Over the past few weeks, I’ve been doing a team-by-team look at what everybody else in the Pacific Division has been up to this summer. With the start of the season underway, I’m going to step back and take a look at the Pacific Division as a whole and what it all means for the Oilers in 2019-20.

The @Calgary Flames enter 2019-20 with mostly the same roster intact from last season. The only differences are swapping Mike Smith for Cam Talbot in net and James Neal for Milan Lucic up front coupled with the loss of solid depth winger Garnet Hathaway. Otherwise, the same group that finished at the top of the Western Conference and tied for second in the league in goals scored is still here.

The difference this year is the burden of expectations. Last year, the Flames exploded from being a non-playoff team to the top of the West with a 23-point increase in the standings. After an embarrassing loss to the eighth-seeded Colorado Avalanche in the playoffs, this group is entering the season with a lot to prove. A lot went right for the Flames last season — an unexpectedly good season from David Rittich in net, a breakout showing from Elias Lindholm, depth scoring up and down the lineup, virtually zero key injuries, and Mark Giordano having the best season of his career at the age of 35 — and it’s hard to say if it can all be replicated.

The @San Jose Sharks went all-in last season and came up short. They traded for Erik Karlsson just before the start of the season and added Gustav Nyquist at the trade deadline but ended up losing in the Western Conference Final to the eventual-champion St. Louis Blues.

Though most assumed Karlsson would be a one-year rental, he ended up sticking around in San Jose on an eight-year deal worth $11,500,000 annually. When Karlsson was signed, it was inevitable the Sharks would end up having to let others go. The result was losing captain Joe Pavelski and depth wingers Nyquist and Joonas Donskoi in free agency and trading defenceman Justin Braun as a cap dump.

The biggest loss, of course, is Pavelski. Beyond being the team’s heart-and-soul, Pavelski was also key to San Jose’s offence, scoring 38 goals in 2018-19. While San Jose still has a potent offence with the likes of Timo Meier, Tomas Hertl, Evander Kane, and Logan Couture, they’ll need to find somebody to replace Pavelski’s offence. If they can’t find that, San Jose will need more from their goaltending duo of Martin Jones and Aaron Dell, who were among the league’s worst last year.

After their miracle run to the Stanley Cup Final in their inaugural season, the @Vegas Golden Knights dove right in. They went out and put together a legitimate first line in under a year, signing Paul Stastny in free agency, trading for Max Pacioretty, and acquiring Mark Stone at the trade deadline.

There’s no doubt that Vegas overachieved during their Cinderella season, but making these three additions makes them a legitimate Stanley Cup contender. While expecting somebody like William Karlsson to eclipse the 40-goal plateau again wasn’t realistic, having the veteran trio of Stone, Pacioretty, and Stastny push him, along with Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith, down to the second line gives Vegas some of the league’s best depth up front.

Of course, making these additions didn’t come without consequence. Vegas is now pushed right up against the salary cap and Erik Haula and Colin Miller ended up being casualties of the crunch this summer. Still, the Golden Knights have the depth to compensate for those losses.

The @Arizona Coyotes finished just four points out of the playoffs in 2018-19 despite sitting towards the top of the league in man games lost to injury. Antti Raanta, Jakob Chychrun, Jason Demers, Michael Grabner, Christian Dvorak, and Nick Schmaltz all missed major time due to various injuries, but thanks to their rock-solid defence, the Coyotes were still right in the mix at the end of the season.

Their biggest issue, beyond health, was scoring goals. Nobody on the team hit 50 points and nobody scored 20 goals. Over the summer, the Coyotes addressed this issue by acquiring Phil Kessel from the Penguins and Carl Soderberg from the Avalanche. Those additions, coupled with some better injury luck, and the Coyotes suddenly look like a playoff team.

The Canucks’ off-season is a bit of a conundrum. They took a look at Elias Pettersson’s entry-level contract and figured it would be prudent to cry and capitalize. On the one hand, they made some nice additions and certainly got better. On the other hand, they most certainly overpaid to do so and put themselves in a difficult long-term position.

Tyler Myers was the team’s big add in free agency. He’s a good second-pairing defenceman but it overpaid at $6,000,000. J.T. Miller is another nice addition, but the cost of a first-round pick to acquire him is steep. Michael Ferland and Jordie Benn at $3,500,000 and $2,000,000 annually are both solid and reasonable additions. The biggest add the Canucks will make this season, though, is rookie Quinn Hughes, who gives the team much-needed skill on the backend.

Just about everything went wrong for the @Anaheim Ducks last season. Only one player on the team, Adam Henrique, played all 82 games. They had a miserable stretch between mid-December and early February in which they managed to win just two out of 21 games and ended up missing the playoffs for the first time since 2012.

The only major move the team made in response was buying out the final two years of Corey perry’s contract. Otherwise, the Ducks will roll into 2019-20 hoping for better health while also giving opportunities to a wealth of promising young players making the jump up from the AHL. The San Diego Gulls reached the semi-finals last season and a handful of players from that team are hungry to make a difference at the NHL level.

And finally, we have the Kings. Father Time caught up to Los Angeles last year as the team bottomed out, finishing last in the Pacific and second-last in the league.

The Kings didn’t do anything this off-season to improve. Instead, 2019-20 will be about giving young players an opportunity to work their way up to the NHL level. Ending up with another high draft pick would do wonders in adding to what’s already a very strong prospect pool. I would also expect the Kings to sell off players like Tyler Toffoli and Alec Martinez prior to the trade deadline, as they did with jake Muzzin last year.

The Pacific Division didn’t get any worse this off-season.

The three playoff teams from 2018-19 are all good enough to make the playoffs again. Even if Calgary regresses a little bit and San Jose struggles due to their loss of depth, they still have the foundations of playoff teams. Vegas, on the other hand, was a playoff team last year despite bad luck with injuries. A fully healthy team will be significantly better.

Arizona and Vancouver, two teams that finished ahead of the Oilers in the standings last year, also got better. The Coyotes nearly squeaked into the playoffs despite having roughly half of their roster struggle with major injuries. The Canucks went all-in to make themselves a playoff team this off-season. The Kings have their eyes on the future and seem poised to spend 2019-20 in the basement of the division yet again. The Ducks could surprise with their impending youth movement, but that’s a tall task.

That leaves us with the Oilers, who finished seventh in the division last year. Jumping over Arizona and Vancouver in order to get into the discussion of either taking down one of the Pacific’s Big Three or getting into a wild-card spot will be a big task for this team. It’s certainly possible, but just about everything is going to have to go right for the Oilers this year. The division isn’t doing them any favours.