Free agency and the trade market reshaped the Pacific this summer, from a 9-million-dollar contract changing hands in San Jose to a Cup contender rolling the dice on a bargain goalie in Edmonton. Here is the single biggest new face on every Pacific team, run through the HighDanger numbers: expected goals, finishing, on-ice share, and our 2026-27 projection with an honest floor and ceiling. The box score is where these stories start. It is rarely where they end.
Anaheim Ducks: A.J. Greer
Anaheim paid up for a career year, and the honest read is that some of it does not repeat. Greer had never scored more than 6 goals in an NHL season before popping 17 last year, and part of that jump was opportunity: injuries up the Panthers lineup pushed him into a bigger role than he had ever held, and he ran with it. To his credit, the finishing says the goals were largely real (17 on 15.8 expected, just plus 1.2), so this was a genuine new level, not a luck spike. Repeating it is the harder question. A 29-year-old fourth-liner posting a career year on inflated minutes is tough to bank on for an encore, and our model projects a pullback to 27 points, with the goal total leading the regression. What Anaheim is actually buying is the rest of the package: 203 hits, a heavy forecheck, and a 51.3 percent expected-goals share that tilted his team's way at 5v5. That is a useful bottom-six piece for a young roster, and the energy fits a rebuild. The lone catch is the term, since 4.25 million through 2030 is a lot of runway for production that profiles closer to the low teens in goals than to 17.
Calgary Flames: Simon Nemec
This is a bet on pedigree and age, not on last year's box score. Nemec was the second overall pick in 2022 and is still only 22, and Calgary acquired him to anchor its blue line for the next decade. The arrow points up, 19 points as a rookie, a lost middle year, then a career-best 26, but two cautions sit under the surface. The 11 goals came on just 6.7 individual expected, a plus 4.3 finishing spike no young defenseman sustains, so the goal total should dip even if the points hold. And the defensive side is still developing. At 5-on-5 in New Jersey, his team was outchanced with him on the ice, a 46.7 percent expected-goals share. There is also a fit question in Calgary: the Flames are high on their own young right-shot defenseman, Zayne Parekh, and two puck-movers who shoot the same way will compete for the top-pairing minutes and power-play time that drive a defenseman's offense. Our model projects 28 with a ceiling of 38. At 7.25 million through 2031 Calgary is paying for what Nemec becomes, not what he was, and at 22 the realistic upside is a top-pairing point producer who grows into the number.
Edmonton Oilers: Frederik Andersen
Edmonton's forever problem gets a low-cost swing, and the case for it lives in the playoffs, not the regular season. The regular-season line was ugly and there is no dressing it up: a .874 save percentage and minus 5.5 goals saved above expected across a limited 35-game run, comfortably the worst stretch of his Carolina tenure. Then the postseason flipped the script. Andersen was the engine of Carolina's Cup run, going 13-2 across 16 starts with a .910 save percentage, a 1.89 goals-against average, three shutouts, and a superb plus 9.8 goals saved above expected, right up until he was injured in the Cup Final and Brandon Bussi stepped in to close out the title against Vegas. That is not a goalie in decline. It is a 36-year-old who was at his best when the stakes were highest, on a career mark that already reads .913. Our model bets on the rebound too, projecting a 2.41 GAA and a .903 save percentage, numbers that would stabilize a crease Edmonton has papered over for years. The framing is still almost ironic: the Oilers chased a real starting goalie for the better part of four years, right through the core of their contention window, and the fix they landed on is a one-year, one-million-dollar deal for a 36-year-old. But after that spring, this looks like the shrewdest low-risk bet of Edmonton's offseason. Age and health are the only questions left, and at one million dollars they hardly matter. For a goalie who was that good when it counted, the price is next to nothing.
Los Angeles Kings: Erik Haula
Los Angeles is running this play again, and Haula is the steadiest piece of it. The Kings loaded up on veterans a year ago and still fell short of what they were chasing, so the fair question with another round of additions is whether the result changes this time. Haula himself is a reasonable bet. He bounced back to 38 points after a quiet 21 the year before, and the finishing actually ran cold, 14 goals on 17 expected, a minus 3.0 that hints the goal total could climb rather than fall. He added 12 power-play points and can slot up or down the lineup, the kind of versatility a deep team leans on. At 35 the model keeps it modest, projecting 34 in a tight 29-to-39 band that reflects how reliable he has been, and the 48.6 percent expected-goals share, earned in Nashville, is middling but not a red flag for a middle-six role. The honest answer to the bigger question is that one steady veteran center does not lift a team's ceiling. Haula makes Los Angeles deeper and more reliable down the middle, and the two-year term keeps the risk low at a fair 3.6 million a year, a sensible bet on a 35-year-old rather than an anchor. But if last year's veteran push did not get the Kings where they wanted, a depth piece like this is unlikely to be the reason this year turns out different.
San Jose Sharks: Darnell Nurse
San Jose has done the hard part of a rebuild well, stockpiling draft capital and building a genuinely exciting young core, which is exactly why the Nurse trade landed with a thud. General manager Mike Grier acquired him from Edmonton and took on the full 9.25 million with no salary retained, and the reaction around the hockey world was brutal, plenty of it framing the deal as the move that fumbled an otherwise excellent offseason. The numbers explain the outrage. This is a contract move as much as a hockey one: Nurse gives a very young blue line the workload it lacks, 82 games, 21 minutes a night, and a physical shutdown game with 137 hits, but the trend underneath is grim. His scoring has fallen from a peak of 43 to a career-low 24 over the last four seasons, and the power-play production is gone entirely at zero points. The underlying play, earned in Edmonton, reads as roughly break-even, a 50.1 percent expected-goals share and a near-even 41-to-40 goal split, not the tilt a 9.25 million cap hit implies. Our model projects 28 points. The one thing working in its favor is context: a young San Jose team pushing to get back to the playoffs has the cap room to absorb the deal and a core that can lean on a veteran to eat the hard minutes. But taking on full freight through 2030 with a no-movement clause and no retention, for a defenseman whose offense has cratered to a career low, is exactly why the trade still drew the reaction it did. There is a more hopeful read, too. Nurse has spent his entire career, more than a decade, with Edmonton, the only organization he has ever known, often shouldering outsized expectations and heavy minutes along the way. A first change of scenery can reset a player, and while it will not fix the contract, a fresh start in San Jose might just get more out of him than his last few years in Edmonton did.
Seattle Kraken: Mackie Samoskevich
Of every arrival in the Pacific, Samoskevich is the most suitable breakout candidate, and the numbers are emphatic about why. He is a 23-year-old who generated 21.5 individual expected goals and scored just 12, a brutal minus 9.4 finish that our model flags with a literal BUY tag. With normal finishing luck, that total lands in the high 30s instead of at 32. The cold shooting is the only thing holding it down. The play underneath backs the case: a strong 53.4 percent expected-goals share, earned in Florida, and 10 power-play points in a middle-six role. Our model projects 38 with a ceiling of 47, and at 23 the arrow points up. At 3.85 million through 2029, that contract could look like a steal within a year if the finishing simply regresses to the mean. The context only sharpens the case. Like Greer in Anaheim, Samoskevich came up through an injury-hit Florida lineup, but that says more about the Panthers than about him: a deep, cap-tight, winning roster simply had no permanent room for a 23-year-old whose game had outgrown spot minutes, even though he produced whenever he played. Seattle gives him the every-night top-six job Florida could not, and paired with a finishing bounce back toward his expected rate, that is how a quietly good season becomes a breakout. If it clicks, 3.85 million through 2029 will read like a steal, and the winger Florida could not fit becomes a player Seattle can build on.
Vancouver Canucks: Jamie Oleksiak
The box score is not the point here, and reading it that way misses the signing entirely. Oleksiak is a 6-foot-7 shutdown defenseman whose value lives in the parts of the game the scoresheet ignores: size, penalty killing, and physicality, with 112 hits and a steady defensive presence. The 15-point output is right in line with a career that has never been about offense, and the model projects a flat 16 in a narrow 15-to-17 band. The 49.3 percent expected-goals share, earned in Seattle, is roughly break-even, which is what you want from a stay-at-home veteran eating hard minutes and protecting leads. There is a developmental angle, too. Vancouver has spent a while trying to add size and snarl to its blue line, and a 6-foot-7 veteran is exactly the kind of stabilizer who can take the hard matchups and help shelter a prized 20-year-old like Zeev Buium, giving the young defenseman room to grow into his game. Vancouver is paying 5.0 million through 2028 for that role, matchup shifts, box-outs, and kill time that do not show up in points. The risk is paying top-four money for bottom-pairing production, but if the defensive game holds up, the Canucks know precisely what they bought.
Vegas Golden Knights: Victor Olofsson
Vegas found value in the bargain bin, and in a familiar face. This is a homecoming: Olofsson skated for the Golden Knights in 2024-25, posting 29 points in 56 games, before a 2025-26 detour through Colorado and Calgary. He still put up 31 points across those two stops, and the finishing ran a touch cold, 13 goals on 16.6 expected, a minus 3.6 that suggests the shooting could rebound. His calling card has always been the power play, where his one-timer plays up in any lineup, and even in reduced roles he chipped in 7 man-advantage points. The model likes the buy, projecting 34 with a ceiling of 40. At 1.64 million through 2027 that is secondary scoring and a specialist power-play weapon for pennies, and Vegas had a hole to fill: it lost Pavel Dorofeyev and his scoring touch to the Rangers on an eleven-million-dollar deal this summer. Olofsson does not replace that on his own, but as a cheap source of some of the lost power-play punch, he is exactly the sort of value a cap-strapped contender needs. The trade-off is the rest of the game: 18 hits and a middling 51.0 percent expected-goals share, earned across two teams, mark him as an offense-only piece. But for this price, a winger with a real shot who can quarterback a second unit is a clean, low-risk add.
