The Edmonton Oilers are going to be doing the ‘theme from Rawhide’ in the coming months (“Cut ’em out, ride ’em in, Ride ’em in, cut ’em out, Cut ’em out, ride ’em in, RAWHIDE!”) and that means badly needed fresh recruits. The fall graduating class is far more encouraging that the 2017 group, led by Kailer Yamamoto, Tyler Benson and William Lagesson.
THE ATHLETIC!
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- New Lowetide: Do you trust Peter Chiarelli?
- New Corey Pronman: Mid-Season draft rankings
- Lowetide: Which way you going, Brandon Davidson?
- Pierre Lebrun: A chat with Peter Chiarelli
- Lowetide: Putting together optimal lines after the deadline
- Jonathan Willis: Oilers planning for summer.
- Lowetide: Central Scouting and where the Oilers shop for talent
My Chiarelli article is getting some attention this morning, it’s a sincere attempt to frame the fan upset against the organization’s stated plan. Here is an excerpt:
- Oilers fans are mindful of the potential ceiling this club had that seemingly no longer exists. The real tragedy is that promise being extinguished by the team’s management. That could (and possibly has) caused a fracture between club and fans that may not have a solution, at least not in the short term.
CURRENT 50-MAN
- UFA’s: Patrick Maroon, Mike Cammalleri, Yohann Auvitu, Mark Letestu, Edward Pasquale, Mark Fayne. Total: 6.
- RFA’s: Darnell Nurse, Matt Benning, Ryan Strome, Drake Caggiula, Brandon Davidson, Anton Slepyshev, Iiro Pakarinen, Laurent Brossoit, Dillon Simpson, Joey Laleggia, Ty Rattie, Nick Ellis, Braden Christoffer, Keegan Lowe, Grayson Downing, Kyle Platzer, Ben Betker, Patrick Russell, Brian Ferlin. Total: 19.
- The Oilers will have three of their four slides arrive in pro hockey next season (Yamamoto, Benson, Wells) with Dmitri Samorukov heading back to junior. Stuart Skinner is eligible to sign a pro deal but it would be highly unusual to have two goaltenders arrive at the same time.
LEAVING
- Patrick Maroon, Mark Letestu and Mike Cammalleri. These men represent actual NHL talent and will need to be replaced.
- Yohann Auvitu, Edward Pasquale, Mark Fayne, Anton Slepyshev, Braden Christoffer,Dillon Simpson, Grayson Downing, Kyle Platzer, Ben Betker, Brian Ferlin run the range in terms of quality but the organization will have players who duplicate their skills. Simpson may stay with Keegan Lowe leaving, but I’m guesing it turns out this way.
- With three SR’s turning pro, and if the names above are correct, Edmonton will enter summer with 39 names on the 50-man list.
ARRIVING
- Slide-rules Kailer Yamamoto, Tyler Benson and Dylan Wells will all arrive in pro, likely Bakersfield for two of them, we’ll see about Yamamoto. High skill forwards often skip the AHL.
- William Lagesson is a strong option to play in Bakersfield this fall. Edmonton has signed him and controls his hockey destination.
- Tyler Vesel is having a fine season with Omaha-Nebraska. He plays center, so might be a valuable addition to the Condors (who badly need skilled pivots).
R.I.P. BACK OF NET ☠️⚰️🏒
Vesel w/ another for @OmahaHKY! pic.twitter.com/N7KQw47wae
— Omaha Video (@OmahaVID) January 28, 2018
He is an older prospect so there won’t be a kicker in year three. Is he better than Joe Gambardella? I’ve never been certain Edmonton would sign Vesel, but it’s probably worth the roster spot just to see if he can deliver in pro hockey. Rob Vollman’s NHLE estimator has NCHC players retaining 43 percent of their offense. For Vesel, who is 10-14-24 in 26 games, his NHLE is 32.5 points. That’s a fine number.
LOWDOWN WITH LOWETIDE
At 10 this morning, TSN1260. Much to discuss!
- Jonathan Willis, The Athletic. Oilers handled Nurse well, what to expect from the second half.
- Scott Cullen, TSN. Super Bowl, Oilers at the deadline.
- Josh Eberley, Hoop Mag. NBA had a massive trade yesterday.
10-1260text, @Lowetide on twitter. Talk soon!
Yeah the lamest part about watching this team right now is how few of our players are fun to watch with the puck. There’s like 5-6 guys that I feel okay with having the puck, everyone else I’ll be surprised if they make a clean play.
Yes thats why he does well with fast skilled players and defensemen that can pass him the puck. All we can offer him is whack-a-puck. Half of our players you could replace their hockey sticks with croquet mallets and you wouldnt notice a difference
But Mcdavid is fast enough and Draisaitl is big enough. So… You know…
Eberle’s pretty quick. It’s how he finds space. He doesn’t burn guys long, but he’s sneaky swift for sure.
Was wondering when someone was going to call me on this.
That’s why I was using Svechnikov in my examples, I’m not certain Brady is as good as Matt was. Being an impact player at 17 at BU is impressive, but Matt’s NHLe was gaudy.
This is intelligent, but I wouldn’t have Benson OR Jones as A-level prospects among young players outside the NHL.
It’s also playing the long game, I think Wahlstrom might end up with more than a year at Harvard.
Game has changed a hell of a lot since then. Now with emphasis on speed Eberle isn’t big enough or fast enough to make room for himself
I agree. Him and Grabner would make excellent UFA signings this summer, but what would it take to sign them? From the verbal out of Pittsburgh, fans there feel Horqvist’s cap hit is too high. Would he take less than his current contract this summer? Grabner’s current contract is $1.65M x 2, at 31 would he garner more than $3M x 3? You’d have to hope the NYR magic comes with him…
I keep the #5 and the two A-level prospects and draft Wahlstrom.
Last day off before game day.
Thoughts are with Larsson and is family.
Go Oilers!
Thank you Roiller Coastlers for the ride of my life the last few years. I can resist any team in NHL except the temptation of you!
Cheers Peter – you have made the team bigger, stronger and more likely to lose big and win big more often. You got us to the playoffs last year and we even won one more round than Toronto did….so over all you are still in my good books.
Cheers Todd- you have made the line changes with an unbalanced team. I wish I could tip the ice like I did when I played that hockey game where you spin the plastic players round and round or when I was a pinball wizard. Maybe we can’t fix out right handed problems so why not tilt the ice or pay extra to the Zamboni to shave the ice a few mm higher on one side. Remember the story of the king that wanted the whole world paved in leather so he could walk easily…. why not just flip it and change the ice or the skates?
Cheers Lowetide- you made me get the song Razor’s Edge by ACDC stuck in my head. Was just walking down AC/DC lane here in Melbourne filled with art, graffiti, and a tribute to Malcolm Young. Is there a lane dedicated to any band in any of the cities you have ever lived in. Well Melbourne AC/DC lane…is something I think you might like!
In an alternate universe like the current Star Trek Discovery TV show–Oilers have rocked and kicked the last 10 years. Oilers didn’t win anything in 80s and have Dynasty today because we drafted Sydney Crosby and flipped Malkin for Ovechkin. At same time McDavid now plays for the Pens which have been inconsistent for ages.
The Oilers SUCK. The Oilers KICK. We get CK when we are playing Oilers scrabble. Depends on whether we are playing at home or on road or who is playing. Depends what is in the bag and who is putting in the letters. Maybe it ain’t Peter or Todd or McDavid. Maybe someone else owns the game?
So the Oilers are rarely 100%, never predictable and always a great trigger for passionate discussion. Can you imagine following a team that is .500 all the time and wins at home often with defensive holdem stickem hockey.
I will take the story of inconsistently travelling all over the map > staying in one boring place anyday.
Thank you Roiller Coastlers for the ride of my life the last few years. I can resist any team in NHL except the temptation of you!
I think you hate Tmac too much. Chia deserves every bit of hate he gets. No need to make his stupidity the fault of Todd.
Not sure if Tkachuk is NHL ready. His numbers don’t scream immediate impact. Pronman doesn’t even have him in his top ten.
For what it’s worth, just read on Habs blog that Patches trade imminent. They were speculating trade to the Blues for Thomas and Kyrou. Not sure they have the cap space for deal like that though.
Nugent-Hopkins and Eberle faced the toughs with Pouliot for half a season when Hall go hurt and did fine (with mostly an AHL defense and goaltender behind them).
Hall, Nugent-Hopkins, and Eberle faced the toughs all the years they were together, and Eberle was basically as productive in all of them as he is this year.
It is well known that I “blame” the coach far more than the GM, and It took me only a couple of months to identify the limitations of the coach which has led to many of the GM’s bad roster adjustments.
Keeping in mind that Griff was a ready to play prospect.
Oh man that was delightful! Just watched the last 2 mins on replay. That’s as pleasing as an Oiler victory for me. Sweet schadenfreude!
Brennan Klak (@nhlupdate) has a few tweets from the Oilers season ticket holder event tonight with Chiarelli. This was the most substantive one:
Brennan Klak
@nhlupdate
Following Following @nhlupdate
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“There are teams willing to pay prospects ready to play or near ready and it may involve a UFA (out the door) here and there” – Chiarelli
7:46 PM – 30 Jan 2018
I assume this means Maroon. None of our other UFA’s have the cache to garner a ready to play prospect.
Anyone know if anyone is in attendance tonight and will post more stuff here?
love it
A little schadenfreude in Calgary at least. That was an Oilersesque collapse.
Don’t forget draft position,
groan
Not at allLOL. I know exactly what you would say. Who knows though with prospects.
Out-of-town scoreboard very unkind to the Oilers. Talbot’s hopeful statements aside, we’re playing for roster spots for next year and for pride.
Yeah, I know you weren’t criticizing. I was clarifying that I was not criticizing Woodguy’s take at the time on Jones (did not say he was bad, just that we aren’t sure yet he will be great) Sometimes the eye test is helpful for projecting what a D-man COULD be in the future.
I was about to write my 1 000 000th Yamamoto post in reply to this.
I am going to look like an absolute clown if he doesn’t pan out.
NYC-Back-to-Tokyo Oil (Gentleman Backpacker),
There was no criticism in there. Ellis had some numbers, Jones had very little so you really had to squint. Both turned out great. You can’t fault Ellis for getting hurt or Nashville being really well and being on a team with Josi and PK
I believe Nurse did start his first pro season in the AHL but was called up around the 10 game mark due to injury. He played a large part of the season on the 3rd pairing and was having a nice season and was then forced up the depth chart due to injury. No, he shouldn’t have been on the first pairing with Sekera but that wasn’t the development plan – it was more forced due to circumstances.
Yes, but unlike you, I’m not sure that Sekera COULDN’T do it.
Also if you watched that World Cup you should have remembered that Chara looked BAD. Looked nothing like a Hall of Famer in that tournament.
Maroon for Ho-Sang. Doug Weight only has two LWers he likes playing right now, everyone else gets caved in CF and GF, and the lineblender comes out.
1) They’re the arbitrary percentages to help you understand where the logic of the trade is coming from.
2) I don’t take the canned musings of executives at face value. Especially when there are countless other incentives that they would never state openly, challenging the player, burying bonuses, etc.
Edit: also, if we are taking them at face value, Chiarelli did explicitly challenge Jesse, he said ‘Yamamoto has outshone Puljujvarvi’ or something to that effect. So even though my argument was over interpretation, the actual words were there too.
Wilde,
Hmm.
Not a fan of line 1 for next year. What are we giving up to get Ho-Sang? Strome will make too much to be our 4C, I think. Lots of question marks there.
This proves a larger point. Even the smartest hockey minds don’t know where a prospect will plateau. From the the time a player hits the draft radar; his future is Loaded with uncertainty. The %’s don’t lie.
Funny thing, these are two of the exceptions. And there will always be exceptions. I can also make a strong case that Nurse should have been in the AHL. We had him on the first pair in the NHL in his rookie year. Seriously? I think he has succeeded despite being mishandled.
Our development of JP should go in some how-to book as an example of what not to do. The kid spent half the year last season in the press box or playing under 8 minutes a game. We actually send him to the minors this year, where he proceeds to play very meh. We recall him anyway and he still manages to look good up here. Good on JP. This team certainly hasn’t done him any favours.
I give this team a lot of passes that others don’t. Their development program, or lack of one, is embarrassing. I want to believe. I want them to be better. But Yammer up here for 9 games was wrong. We wait to see how they handle these players next year.
Watching San Jose at Pittsburgh. I’ve been banging the drum on this for a while now but I think, depending on what he costs as a FA, Patric Hornqvist on RW is exactly what this team needs.
Works hard, crashes the net. Good hands. Like Ryan Smyth-lite. Warrior. Has some fire in his belly as well. Good for 25-25 and tons of hustle. Right shot to boot.
This is the part of the argument I’m referencing.
Is it possible that an early emergence, ie impact NHL seasons while we still have everyone under their current contracts, is worth the trade up?
I’m of the mind that it’s possible, that having two ELC impact wingers(Yamamoto+Svechnikov/Zadina/Tkachuk) shores up the entire forward core into championship calibre starting NEXT year, because then you have money to keep Nuge.
Khaira-McDavid-Yamamoto
Lucic-Drai-Svechnikov
Cammaleri-Nuge-Ho-Sang
Slepyshev-Strome-Kassian
Cam Fowler? Zach Bogosian? Drew Doughty? Seth Jones? Jakob Chychrun? Noah Hanifin? Adam Larsson? Victor Hedman? Dmitri Kulikov? Fowler, Chychrun, Hanifin and Kulikov all picked #5 or later.
I wouldn’t say I stated “the” reason, a reason, sure.
I think its bold to read too much into the smallest of sample sizes of the World Cup where he played the girth side with a hall of fame caliber defender (granted he is declining).
I’m not sure that is enough evidence to go in to next season counting on Sekera at a top 4 d-man on his off-side.
1) Where do those percentages come from? Are those just what you’ve come up with?
2) From multiple accounts, your opinion is not correct – accounts from the GM, the NHL coach and the AHL coach.
Sure, both good. Woodguy with his numbers, was also iffy on trading Nuge for Jones because he wasn’t sure based on what the numbers said at the time that Jones was going to be top pair. The eye test in this case said otherwise–one could see the talent and skill set was there. Note, this isn’t to criticize Woodguy in any way shape or form–just that it’s a little hard to project the future for young D, I think.
We knew Ellis was going to take some time due to his size but he was always dynamite in junior and the WJCs. Nashville was patient with him. I mean, they really are a D factory along with Anaheim.
Each year every kid that gets drafted is the next “xxxxx”; plays like “xxxxxxx” …..
Every year only 3 – 6 kids play in the NHL, andonly 2 or 3 actually contribute.
The odds the the Oilers get a player who starts the year in Edm is prob 5%. This asumes they pick 7th – 12th.
Dahlin is a sure thing to make the jump. Outside of that, nobody knows.
Is your argument that unless they can make an impact in year one it’s better to pass? We’re in a spot where we are trading Hall for Larsson when we could have just as well drafted Larsson instead of Nuge–and Larsson took forever to develop and he still isn’t an impact top pair D, he is a solid #2, so he isn’t even a good example. But the League values D-men with stud potential very highly.
You just stated the reason it was awful and then declared that Sekera should never play right side because of those results. Doesn’t make sense to use those results to determine the potential success of that pairing today.
Nurse was a struggling rookie trying to play 1st pairing minutes. He is a totally different player now.
Sekera looked real good playing right side with Chara in the World Cup. Looked to me like he was carrying the pairing. So declaring he couldn’t do it with this years version of Nurse seems like a pretty bold position.
+1. Good Stuff.
Seth Jones got the same treatment as Hanifin: sheltered heavily on a team stacked with defensemen negative gf% player, not what I’d consider an impact NHL season.
What about trading Maroon for a good prospect who already has a year of AHL experience?
For the Athletic: Oilers draft 2018: Draft and follow
https://theathletic.com/226636/2018/01/30/lowetide-the-edmonton-oilers-return-to-the-draft-and-college-approach/
I used to have arguments with woodguy version 1.0 about who would be a better d man Seth Jones for me or Ryan Ellis for him. We both win
Wilde,
Seth Jones straight to NHL as well. Now a legit stud.
I don’t consider defensemen drafted in the neighbourhood of 10 years or more ago to be good prospect comparables, which rules out Johnson, Doughty and Hedman.
Larsson struggled in his first few years, Chychrun got injured, Hanifin and Jones were sheltered heavily.
I have something I wrote about defensemen comps this morning:
Ekblad: straight to the NHL, top pairing
Hanifin: straight to the NHL, 3rd pairing
Provorov: 1 year junior, then top pairing NHL (stud #1D imo)
Werenski: 1 year big ten(same team as Hughes) then top pairing NHL(stud top pairing guy)
Chabot: 1 year junior, dozen games AHL then NHL top 4
Sergachev: 1 year junior, then NHL top pairing
McAvoy: 1 year BU, then NHL top pairing
Chychrun: straight to the NHL
Girard: 1 year junior, NHL(same size as Hughes)
As for 2017, you can quote me that Heiskanen and Makar will be everyday NHLers next year barring injury.
NYC-Back-to-Tokyo Oil (Gentleman Backpacker),
Yeah sorry. Sometimes it’s easier to quote the last quote than dig through the batch.
I am happy for Eberle he’s gone. He needs to play with players that can move the puck and play with speed to make room for him. We just offered him whack-a-puck and dig out pucks from corners and that is his weakness and the fan base turned on him until they realized how much we actually needed him. Now he can live his life without getting chased out of town by the mob