in Florida. No player at the annual players' tour suggested the league didn't need to expand and most pinpointed Seattle and Quebec City as expansion spots they would choose. There seems little doubt that if a plan fell into place for an arena to be built in Seattle, either with or without the return of the NBA, the NHL would move quickly to put a team there. Vegas seems a much longer shot, although finding an owner might not be as difficult a task as one might imagine and there is an NHL-style arena being built on the Strip. Further expansion into Canada is a bit trickier, but it would mean oodles more money in expansion fees. Big picture, the discussion is a reflection of the league's overall health and the fact talk about failing franchises in Florida, Long Island, Arizona and New Jersey has been largely replaced with "Where to next?" Our guess is that by the end of the season, the expansion picture will come more into focus.

7. Analytics ascension: Never have so many men jumped directly from sitting behind computers in their pajamas in ill-lit rooms in their parents' basement to executive positions with NHL teams. OK, we're kidding in using the old stereotype of hockey bloggers and their lonely existence. But no question this offseason represents a coming-out party for those who swear by advanced analytics and have long insisted varying methods of in-depth analysis of players' effectiveness needs to be more broadly embraced. Voila. The Edmonton Oilers, New Jersey Devils and Toronto Maple Leafs were at the cutting edge of a slew of offseason hirings that saw teams expand to include advanced stats guys. And those teams that didn't actually hire staff insisted they'd been using advanced stats for years. Now, the temptation will be to put too much emphasis on how these teams fare and draw a line directly to the hirings. That would be unfair. The Oilers are still likely to be on the outside looking in come playoff time next spring (same as it ever was). The Leafs will be life and death to qualify for the postseason, as will the Devils. But that won't necessarily be a reflection of the work done by Tyler Dellow in Edmonton or former poker pro turned hockey stats guy Sunny Mehta in New Jersey or the Leafs' youthful new assistant GM, Kyle Dubas, and his new analytics staff in Toronto. Neither will any unexpected success be entirely the result of adding such people. Like any tool employed in the hopes of maximizing a team's potential, it's merely part of a long, complex equation. But the reality is teams will inevitably be heading further in this direction.