The NHL off season is well underway and many teams have made many personnel changes to bolster their rosters. I am going to go through and grade each team on the moves they made so without further ado...

Atlantic Division
Pittsburgh Penguins
The Pens coming off of a Stanley Cup finals appearance didn't have a large amount of money to spend but they had a lot of players to sign. Obviously they were going to lose some in the shuffle; their biggest losses came in the form of losing Marian Hossa. Hossa signed on with the Red Wings so in turn the Penguins have nothing left from their blockbuster deadline deal for Hossa. They really risked a lot of future to win now and it didn't quite pay off. Another key loss for the Pens came from losing Ryan Malone and Gary Roberts heading to Tampa, of the best depth players they have.

The Penguins added the likes of Miro Satan and Ruslan Fedotenko, but those 2 can not replace Hossa, Malone and Roberts, not by a long shot. Another bright point for the Penguins off season was resigning Evgeni Malkin and Marc-Andre Fleury to a long term deals which will solidify the core of their team for the next 5-6 years.
Overall this off season the Penguins are getting a B- from me because their losses in the roster far outweigh the additions, but the resigning of Malkin and Fleury are huge. I can't believe I wrote the whole column on the Pens and didn't mention Crosby once, oh #### there goes that hope.

New York Rangers
The Rangers got a lot better in the offseason through trades and free agency. I don't think the loss of Jagr will hurt the Rangers as it seems he was just a cancer in the dressing room anyways. The addition of Wade Redden is big for this club, but they well overpaid for a player who is gradually getting worse. Redden and Rosival will be sufficient for this team on the back end as long as Henrik Lundqvist plays to his potential. Adding Marcus Naslund was a nice move my the Rangers as well, I really think he just needed a change of scenery from out West to get his game going again.

The big splash that really improved the Rangers was trading for Nikolai Zheredev and Dan Fritsche. Zheredev seemed to come into his own last season and started to separate himself from being just a regular player to a offensive threat. Fritsche is still young but will have a nice career in the NHL. It seemed the Rangers had to give up very little to Fedor Tyutin and Christian Backman to get these 2 forwards, you can tell Columbus was desparate for D-men on this deal.

The Rangers will be a solid team next season, their biggest worry as always is going to be consistency and chemistry. On paper they should have no problems scoring, but when you put a bunch of individual players that play for themselves on one team it typically spells disaster. For their offseason moves I give the Rangers an A-. They look like a deadly team that's going to be a force...at least on paper.

New York Islanders
What a terrible, terrible team this is going to be. I am sorry to any Islanders fans but you can not get excited when you look at this roster. After trading down in the draft several times, the Isles really missed out on getting Luke Schenn. The Islanders only notable pick-up in the offseason has been Mark Streit, a great power play defencemen, who can be a potential liability on D. He is versatile as he plays both wing and defence, but he alone certainly can not save this team.

The one bright spot for this team is seeing players like Jeff Tambelleni and Kyle Okposo develop and become talents in the league as they both have the potential to do that.
The Isles are getting a C for their off season moves, an improvement on the blue line will help, but they need more then that......maybe they need John Tavares?

New Jersey Devils
The Devils threw some cash around this off-season, most notably signing Bobby Holik and Brian Rolston. They kept Bryce Salvador on the blue line after acquiring him at last years trade deadline and he should help out back there. Unfortunately, this team is lacking a lot of defence (but so is everyone) but I will never count out the defensive abilities of a team that has Martin Brodeur in net, no matter how old he's getting. Not to mention the traditional style of a New Jersey team is to play the "trap", and they can sure do it well.

They should make up for a lack of star power on the back end with the likes of Rolston, Elias, Gionta and Parise to name a few. New Jersey has always been a solid team over the past years, and I don't see any difference come this year.

The Devils get a B for their off season acquisitions, they lost nobody notable, and signed a great goal scorer in Brian Rolston who was one of the top forward UFAs this off-season.

Philadelphia Flyers
This off-season they didn't make any staggering moves to sign players, but they didn't have to (and didn't really have the cap space for it either). They got the most important guy to them signed in Jeff Carter. They also shed the contract of R.J. Umberger who was an RFA this season; as much as that is a loss to Philly you can't expect R.J. to play like he did last playoffs all season long. This is a team with a very bright future and has many up-and-comers who can jump into Umbergers old spot.

The Flyers will be a good team once again, and the issue as always with them is at the back end. The goaltending is nothing to brag over. Biron had an amazing playoffs but how long will that continue in this season? The other issue with the Flyers is on defence, aside from Kimmo Timonen, there isn't much to brag over. Braydon Coburn and newly acquired Steve Eminger will have to have big years.

The Flyers get a B- for this off-seasons work. They did what they had to do under the CBA and managed to get Carter signed on for 3 more seasons.

Final Grades:
Penguins B-
Rangers A-
Islanders C
Devils B
Flyers B-

Overall the Atlantic division should be a competitive one next season as each team with the exception of the Islanders could very easily make the playoffs. Next time I will have the Northeast division and we will look at the moves Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Buffalo and Boston made and see how they made out this off-season.