It’s about time we had a look at the summer to come, and this quiet period between series gives us a bit of a breather. Tomorrow morning, I’ll have a lash at Peter Chiarelli’s Summer List, or as my friend Dean calls it “my copy/paste post of spring”. I hate you all.
EXPANSION DRAFT LIST
- Goal: Cam Talbot
- Defense: Andrej Sekera, Adam Larsson, Oscar Klefbom
- Forwards: Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Milan Lucic, Jordan Eberle, Patrick Maroon, Zack Kassian, Jujhar Khaira
- Ineligible: Connor McDavid, Darnell Nurse, Matt Benning, Jesse Puljujarvi, Anton Slepyshev, Drake Caggiula, Nick Ellis
- Eligible: G Laurent Brossoit, D Mark Fayne, D Kris Russell, D Griffin Reinhart, D Jordan Oesterle, D Dillon Simpson, D David Musil, C Mark Letestu, C David Desharnais, L Benoit Pouliot, R Tyler Pitlick, R Iiro Pakarinen.
In looking at this list (and understanding how much of a factor the cap will be this summer), I think the Oilers are going to try (real hard) to offload Benoit Pouliot and buyout Mark Fayne. In fact, they need it. Pouliot is $4M and Fayne’s buyout would put $1.291M on the cap and save the team $2.33M in 2017-18 cap. They also have $1M from the Korpikoski buyout and an overage from bonuses the smart people tell me will be around $1M. All-in that’s about $3.291M of dead money on the cap, making the Pouliot exit even more important.
HOW WILL IT HAPPEN?
It has to be Vegas, and it might cost something of real value. If the Oilers can find a way for the Golden Knights to take Benoit Pouliot, it may also cost the 2018 second-round pick. The Oilers could also give up one of their young defensemen or some other prospect of interest to Vegas.
I’ve been running the numbers for next year, and if we take that $3.291M of dead cap as gospel, Pouliot has to move down the road. After that, we can talk about Eberle.
ESTIMATED ROSTER AND CAP
I used Cody Franson as an example, you can pick a $3M defender from this list is that doesn’t work for you. I think it’s fairly obvious that, even with the Pouliot exit and Fayne buyout, Peter Chiarelli will need to move a big contract.
The candidates (as I see it) are Jordan Eberle or Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and the club could send Jesse Puljujarvi down and replace him with a $1M value deal on a veteran (which seems unlikely). Which one do you prefer?
The easiest answer is moving Leon to RW, dealing Jordan Eberle to the NY Islanders for Travis Hamonic, and running about $4M under the cap. Is that the right answer? We’ll talk tomorrow morning.
Not at all. Radio always overplays things. For instance, Woodguy actually has great taste in music! 🙂
Thx buddy. I have a Lucky on chill waiting for ya.
I’d drink that. I also would upgrade any player I could. For me skating is key and Letestu isn’t quick enough.
Don’t talk to me!
What Chachi said.
That is 3 of the 4 refs from games 1 & 2 gone. Unbelievably the NHL saw the shit show that was the refereeing in game 4 and thought, yeah that’s the good stuff!
Clearly. Chiarelli paid 2 high picks and didn’t get one.
That trade was horrible. That’s been pretty well the consensus for some time now.
Pouzar,
So Fingerwag O’Hollerin is still working?
Weren’t they 7-0 with Chris Lee reffing this year?
Given the price paid to get him, its pretty bad that the oilers would rather not lose Kassian than Reinhart.
God love Kassian for bringing the right kind of crazy to the Sharks series, but he should be fairly easily replaceable. Young NHL capable defenders are not easily found.
So, of you have the expansion list right, wow, what a fuck up that trade was.
Rest easy folks.
Out: Gord Dwyer, Eric Furlatt, Trevor Hanson, Marc Joannette, Chris Lee, Tim Peel, Brian Pochmara, and Ian Walsh
Apparently the Stat trick people do too. Along with Golden Wedding…
LOL
#bitcoin
I must be the only person on this board who wants an upgrade on Letestu.
Then again, I’m the only one who drinks Lucky.
so funny listening to the morning show guys make fun of people still against the trade.
LT, do they give you a hard time around the office?
or a calculator
It’s weird, right? Thanks to all who looked into it, I feel better about not proceeding. NST is a fine resource, but these numbers seem off.
Hmmmm… the individual games have him at 5 more corsi for events (95 vs 90) and 1 less corsi against (79 vs 80).
Odd.
Seriously, this calls for G Money.
I must have Chachi’d somewhere, but here’s my understanding of the situation (all #s courtesy of capfriendly):
Current Cap Space: $4.46m
Performance bonuses (Connor + Leon): $5.325m (2.85 + 2.475)
LTiR: $3.16m
My understanding is that the LTIR can be used against any cap overages. This should give us more than enough room, no?
You know, we can check all this by asking G to run the numbers.
I think you are over rating Letestu a bit here. He is a 32 year old 4th line center with one year left on his contract. Not exactly a building block for an expansion team.
I think the dilemma for Vegas is that the pickings in Edmonton are pretty slim. I would pick Reinhart or Pitlick. That is why a second rounder might entice them to take Poo. Would you rather have Poo and a second rounder or Letestu.
McPhee has mentioned two things in regards to his roster:
Tough to play against, and not taking other teams’ salary problems.
Letestu gives him a reliable NHL 3rd line center, with PK and a righty PP shot, for a reasonable number for one year. He’s going to have a lot of young players, and Letestu could be a calming influence.
He’ll have a lot better defensemen to pick from, and Reinhart still has footspeed issues and has a career track so far similar to Cam Barker. Plus Chiarelli owns that trade good or bad old boys club, so he may posture to keep him from being selected.
I really don’t think Pouliot to Vegas is going to happen, he’s had two poor years on a team where everyone else has bought into what the coach wants, nobody seems to want to trade for him (and the Oilers have tried) and has 2 years left at $4M We’d need to send significant assets, like a future first and a decent prospect or two.
GMs don’t usually do us a solid, other than that one time with Sather.
Back when I was a kid, 10 was a good Corsi For. Now we’re like 5 times the number!
#EndtheFed
This doesn’t look right, unless the numbers for the other Dmen are wrong. That is, 1-16 against Dillon alone would mean 0 CA when up against the other pairing Dmen… which they aren’t.
Have you factored in Big Mac inflation?
According to the NHL.com, CMD’s CF–CA for the series is 112–96. According to NST 97 had 15 CF while the other two left side Dmen were on the ice… Dillon and Martin. Looking at their D-pairing’s numbers, this looks about right.
112-15 leaves 97 CF when against Vlasic.
CMD allowed 23 shot attempts against Dillon/Martin… 96-23 leaves 73 CA when against Vlasic.
97 / (97 + 73) is 57.1 CF%. Whole series 112/ (112+96) is 53.8%. 15/38 is 39.5 CF% away fr Vlasic, which is born out by the 1-16 CF-CA events when on against Dillon.
It’ll be out by a shot or two, but that should be close, assuming the other numbers are correct.
Checked NHL’s numbers against NST’s and NST has 111 CF for CMD in their game reports. Difference might be the empty net goal? Still, almost identical. And 96 CA, which is identical.
Lowetide,
Manually adding up each game from Natural Stat trick gives me this:
97 vs Vlasic
5v5: 95-79= 54.6%
All EV 97-84=53.6%
Neither match McDavid’s opposition page at NST.
I trust his single game results more than his aggregate and I trust I added these up correctly.
5v5 the games were:
14-6
11-3
16-22
9-15
33-18
12-15
The easiest answer is moving Leon to RW, dealing Jordan Eberle to the NY Islanders for Travis Hamonic, and running about $4M under the cap. Is that the right answer?
What a deal LT. Garth or whoever takes over for him will never willingly do this unless they’ve not watched their cross river rivals do this last summer. Mike Milbury has left the building…hasn’t he???
(Note, I edited this post for clarity and rewrote most of it)
I had this difficulty doing my piece. After looking through it for some time, it appears the “McDavid away from Vlasic” column is off. That column is off for every player that I looked at. There’s something screwy in the calculation. That’s why I didn’t look at the “Nugent-Hopkins Without” numbers in my post on him.
So when you look at the McDavid Opposition tab in Natural Stat Trick, and you look at Vlasic’s row, you see Vlasic’s CF vs McDavid. You also see Vlasic’s CF away from McDavid. Those two cells are correct. The one in the middle (McDavid away from Vlasic) is incorrect. You can get the correct number by calculating manually (subtracting the corsi numbers there from McDavid’s total 5×5 corsi). I think I see where the error is in the Natural Stat Trick formula actually. They’re just subtracting the wrong numbers.
The Vlasic away being 27% appears to be accurate. That’s just a product of small sample size. Vlasic only played 27 minutes away from McDavid and happened to get crushed in them. I calculated that column manually to confirm.
So, to clarify,
McDavid vs Vlasic: 52.9% CF
McDavid away from Vlasic: 56.8% CF (21 shot attempts for, 16 against in 19 minutes)
Vlasic vs McDavid: 47.1% CF
Vlasic away from McDavid: 27.0% CF (10 shot attempts for, 27 against in 26 minutes)
Funny things happen in small sample sizes.
What role would you expect Letestu to play in Vegas?
Trying to think from GMGM’s point of view, I imagine he would see Letestu as a 3rd or 4th line center and no long term upside since he is 32 already with only 1 year left on his contract. Pouliot or Reinhart would provide more years of control. However neither of those guys will blow his doors off. It would be worth exploring what is the best prospect/draft pick he could get from the Oilers for taking on some of the cap problems.
From the Oilers point of view, I’d love to see Letestu back for next year, then slowly work a guy like Spencer Foo in as a replacement.
Yes, $1M for overage and $1M for Lennart Petrell 2.0.
I don’t think it makes sense to buyout Fayne. They will need cap space in the McDavid next contract era.
Retain salary (up to 50%) if necessary. There isn’t a market for Fayne at 1.75M?
Pouliot will be more difficult to get rid of, but he can still add value to the team. His shot suppression rates 4 on 5 are excellent and his offensive totals this year may be an outlier rather than a trend.
Offering a draft pick may be necessary to get rid of these contracts, but that’s okay. This team is in a win now mode and have to look at all options.
He’s 32 – if that’s old then I’m ancient lol.
I think he probably has one more good year left – I’d feel better about leaving him exposed if we had an option to replace him. There’s nothing but expensive regrets in free agency, and Khaira needs a full season before we can count on him. DD is not a long term answer.
Tmac loves his centres – letestu will be protected.
Not a huge fan of buyouts but Fayne looks reasonable. CapFriendly.com has the calculation a little different from yours.
They have it as 2/3 of his remaining salary ($3.5M as opposed to his cap hit $3.625M) which would mean two years of $1.166667M. Small difference but could be helpful.
LT, does your cap calculation include all the bonus money owed to McDavid and Drai? Understood we are going to be over a bit and have to work with a slightly smaller cap number.
I was looking at these same numbers for a piece I was writing earlier today & gave it up in frustration cuz they didn’t make sense.
I also read both these posts earlier today (from two contributors I greatly respect) & found myself nodding my head both in approval of their work & in relief that we at CoH weren’t completely out to lunch in having Nuge our highest rated forward in the series despite scoring 0 points.
Letestu’s had a great season, but he’s a thousand years old.
Aging is not kind to non-elite NHL players.
Lowetide,
Whoops, I think I took the question more seriously than intended. ?
Hopefully they can fix the problems, it would be a great resource if they do.
US forces in South Korea regularly practice mass evacuations of American civilians. You’re probably talking about the mass evac exercise planned for June: http://time.com/4751933/south-korea-evacuation-exercise-military/
I don’t think it’s possible in a certain way without the NHL tracking players with tracking.
My dream scenario would be Vegas choosing Poo and trading Eberle for Hamonic.
My question is what would the adds have to be to make them both happen. You have suggested adding the 2018 2nd to Poo and I think I might be okay with that.
The Eberle add would be more difficult. I would suggest Benning/ Bear but I don’t know if the Islanders would bite. I really don’t see Tavares re signing and if so you would probably have a better chance with picks and prospects. I think I would have anyone but JP on the table.
That’s my point. I mean, I use Stats.HockeyAnalysis.com and DFF, good information. I desperately want the NST stuff to be correct, but it has some question marks.
Remember when we used to say that these players were a dime a dozen and MacT could find them in his sleep? Good times.
I’d want to protect Letestu – its hard and expensive to find competent centres who can PK and win face-offs. They also tend to make a lot more money. He’s a good soldier who our coach has found many positive uses for, and there is no replacement waiting in the wings if we lose him in expansion.
Lowetide,
For comparison, I checked the numbers the other way around.
http://www.naturalstattrick.com/playerreport.php?season=20162017&playerid=8471709&sit=5v5&stype=3&rate=&v=o
I seriously doubt Vlasic actually had a CF% of 0 away from McDavid.
Here’s another excellent piece
http://www.theoilersrig.com/2017/04/nugent-hopkins-playoff-hero/
Lol yup.
That wouldn’t surprise at all. I think there will be some other vets with no movement clauses who agree to waive them as well.
I could also see Anaheim and Nashville both making a pitch for Duchene before the expansion draft as well – both teams could offer up D and forwards prospects + picks to make it happen, and it would make their protected list a lot less complicated.
Lowetide,
The 47.06% CF with Vlasic seems plausible to me.
McDavid supposedly being 83.78% away from Vlasic, and Vlasic being 27.03% away from McDavid seems a little off though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Great job doing what you’re doing LT. There’s plenty of insider playoff coverage, but your ability to balance the past (RE), current (GDBs), and future (draft) is one of many things what makes this place great.