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Posted at 1:15 PM EST.

10:05 PM EST. One of the challenges early in the year is to pick out the over and under-valued teams before a market adjustment is made and right off the hop, the Canucks are absolutely on our radar as an underpriced team. The Canucks enjoyed sustained stretches of dominance across many of Daniel and Henrik Sedin’s best years, coming within one victory of the 2011 Stanley Cup and winning the Presidents’ Trophy in 2010-11 and 2011-12, but those teams eventually aged out of their primes, and the Canucks stock hit rock bottom, as they sank to the bottom of the standings or near it for years, The current down years may now be over.

Because they play out West and have been irrelevant for years, Vancouver may also be the least exposed team in the NHL. When East Coasters and Midwest hockey fans stayed up late last year to watch NHL games, it wasn’t to watch the Canucks, as there was this new team that set the NHL on fire but here’s what we know about Vancouver:

Brock Boeser had a spectacular rookie season, but it ended a month early due to injury. Bo Horvat was lighting it up before a broken ankle. Sven Baertschi was having his best season before a freak injury. Even veterans such as Loui Eriksson, Brandon Sutter and Sam Gagner have more to give than the 10 or so goals they provided last season. Furthermore, expectations are high for Elias Pettersson to be one of the league’s top rookies and Jake Virtanen to finally blossom offensively. There is potential galore up front.

Alexander Edler and Chris Tanev play as top-pair defensemen. Behind them are four or five serviceable defenders including a player we like in Ben Hutton. In goal, it’ll be Jacob Markstrom and Anders Nilsson, which isn’t great by any stretch but Markstrom has long been highly touted and he’ll be playing behind a team that figures to be improved in all areas.

In the offseason, GM Jim Benning picked up Jay Beagle, Antoine Roussel and Tim Schaller. These are three character guys that play an important role and also provide serviceable duty in the bottom six. Ideally, their steady work ethic helps smooth out the inconsistencies in Vancouver’s skill players. Even if half the Canucks’ “raise the bar” players post improvements, Vancouver will make noise. If more than half do, watch out. This team could surprise.

The Flames made a lot of moves this offseason by dumping or trading Dougie Hamilton, Micheal Ferland, Matt Stajan, Kris Versteeg,  Nick Shore, Matt Bartkowski and Tanner Glass while picking up James Neal, Noah Hanifin, Elias Lindholm, Derek Ryan, Austin Czarnik. They also fired Glen Gulutzan and hired Hurricanes former bench boss, Bill Peters to replace him. These were very good moves, as the Flames’ offense fell to 27th overall from 16th the year before because there was precious little contribution from the bottom six. The fourth line of Matt Stajan, Troy Brouwer and Curtis Lazar scored just 12 goals in 209 combined games played. With the acquisitions of James Neal and Elias Lindholm and the signings of Derek Ryan and Austin Czarnik, who both have very good potential, it should give the Flames more balance and also four lines that could put the puck in the net.

For years, the Hurricanes were a possession monster under Bill Peters but he had no goaltending in Carolina and now he comes to Calgary under the same conditions. GM Brad Treliving addressed everything but the crease in the offseason, which was a massive gaffe because goaltending decides more games than anything else. Mike Smith is 36 and had a lousy finish to last season. Smith has missed large chunks of the past three seasons with injuries. Behind Smith it’s even worse with David Rittich beating out Jon Gillies for the backup job. Look, we like the Flames as a whole. Very much so but what we don’t like about them is that weak goaltending we discussed. That matters and we’re willing to fade Calgary as road chalk until they do something about it.

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