It's hard to see which of these other middling western teams are really poised to make a leap forward more than we are. We've got all of these younger guys that will continue to improve, plus the possibility of a FA. Even the team right now seems a lot better than the beginning of the year, with Gud/Pou being replaced with Hughes/Schenn and Pearson/Leivo having immediate impacts. Imagine what our team's record would've been if our end of year roster was with us all season...
Wouldn't be hard to argue that even without a FA pickup, we're looking very close to being the team that makes the jump. I'm voting yes to this because I'm think we'll also get some sort of FA pickup and that could put us over the top. With a team this young, you never know.
Now remember when making these predictions that everyone last year thought we were going to do much worse. We didn't underestimate them just because of EP, but also the improvements of Markstrom, Stetch, Hutton. It just seems easy to badly underestimate the improvement and impact of younger players.
The only signings I want are Edler and Markstrom and any modest term/price FA. I'd expect that if they're looking at high priced FA's, they'll be extremely careful not to create another Erikson situation. If any team is concerned about making a mistake like that, it's the team that has to watch him play.