NHL teams with holes remaining after the first wave of free agency

NHL free agency is in full swing and teams have been taking advantage of their yearly opportunity to get better.

Well, some teams are. Others have been weirdly silent, unwilling to make moves to clear cap space, or simply aren’t doing much when more is required.

There are also teams that fall in the middle, such as the Toronto Maple Leafs. They’ve made trades and signed players, but are they truly better off? The Leafs let Jack Campbell leave for Edmonton after acquiring the often-injured (and recently struggling) Matt Murray from Ottawa. Will that equate to a lateral move? Signing Ilya Samsonov to back up Murray should provide an upgrade over Petr Mrazek (who was traded to Chicago). But there’s a lot riding on Murray rebounding into his Stanley Cup-champion form of old. That pressure will increase if Campbell gets off to a hot start and Murray doesn’t.

Then there are the Blackhawks. If the club’s top priority is a quick teardown and good positioning in the 2023 draft lottery to land Connor Bedard, they are right on track. The flurry of moves — trading away young players that could be part of the next contender like Alex DeBrincat and Kirby Dach, and non-qualifying fellow twentysomethings Dylan Strome and Dominik Kubalik — make it seem like an acknowledgment that GM Kyle Davidson wants to head in a new direction. The forwards signed — Max Domi, Andreas Athanasiou and Colin Blackwell — seem more like players that will eventually be traded as opposed to filling the production gaps left with the departure of DeBrincat (41 goals, 78 points last season) or Strome (23 goals, 48 points).

The fun of free agency is dividing what we see into winners and losers. These quieter clubs might fit the loser bill, too. But mostly, we’re talking about underachievers who have needs not being met — not yet, anyway.

Is there still time? Of course. But almost a week into free agency, there are teams obviously falling behind on work to do in addressing their issues, and there’s a dwindling pool of players from which to do it.

Florida went all-in harder than anyone to load up at the 2021-22 trade deadline.

The Panthers have employed an exact opposite strategy in free agency. Given their cap situation, it’s tough to blame them.

Florida began free agency by filling in its edges, agreeing on short-term, low-money deals with forwards Colin White and Nick Cousins, defensemen Anthony Bitetto and Marc Staal and goaltender Alex Lyon. Bitetto and Lyon are on two-way contracts as…