Welcome to a summer edition of Dear Abbey. I don't give out life advice like the real Dear Abby, but I do talk about hockey.

We're into the silly season part of the summer. The Colorado Avalanche are having their days with the Stanley Cup, and hopefully they aren't stressing out Philip Prichard too much with dings, dents and collisions. The draft has passed, free agency has opened and we still don't know where Nazem Kadri is going to play next year. The verdict on who won the offseason is still up for debate, but there was one clear loser: The Philadelphia Flyers.

Maybe that's a hot take, but I don't think it is, and here's why.

We asked members of the B/R community to drop their hottest takes on the of the offseason and boldest predictions for the 2022-23 season. Shoutout to @OzymadiasXVI, who clearly doesn't disagree with me about the Flyers, saying, "By allowing Chuck Fletcher (and his 'special advisors') to continue to make personnel decisions this offseason and into the future, the Philadelphia Flyers have moved from what should be a 3-4 year tear down and rebuild to being mired in irrelevance until the tail end of this decade."

I don't know if they'll be irrelevant through the end of the decade, but between poor roster construction, bad asset management and a big strikeout on hometown product Johnny Gaudreau, you can probably pencil them in for the lottery next season, and maybe the one after that as well.

With that said, let's take a look at what a few other commenters had to say.

The Race to the Bottom

Still can't believe the Hawks traded DeBrincat. Stupid move. - @jefrat

Typically, teams don't trade away 24-year-old, two-time 40-goal scorers. They don't really trade away a lot of players around the age when rebuilding, to begin with, but the Blackhawks let four players in their 20s go within the span of a week: DeBrincat, Kirby Dach, Dylan Strome and Dominik Kubalik.

Rebuilds take a considerable amount of time—just ask the New Jersey Devils—so one could reasonably make the argument that DeBrincat is better off elsewhere because he'll be past his prime by the time the Hawks are ready to contend again. But then again, he's a 24-year-old two-time 40-goal scorer who could have been a key piece to build around.

So who is left for fans to watch? Jonathan Toews is a shell of his former self and Patrick Kane may or may not be on his way out of town at some point as well. That would be a tricky trade given his considerable cap hit of $10.5 million. It would require a third party to take on some salary since Chicago can only retain 50 percent. He also has leverage with full no-movement protection.

Here's what I was hearing at the draft: Some people in hockey think what the Blackhawks are doing is "embarrassing" because they believe that deliberate tanking is a black eye for sports. A culture of losing should never be encouraged, and while a rebuild requires some losing there is a way to do it without outright tanking.

However, some believe the club will hang on Toews and Kane for one final season. The only remaining members of the dynasty era, it lets them go out on their own terms and gives fans a reason to buy tickets next season. Plus, having their leadership in the locker room is beneficial, as leadership becomes absolutely crucial in bad seasons.

I won't fully judge the trade until I see how it pans out in a few years but for now, I'm inclined to also say it's a stupid move.

A Stampede out of Town

Calgary gets the biggest L. So bad that stars are lining up to leave. - @thansen4

How dare Johnny Gaudreau rock Calgary during the week of the Stampede! The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth deserves more respect.

This comment came before Friday night's blockbuster trade with the Florida Panthers. But the narrative throughout the last week has been that no one wants to play in Calgary.

When Gaudreau elected to sign with the Columbus Blue Jackets and left money on the table to do so, the writing was on the wall for the Flames. It probably expedited Matthew Tkachuk's exit, but with an arbitration date of Aug. 11 the club has some time to figure out how to work with him. General manager Brad Treliving did a fantastic job of turning Tkachuk into a package of players that makes the Flames better next season, replacing Gaudreau with Jonathan Huberdeau and adding a top-four defenseman and quality defender in MacKenzie Weegar. The first-round pick in 2025 is a way to mitigate some of the risks that comes with acquiring two players that will be free agents following next season.

Calgary was all but counted out until this trade. There probably isn't much to make of the exits of Gaudreau and Tkachuk. Sometimes players just want to play somewhere else. It's no different than when LeBron James took his talents to South Beach, which, well I guess is near where Tkachuk is taking his talents.

Lonely Island

Will someone wake up the Isles? - sdelmonte

I can confirm that Lou Lamoriello was, in fact, awake at the draft in Montreal. In fact, I'm not sure Lou sleeps at all. That chamber of secrets he operates in doesn't sound very peaceful to me.

The biggest move the New York Islanders have made so far was to trade the No. 13 pick to the Montreal Canadiens for Alexander Romanov. The defenseman didn't work out in with the Habs, but there are still scouts who believe that he'll grow into a solid two-way player out of the harsh spotlight of Montreal. The Islanders were rumored to be in the mix for Johnny Hockey, along with the New Jersey Devils and Philadelphia Flyers, but we all know how that turned out.

There aren't significant holes that need to be filled on Long Island but the team needs to get younger, faster and more offensively inclined. They were only a game away from the Stanley Cup Final in 2021, and injuries, a brutal travel schedule necessitated by the delayed opening of the new UBS Arena, as well as COVID-19 made for a particularly difficult season last year.

I doubt that Lamoriello is standing idly by, but you might not get an idea of what he is doing because he is a master of plugging any and all leaks in his organization. We still don't even know why Barry Trotz was fired.

Lamoriello has the full backing of owner Jon Ledecky, and an owner doesn't typically make statements like this unless there is a need to reiterate it and quiet the fans. But the Long Island locals sure are getting restless.

Sympathy for the Devils

Despite being spurned by Gaudreau, Devils make playoffs as WC while CBJ finishes next to last in the division. - @polishpanda28

The Metropolitan Division is going to be an absolute grind on a nightly basis. The Devils have made it known that they want to return to the playoffs next season and they backed that up with some aggressive offseason moves.

They swung for the fences with New Jersey native Gaudreau, and they might have whiffed but they moved swiftly to plan B, signing former Tampa Bay Lightning forward Ondrej Palat to a five-year deal. Is it an overpay at $6 million per year? Maybe. Palat is 31 so they might be paying for some declining production on the back end of that contract, but that's to be expected with most long-term free agent signings. This is why the club has shied away from these types of deals in recent years, choosing to sign veterans on short-term deals until the rebuilding process was at a certain point. But you have to know when it's time to start moving some of those chips to the center of the table, and general manager Tom Fitzgerald is doing exactly that.

Palat brings a winning pedigree to a team that doesn't really know how to win right now. They added center Erik Haula in a trade with the Boston Bruins and Fitzgerald made a trade with his old club, the Pittsburgh Penguins, to bring in John Marino, a big, mobile defenseman who will be an upgrade to the offensive-minded Ty Smith.

The club gave goalie Mackenzie Blackwood a vote of confidence, bringing in Vitek Vanacek from the Washington Capitals. Blackwood has yet to show that he is a true, No. 1 goaltender, but there is no better time like the present. Maybe it's a gamble to stick with him, but giving up on a 25-year-old goaltender isn't usually a good idea.

The timing of the Gaudreau move seems strange since the Blue Jackets have been in the midst of a rebuild. You don't sign a player like Gaudreau to make the playoffs, you sign him to win. GM Jarmo Kekalainen got Patrik Laine to re-sign with the team, so this will be a fast, high-scoring team. I wouldn't be surprised if either of these teams won the Metro, clinched an Eastern Conference wild card spot or failed to make the playoffs all together.

It's going to be a wild ride in the Metro next season and I can't wait to see how it all plays out.

Bringing the Cup Back to the Caps

The Capitals had their best offseason in a long time. - @k23ja

The Washington Capitals might be headed toward a rebuild or a retool of sorts in the coming years. Who knows what Alexander Ovechkin thinks about that, but the current management group is going to give him another chance at a Stanley Cup this season.

The club addressed its biggest need this summer by signing free agent goalies Darcy Kuemper and Charlie Lindgren, and signed players to plug the holes left behind by a trio of injured players. The Caps will start the season without Nicklas Backstrom (hip surgery), Tom Wilson (knee surgery) and Carl Hagelin (eye injury), but the did add Connor Brown and Dylan Strome on two affordable contracts.

Will the goaltending be better than it was last season when it was ninth-worst in the league? It could be, but Kuemper's stock is down. Throughout the postseason, his name was often compared to Trent Dilfer's, the quarterback who won the 2000 Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens despite some shaky play throughout the season.

The good news for the Caps is that several players are only signed through next season, so if they need to retool on the fly in order to limit the losing while Ovechkin is still around, they can probably do so.

So yeah, you can say it was a good offseason. But did they win the offseason? It doesn't really matter who won the offseason, because…

Meaningless Wins

The offseason isn't won in the summer, chief. - @mrhab

I'm not going to disagree with our friend @mrhab. Just ask the Devils, the team that "won the offseason" in 2019 when they drafted Jack Hughes first overall, traded for P.K. Subban a day later, and added veteran winger Wayne Simmonds and Russian forward Nikita Gusev.

By the winter, the big winners of the summer had fired their head coach and general manager. In between those firings they were forced to trade away Taylor Hall. They ended the season outside of the playoff bubble and were once again a lottery team.

I would exercise caution when using the "offseason winners" title. It's important to assess the offseason transactions in order to find trends for the coming year and to look at the salary cap to see which teams have room to maneuver and which teams will probably need to shed salary. There is a benefit in looking at the bigger picture, but none of it really matters until the puck is dropped in the fall.

The Ottawa Senators, Carolina Hurricanes and Detroit Red Wings might have done well this summer, but the Colorado Avalanche are still the champs until they aren't.