The Oilers signed Patrick Russell yesterday, adding another name to the 50-man list. I’ve always wondered how unsigned RFA players who are possibly bubble types react when a UFA gets a contract. Make no mistake, the deck chairs are running out, and RFA’s are waiting for deals. A contract means a training camp and a roster spot in Edmonton (or Bakersfield). No contract means Europe or an invite without any guarantees. No fun, this.
THE ATHLETIC!
The Athletic Edmonton features a fabulous cluster of stories (some linked below, some on the site). Great perspective from a ridiculous group of writers and analysts. Proud to be part of the group, here’s an incredible Father’s Day Offer!
- New Lowetide: Looking at the Oilers’ options for the No. 8 pick at the 2019 NHL Draft.
- New Jonathan Willis: How many of Sam Gagner, Zack Kassian and Jujhar Khaira can play top-nine minutes for the Oilers?
- New Daniel Nugent-Bowman: Q&A with Ken Holland: On the draft, buyouts, free agency and how to have a successful offseason
- Lowetide: Trading for Loui Eriksson: What makes sense for the Oilers?
- Jonathan Willis: Differing needs of Oilers, Jets could create a trade fit
- Lowetide: How will Ken Holland build around Connor McDavid?
- Daniel Nugent-Bowman: The top five players the Oilers could lose in the expansion draft
- Jonathan Willis: What a trade involving Edmonton’s No. 8 pick might look like given Ken Holland’s history
- Lowetide: Hard Target Search: Finding the Oilers a centre who can penalty kill, help shape a useful third line, and serve in a mentor role
- Daniel Nugent-Bowman: How a third-line grinder launched the star-filled Oilers to their first Stanley Cup and a hockey dynasty.
- Lowetide: Is Zack Kassian the answer for the McDavid-Draisaitl line?
NEW 50-MAN LIST (42)
The list is up to 42, with only two slide rules (Bouchard and Rodrigue) in the entire lot. Bouchard will turn pro, and the Oilers will sign fewer than 50 total, so let’s say we’re at 41 of 48 — seven names to sign.
RFA’s who remain unsigned include Jesse Puljujarvi, Jujhar Khaira, Tobias Rieder, Ty Rattie, plus three minor leaguers (Colin Larkin, Robin Norell, Tyler Vesel). Sail on Hayden Hawkey and Vincent Desharnais, and we’re looking at some turnover with the restricted men (same as it ever was).
If the Oilers plan to trade, or are in conversations with teams about trading one of the rfa’s, it’s likely they don’t get signed. Let the next team make their own decision.
KEITH GRETZKY, BOB GREEN, BAKERSFIELD, DRAFT
Keith Gretzky will remain Asst. GM in Edmonton and will be the GM of the Condors. Based on the words and music from yesterday, he’ll spend the fall and early winter focusing on the Condors, while Bob Green and the scouts drill down on the 2020 draft. Somewhere in the new year, Gretzky will begin focusing on the draft and be a part of the decision making.
Every swinging Dick has an opinion on the Oilers drafting, I think the last truly poor one was 2012 — partly because it was a poor year and partly because the Oilers were drafting players out of order. The 2013 draft saw only Darnell Nurse emerge, but I’ll go to my grave believing MacT was on the right track making that crazy trade for five picks. They should have signed Marco Roy. The 2013 draft shows you that an organization can do the right things and still have things work out wrong. It doesn’t mean you flush the right things.
The 2014 draft is Leon Draisaitl and William Lagesson but could have been much more. Edmonton dealt for Nikita Nikitin, Victor Fasth, Mike Brown, Ben Scrivens and David Perron.
The 2015 draft was more of the same, although I’ll give the scouts tremendous credit for adding Caleb Jones, Ethan Bear and John Marino after the Connor McDavid selection. I count this draft as Bob Green’s first.
The 2016 draft has Jesse Puljujarvi, Tyler Benson and Dylan Wells as the only three men who signed a pro contract (among nine selections). Although JP is struggling, there’s still time to get something from what is now an unusual list.
The 2017 draft has a lot of promise, notably Dmitri Samorukov, and 2018 boasts Evan Bouchard, Ryan McLeod and Olivier Rodrigue but there’s miles to go.
LAST FIVE DRAFTS
There’s no fair way to measure a draft until the five year mark, but we can count arrows. Although you can’t give any credit for walking to the podium to select Connor McDavid, he is part of the draft record. Here’s my take on 2014-2018 drafts:
Generational Talent: Connor McDavid
Impact Talent: Leon Draisaitl
Quality Prospect: Dmitri Samorukov, Evan Bouchard
NHL Prospect: William Lagesson, Caleb Jones, Ethan Bear, John Marino, Jesse Puljujarvi, Tyler Benson, Dylan Wells, Kailer Yamamoto, Stuart Skinner, Kirill Maksimov, Ryan McLeod, Olivier Rodrigue
Is it good enough? By eye, it looks better than 2008-12, but we have arrows not concrete results. Holland will make his changes to the scouting staff this summer, seems Gretzky and Green will be part of the future. I believe the results since 2017 are strong enough to retain, and know that is a minority opinion. I am hopeful we can have a conversation and not a food fight.
CONDORS SIGNINGS
Aside from Russell, the organization added a couple of AHL contracts to the group this week. The Condors have signed Luke Esposito and Steven Iacobellis to AHL contracts. Ryan Holt (pbp man for Bakersfield) said “Esposito took an enhanced role late in the season and seized the opportunity. Effective center and PK guy as well. Iacobellis was named to the ECHL All-Rookie Team following an injury last year.”
These AHL signings can be important and the current procurement group can boast Josh Currie and Logan Day as men who came through the AHL-only deals to land NHL contracts. I keep wondering about Evan Polei. Jared Wilson has signed with an Sm-Liiga team and Braden Christoffer is off to Norway. (Source)
BUYOUTS
June 15-30 is the first window and Ken Holland told DNB that he was mulling buyouts and hadn’t made up his mind. Because these things can get confusing, and because the reason for buyouts is most often immediate help, here are the cap savings for 2019-20 on various contract buyouts:
Kris Russell $3.083 million
Andrej Sekera $3.0 million
Milan Lucic $2.375 million
Sam Gagner $2.133 million
Brandon Manning $1.33 million
GAME OVER
Melancholy is my mood this morning, they’re going to turn off the lights after tonight’s G7 SCF and it’s summer. I love summer, but miss hockey already. My whole life people have said “come on, you can’t possibly want more hockey” but they don’t know. When the final credits roll tonight, the business of hockey will be front and center and I’m grateful. But the game itself will be at rest, and I’ll be it until September.
LOWDOWN WITH LOWETIDE
A fun morning that will give way to a massive sports night, we get started at 10, TSN1260. Kris Abbott will join us from OddsShark to talk SCF and NBA finals, and Bruce McCurdy from the Cult of Hockey at the Edmonton Journal will pop in for a discussion of the Oilers draft plans. I’ll also have a special announcement at 11:05 or so, when Bruce is on the show. 10-1260 text, @Lowetide on twitter. Talk soon!
In the meantime, who do they supplement the roster with?
Using Matt Cane’s model with an eye for getting faster, can the Oilers acquire any of the UFAs?
Karlsson – 8 @ $9.90M
Duchene – 6 @ $6.92M
Dzingel – 4 @ $4.33M
B Tanev – 4 @ $2.79M
Hagelin – 3 @ $2.47M
Paajarvi – 3 @ $1.95M
They probably only have room for players on the bottom half of this list unless they can dump a lot of cap.
Google “why +/- is a flawed stat” and you’ll see that 5v5 goal differential is a very different animal.
I’m not going to respond to the rest of your post as you clearly have made no effort to read and comprehend anything I’ve written up to this point.
1) Why don’t Benning’s glaring defensive deficiencies show up in any of his numbers/results? Traditional, fancy or otherwise.
2) I don’t know if anyone is pushing him into the 2RD role. At most some of us are arguing that he can maybe/probably handle them as well as some of the other Oilers defenders can.
The flip side is that some other folks view Benning as completely expendable and already redundant with the Bakersfield D, despite considerable evidence that he’s actually a good NHL player.
3) I can’t comprehend why you keep talking about CF% and xGF% with Benning. You’ve seen many times that real, tangible goals for and goals against show Benning in a very good light. In his top 4 minutes he has the best GA/60 (and scoring chance/HD scoring chance against/60) among all Oilers D. The goals for and goals against actually like Benning more than the corsi’s.
Maybe this is all a schtick.
Edit: I guess you’re not reading the posts. How can you say “comp he hasn’t been able to handle” when replying to a post showing that he’s not only handled those minutes, but performed better than any Oilers defender?
I believe Lucic has more value to Van than a burnt- out 34 year-old does to Edmonton and with the Caps and Blues Winning I would bet Dollars for doughnuts so do most of the GM’s in the league.
So is plus-minus, and that’s looked down upon.
I fully understand this, my issue is when a player is deemed good if his offensive contribution outweighs his defensive contribution, which akin to OPS in baseball. This rewards players who do certain things well, and punishes others who also contribute but don’t do things that count in that specific metric.
For forwards, I’m much more on board with this, but not for defensemen, who’s core responsibility is to keep the opposition from getting easy chances just as much as it is to get the puck and send it the other way. Like the Blues last night.
The shot numbers have painted a picture for many that unless a player conforms to specific skills that builds shots for numbers, we can overlook a heck of a lot when we don’t have the puck.
This is also lazy analytics, where minutes that a player is on the ice when we don’t have the puck is overlooked, or minimized. There are advanced stats that measure this, but they’re primitive and hard to locate. To LT’s credit, he’s using scoring chances and goals allowed and minutes vs. elite frequently.
People rip on Ricki’s posts, but there is at least a good attempt to quantify something that is hard to quantify, yet has value.
I’m not willing to overlook Benning’s glaring defensive deficiencies when people are pushing him into a 2RD role with higher minutes and comp that he hasn’t been able to handle in the past and there are reasons why it’s unlikely he can handle it it in the future despite what the CF% and XG% says.
At the same time, Russ’s comment is not completely baseless. A player can win the goal share while still being a defensive liability. I just don’t believe this is the case with Benning.
I had a similar look at Benning’s 2nd pairing minutes as Armchair (last 2 seasons instead of 3, and using a different methodology) and came up with very similar results: Benning has been winning the minutes he’s played as a 2nd pair defender (in goal share, but also all other potentially relevant metrics).
Following up, here are his GF and GA/60 numbers in the same minutes compared to other Oilers D.
/Benning 3.15GF 2.45GA (932 minute 2nd pairing sample)
Klefbom 1.97GF 2.72GA
Larsson 2.04GF 2.74GA
Nurse 2.55GF 2.49GA
Russell 2.25GF 2.49GA/
So Benning has actually been the best Oilers defender at (not) allowing goal against (in top 4 minutes) over the past 2 seasons.
You wanted also to see on ice save %. Turns out Benning was a little lucky relative to his teammates, but not by a lot (and not enough to explain his good GA/60 and GF% numbers).
/Benning 92.16%
Nurse 92.01%
Russell 91.99%
Larsson 91.34%
Klefbom 91.26%/
To add to that here are Benning’s shots against, scoring chances against and HD scoring chances against for more context.
Shots against/60:
Benning 31.2
Russell 31.0
Klefbom 31.1
Nurse 31.2
Larsson 31.6
Scoring chances against/60:
Benning 27.4
Larsson 27.2
Klefbom 27.9
Nurse 28.1
Russell 28.2
HD scoring chances/60:
Benning 10.9
Klefbom 11.5
Russell 11.6
Larsson 11.7
Nurse 12.1
Again, all of this is Benning in top 4 minutes only, compared to the Oilers actual top 4 D. I can’t find anything in the “for” numbers, the “against” numbers or the “%” numbers that reflects Benning being poor defensively or a liability. Maybe it’s not there. I dunno.
This just about made my day yesterday, as I’ve had the same conversation a time or two.
BOP, this is a public forum… you can ask OP to ignore your posts all you want. If he wants to respond, he can respond. You have the same options on his posts.
Speaking for me, I really enjoy what you both have to say when you’re talking hockey. You both have great points of view and can back up your positions well. I may post rarely but I read this site daily and every comment. But what makes this place painful is when you and OP get into your pissing matches and try to out alpha male the other!!
So you asked him not to respond to your posts, if he does (which you have no control over) don’t respond to it. That you have control over!
For The Athletic: Oilers GM Ken Holland is shopping for 20-goal scorers on a budget. What will he find?
https://theathletic.com/1022185/2019/06/13/lowetide-oilers-gm-ken-holland-is-shopping-for-20-goal-scorers-on-a-budget-what-will-he-find/
He had a groin issue I believe this season, you could see he was laboring at times. I’d bet on Larsson returning to previous levels in 2019-20.
Why do i keep hearing these concerns about Larsson’s health?
He doesn’t have back issues – he missed like 10 games with a wonky back over a season ago – that’s it.
Other than that, he’s missed 3 games with injury over 4 years (and a bunch more with bereavement).
He’s been extremely durable.
Why is there an age/cliff issue with Larsson – he’s 26 – he’s barely even in his prime for his type of game.
Larsson had a really tough year last year. Who knows why. Maybe it was function of his partner being playing injured. Maybe it was function of his goalies being awful. Who knows. At the same time, he was absolutely excellent the year before, even with a tough year personally. He was a plus 10 playing top minutes (with a developing Nurse for a few months) and a big negative team – excellent.
I didn’t see any players on the Blues that weren’t able to take/make a pass with any sort of speed efficiency, weren’t able to keep up with the play, etc.
There is nothing in Lucic’s game that is a copy of any player on the Blues.
I miss hockey…..
Bennington should have been the MVP without him going on a 5 month heater probably half the team is traded or in wasteland. Worst to first old time hockey gotta love it.
Percentages aren’t difficult dude
Cheers. No worries there. That’s for sure.
This is awesome. Luv this kind of wacko but real post. Keep em coming.
Don’t ever lose being unique it would be a shame.
I’m looking for Old Dutch and the Oilers to slow play this summer. This will not be a playoff year for the upcoming team. I hope to see some modest improvement on the wings and less blender effects with the forward lines, stability i think will help as the new coaches improve team defense. The Dmen are OK for a team of their ranking, frankly if Larson”s +/- does not rebound after 20-30 games, I would deal him for a winger, the cliff, health, between the ears, something amiss here.
The clamor over KR is so ridiculous, coaches trust him but some tall foreheads here think ? he should be gone, I guess we’ll see what real hockey people think again. I hope against hope that Caleb Jones does not get called up to play RD. Playing him there in the AHL is like playing him in NHL training camp, it hardly counts. Guys kill it in the A and struggle in the NHL. It won’t be long before the hounds are howling, they will feast on his failures, and the crucifiction walk out of town will commence. Think Shultz, Petry all the way back to Poti, all better elsewhere than here? Really?
Lucic should be the #1 issue dealt with, this will go bad in the room when respect for him wanes.
Eakins befriended the owner in Anaheim. Murray is just giving the owner what he wants. A confidence man always finds the weak link to sell a bill of goods to. Murray’s choice is a job protection choice.
From the Oilers perspective, it is good the dementor got the Anaheim job, rather than someone actually good, like Nelson.
Chop wood carry bullshit was put in a tough position but you can’t throw and embarrass your leader your real captain. Eakins must be able to suck a golf ball though a garden hose. David Perron suck on it Eakins.
Ah, the mighty REJA was the bearer of such a good recommendation. The Trip is a Trip.
PS – change the J to G and your are a mid-level high end record player company.
It’s a copycat league Caps win Blues win the Jenny Hockey anybody thinks of touching me will have to wait another year.
I think you might be placing a little too much emphasis on anonymous posts on the internet. To be fair, I probably could be more transparent on my personal exercise and diet regimen if it’s content that you find compelling?
I have a pretty full and happy life with good family, friends and colleagues in the real world.
But thanks for your concern. I’ll self reflect now or sleep. Whatever comes first.
The Trip. Beautiful relaxing song.
Eakins was a bad coach here. He’s even admitted himself. I suspect his approach with his new gig will be much much different.
Bag of Pucks,
I provided you my opinion on your behaviour as an opportunity for self reflection. I genuinely hope you find my feedback helpful.
Seriously? From the guy who’s every post is a statement straight from the smartest playbook
Should have asked him the water bottle question.
When you consider the RoR acquisition (his numbers werent good) and the players who were “available” (Tarasenko, Parayko, Schenn and others were rumored to be available) you gotta hand it to Doug Armstrong to stick to your guns and not panic.
Jaden Schwartz may be the most underrated player in the game.
Good on Maroon (you beauty), Perron and Boumeister.
Love Dave Mason. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8_FOQ7-P30
I think you’re ALL a bunch of jerks.
Blues are such a cool story…worst to champs in a few months. I’d read a few thousand words about the spiritual and statistical aspects of the turnaround.
Yegfoundation,
Do you find it effective to insult someone and then give them advice?
FWIW I’ve repeatedly asked OP not to reply to my posts and he refuses so as far as I’m concerned, he deserves whatever he get when he insists on doing so.
Bag of Pucks,
I’m happy to have OP as part of our community and I enjoy all of his posts and find his informative and insight excellent. I also enjoy reading about his travels, his work and his early morning workouts.
On the other hand, I skip past 80% of your posts due to your poor behaviour.
If something is making you unhappy in your personal life, please don’t take it out on the good people in this community.
This is why I’m happy Brad Marchand did not hoist the Cup tonight!
Well, the cup run is over and congrats to the Blues, a run from
New Year’s to be savored and enjoyed.
The next 3 weeks will be interesting as well as teams and players
seek to find partners before “closing” time.
Pretty brutal year for him I’m sure. Nice that the game gave him some joy.
Hopefully Dave Mason is here for just as long as Woodcroft, or even longer.
Incessantly passive aggressive people are poison to a community.
I guess “the plan” worked.
Fuckin’ eh passes muster with the CBC/Sportsnet apparently
Words you can’t say winning the Stanley Cup.
So you’re saying he’s got market value again? ?
Shoutout to the Edmonton/Oil connections!
Bouwmeester, Parayko, Berube, Big Rig, with honourable mention to Perron.
SN, on the other hand, did not!
Whatever. This is too special a night to debate your BS.
LT’s white whales are the 3 for 1 trade and the balance photo and the Blues got both with the O’Reilly trade.
Too bad Binnington won’t win the Calder, but the Cup is better!
I am a member of this community.
I don’t recall stating that I’m an Eakins fan – far from it.
Sumit Tripathi
@Sumit_Tripathi_
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So ladies and gentlemen I believe Peter Chiarelli has won the Stanley Cup as a memeber of Blues
F^ck em.