It’s possible—unlikely, but possible—the Edmonton Oilers will feature a couple of former Bakersfield Condors among the 14 forwards in the opening night lineup. A lot of attention has been paid to Tyler Benson, Cooper Marody, even Kailer Yamamoto. Let’s spend a little time talking Josh Currie, Joe Gambardella and Patrick Russell.
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 Offer!
- New Lowetide: Jesse Puljujarvi’s biggest hurdles: Bad timing and the indifference of the Oilers.
- Lowetide: Projecting the Oilers 2019-20 Opening Night Lineup
- Lowetide: Revisiting the Oilers’ 2016 draft and the opportunities missed
- Lowetide: Examining the potential waiver-wire opportunities at hand for the Oilers
- Lowetide: Cooper Marody’s utility gives him an edge for an Oilers roster spot in 2019-20
- Lowetide: Ken Holland’s roster construction options for the Oilers over the next seven months.
- Lowetide: Kailer Yamamoto has the talent to win a job with the Oilers on merit, if he’s healthy.
- Jonathan Willis: Jesse Puljujarvi still has upside and the Oilers’ patient approach is the right one
- Daniel Nugent-Bowman: Q&A: Dave Tippett on rounding out his coaching staff, fixing Oilers’ special teams and using Connor McDavid
- Lowetide: Handicapping the Oilers’ young defencemen and their chances of replacing Andrej Sekera
- Lowetide: Is Kirill Maksimov progressing as the Edmonton Oilers’ next great hope for a true homegrown sniper?
- Jonathan Willis: Oilers ease pressure on crowded defensive pipeline by trading John Marino to the Penguins
- Daniel Nugent-Bowman: What the 2021-22 Oilers might look like after their steady build toward contender status
- Lowetide: Joel Persson is ideally situated to win an opening night roster spot with the Oilers
- Jonathan Willis: Projecting the Oilers’ opening night lineup, line combinations and more.
- Lowetide: Oilers’ acquisition of James Neal could add badly needed scoring to the top two lines.
- Daniel Nugent-Bowman: Ken Holland puts his stamp on the Oilers with first big move in Lucic-Neal trade
- Jonathan Willis: Ken Holland ends an ugly situation for the Oilers by trading Milan Lucic for James Neal
- Jonathan Willis: Which Oilers defencemen can make an outlet pass?
- Lowetide: Looking ahead to Oilers training camp: 35 players for 23 jobs
- Jonathan Willis: Josh Archibald won’t fix the Oilers’ biggest problems, but he’ll help with some key issues.
- Lowetide: Oilers top 20 prospects summer 2019.
WAIVE BABIES
If I’ve guessed correctly on my RE, the Oilers will waive Brandon Manning, Keegan Lowe, Brad Malone, Joe Gambardella, Patrick Russell and Josh Currie in the days leading up to opening night. There’s a lot of utility among the forwards, and we might see one in the group sneak onto the opening night roster (or be recalled during the year). Here are the NHL numbers from a year ago:
These are small sample sizes (Currie 181 minutes) but each of these three men made their NHL debuts and played well enough for us to talk about them as recall options during the 2019-20 season. Eric Rodgers’ time on ice estimates give us an even better chance to drill down on AHL scorers, and his work on the 2018-19 Condors was revealing:
Even strength points are the great equalizer, and the three forwards we’re discussing today show very well against Marody and Benson. I can see the three older Condors getting work on the depth lines, while the kids spend more time in Bakersfield waiting for the call.
Marody is the top player in this group, but he’ll either play on a skill line or return to Bakersfield. It’s going to come down to foot speed, for Marody and for Benson. Yamamoto’s injuries impacted his offense and I do believe he’s a lock to start the year in Bakersfield. I really liked Gambardella on the forecheck, and Currie had more skill than I thought he would at the NHL level. The Oilers badly need depth (along with quality) in an effort to finally find a balanced roster. These mid-20’s forwards may help.
LOWDOWN WITH LOWETIDE
At 10 this morning, TSN1260. We’ll have a lively show featuring Bruce McCurdy from the Cult of Hockey at the Edmonton Journal. We’ll talk the Perseids-on adventure, Bianca Andreescu and the young Jays. Kris Abbott from OddsShark will also be by to talk CFL, NFL and college football. 10-1260 text, @Lowetide on twitter and we’ll see you on the radio!
You had it shown that how you remembered it was not correct. As an excellent poster on this site I expect more from you. Please don’t think this other than my feeble attempt to keep you on the correct path.
Curious – what do you think will trigger and be behind this crash? And why will it be worse than all previous crashes of the last 50 years that we’ve recovered fairly quickly from?
When prospect depth is talked about, to me it’s about players that can do what is necessary to win when it counts.
In any sport where teams compete directly for the object and space, the team who’s best players are willing to play two ways almost always wins when it counts.
Having elite talent on top of that is ideal.
Hello again
The Oiler’s system in terms of high end prospects is deep in LD, decent at RD, decent at G, decent at wing, thin at C, and devoid of RC. Marody having size and skating issues combined makes him a thin hope to me.
Smallish players need wheels, high skill and an edge to be other than a 100 game player, which to me means a passenger. The Oilers don’t need to babysit more passengers. At any roster spot.
Maybe OP can chime in, but I haven’t seen where he is spoken of as a strong two way C, which for him will be essential.
His offense will not put him top 6 on the big team. To me Holland moving depth to secure young quality at thin positions is his Sather status.
Outside of taxes
Hockey talk: has anyone else been following Pronman’s NHL farm system series at the athletic?
https://theathletic.com/1125088/2019/08/15/pronman-2019-20-nhl-farm-system-rankings/
It caught my eye a few days ago and I was pleased to see Calgary was ranked 31st and Winnipeg 27th. A new column is released every day – no Oilers content so far! *crosses fingers*
Eventually, nothing will be worth anything. The only thing that won’t change is your debt. Get out of debt and stay that way. It doesn’t matter if your house is worth $10M or $10, as long as you don’t owe anything on it.
godot10,
Bitcoin is fine as long as you recognize the inherent instability of the system. Not for long-term, more short-term ride the wave and get out. Bitcoin is the Las Vegas of the financial world. LOL
Gold is only good if you have someone who will buy it, and the way things are going, that could be tricky.
Would be nice if our doofus president stops the isolationist nonsense that’s harming our country. I pulled my money out of mutual funds recently due to this crazy instability brought on by an unwinnable trade war. Sorry for the rant, need some hockey news soon. LOL
London Jon,
No it won’t. The next crash is coming soon and it will be biblical.
The financial system will be fine.
The health of our planet is a much bigger worry and far fewer shits are being given
OP:
Your mental video review often comes to the same conclusion.
Gambardella. Yes.
But I like to look at
Video mechanism
Relevant Off & def productoon data.
Human trend factors.
Based on my look at age based 37+ gm debuts during hollands 21 yrs as GM.
When quality veteran even goal & def forward depth exists.
I showed on this blog that he prefers 23 yr old debuts.
With exceptional unique skilled players debuting at age 21, 20
13-14 might be the first sign of veteran depth issues.
9 – 9+ goal forwards 22+ yrs.
Sheehan (21) 42gm 9 goals
Jurco (20) 36gm 8 goals was first sign of wavering.
Current Oiler fwd depth:
Mcdavid (22) C
Draisaitl (23) W, C
RNH (26) C
Neal (31) LW
Chaisson (28) RW
Kassian (28) RW
Archibald (26) RW
Granlund (26) LW
Gagner (30) RW, C
—————————- above 9 double digit evg forwards
Jurco (26) W
Khaira (25) DZ LW, C
—————————- above 2 forwards with double digit pace or season thru career
Nygard (26) LW
————————— above 1 forward with high evg NHLE
Brodziak (31) DZ C
Haas (27) DZ W, DZ C
——————————- 2 strong D zone history
I see 13 23+ forwards and 1 exceptional 22 yr old
Cave (24) currently on roster and center
Currie (26)
Gambardella (25)
————————————- 2 above older than 23 and double digit evg NHLE in AHL
Maroody (22) 1 more yr to 23
————————————- 1 above with exceptional AHL season near double digit evg NHLE in A
Benson (21) 2 more yr to 23
Yamamotto (20) 3 more yr to 23
Maximov (20) 3 more yr to 23
Mcleod (19) 4 more yr to 23
Lavoie unsigned (18) 5 more yr to 23
———————————— 5 above with years to go to Holland’s magic number.
Zetterberg was (21) when he saw NHL.
Any of those 5 – 21 and under exceptional.
The 18 yr olds draft -1 reg season & draft post season says he might be.
Benson, yamamotto, Mcleod should be double digit evg ( 2nd line) fills for 3rd line down the road.
LT’s draft +5 (22) tells us if they are NHL ready
same as Holland
NHL @ 23
I first learned of VB based action team/comp/ZS data.
In single strings of data.
That allowed for visual check of shots and goals.
Open/ closed.
A manual test for you guys!
Watch the famous Sedin shift against the oilers.
Watch the entry.
Was a NZ trap run?
How many high density corsi?
How many were 0% corsi blocks, misses, Closed shots?
How many were open shots?
Interesting to see everyone’s answer on this blog!
It is perceived as great attacking hockey?
Is it?
Was a clear penalty committed based on what penalties caused on oilers best players.
As bill burr would say:
What is this process you talk of.
When looking at any of your % measures.
3 different +/- values could have same %.
That is embarrassing science.
Did you diferentiate for for the 50-60% of Zone start that are bench changes.
Identifying weather they went on with or without procession.
Ignoring this is brutal science.
Who were their teammates.
I use to calculate WOWY manually for Oilers with
Shift charts & Behind the net.
A painfully slow process until LT pointed out Stats hockey analysis.
When Behind the net first came out.
It allowed me to calculate averages for any column of data for any combination of them, comp, face off based ZS Situation.
Single variable and binary analysis of hockey data requires the need for large sample size cause of the perceived need for large sets of Data to regress to a mean.
But it will not in a season.
Once their is 3 variables with 3 averages their is no need for common regression or large sample sizes.
You may likely need a higher resolution differentiation of the 3 variables.
Multi variable situational analysis allows for a resolution level that might look to deep into the data.
Based on # groups of averages.
I originally started with
8 groups of comp upper, lower, 1st, 2nd …….
8 groups of Team upper, lower, 1st ……..
8 groups of face off
Each group should regress to its own mean.
But a reduction in resolution was required for a clear valued differentiation of performance.
All 512 differed.
O
Expected goal diff average varied from -26 to +26 at the ends.
But not at a competitive differentiation ( deviation) in the middle.
Backed the group count back to
4 comp
4 team
6 ZS
But their is a need for 2 difrent charts.
Face off Zone start with or without pocession
Bench change ZS
As you look at different data columns of data.
You see different splitting of charts for each column.
GF & GA, etc.
GF is forward dominate.
The only real accurate +/- ( you guys use %, tsk, tsk) differentiation is
Corsi F – CA which is a very forward dependent range.
It passes 2 major tests.
1. Mechanism video
2. High Population capture with marked differentiation.
Just a little insight into identifying the minimum basic level of resolution methodology
That is not bound by regression.
So that you have a sellable differentiation of winning hockey population on a seasonal average.
At least 3 variables are required.
Puck IQ
1. Not enough variables
2. resolution is not good enough.
3. DF% fails the population test. Identification of winning roster value players!
Glovjuice,
True but one needs to try stay modestly optimistic. Hard though when BAU sends the rock of modern economies needing infinite growth to function into the hard place of finite planet and resources. We are printing debt (future spending brought into the present) like mad to square that circle, but it obviously can’t last. Some people believe more money don’t generate much additional happiness after our basic needs are met. We might get test that idea at some point soon.
Back to hockey though. I’m here to distract from the heavy issues for a bit.
Us Gen-X’ers have had the easiest life in all of human in history (apologies to those who haven’t had it easy for whatever reason). Especially us in Canada. Mindblowing when I really think about it. Scary actually. Future Gens will definitely have a more challenging life on average.
godot10,
Knowledge will not make you happier as I’m sure you know my friend. But on the slightly brighter side, I figure TPTB have one last bullet left (helicopter money) before the masses figure out that the paper in their pockets is …….. paper. So the show might go on for a while yet. Just don’t dig too far into the ERoEI literature if you want to sleep well at night. Things might get a bit medieval if the future goes as some predict.
Delusion is the default position for most of humanity.
You two need to go to church or something.
Mass worldwide collective delusion across so many fields. Terrifying, but It is truly amazing to behold.
So many people voluntarily and willingly proclaim that “there are five lights”.
And #NothingToBeDone
That’s true, for the most part at least.
Without Larsson, Nurse, Russell, and Benning there are 94 minutes left (even less representative of anything than before).
CF% 49.4
FF% 46.4
SF% 43.8
GF% 50.0 (3-3)
xGF% 45.3
SCF% 55.4
HDCF% 38.7
PDO 1019
OZS% 55.6
Jones still wasn’t breaking even by most metrics, FWIW.
People have no idea the misery we are leaving for future generations. Or maybe they don’t care because we’re living well, and by the time the future folk aren’t living well, most of us will be dead and gone. Our generation, and our parent’s generation, will be reviled by history. Because by now, we should have known better. But y’know, politics.
godot10,
Secondly, bitcoin comes with political risk. If one is holding bitcoin for the purposes the OP described then concerns about political risk would be paramount and that medium not considered a true safe haven from government shenanigans. I know you know this, but felt it was missing from your response.
godot10,
Not disagreeing but want to add one caveat. Gold that is not held in your hands, but rather by a “secure” service can have a counterparty. Gold can be hypothecated, which basically means it can be lent out. And worse, it can be re-hypothecated, possibly multiple times.
Obviously, this is still better than non-redeemable fiat notes, which have a counterparty whether they’re held physically by yourself or not. And worse are nightly lent out from your chequing account through sweeps… without any return to the actual holder of the notes, ie yourself.
We are in Wonderland. There is over $15 trillion in negative yielding debt in the world, and quickly rising. The entire German, Swiss, and Swedish bond curves are negative. The over $20 trillion and counting in money conjured out of nothing by central banks since the global financial crisis have are destroying all markets and causing massive wealth inequality.
Be careful out there.
Now you can take your blue pill and forget about this post.
J.P. Morgan: “Money is gold, and nothing else.”
Bitcoin is the antithesis of gold. It is really an equity tranche, backed by no assets, dependent on the international electricity grids and the internet staying up. It’s only utility is for capital flight out of developing countries, while the power and internet are still on. Bitcoins are basically tulips. It is difficult to exactly determine where we are in this tulip craze. Advances in quantum computing will ultimately doom bitcoin, if the tulip craze doesn’t go bust first.
A gold brick hurts your toes when you drop it on your foot. That is how you know it is real, with no counterparty.
Joe G. had 2 more goals an 7 more points in 3 less games and played with Malone and P. Russell predominatnly – very good and productive AHL players but not the likes of Benson and Marody and Yamamoto, etc. which is where Currie spent most of his time.
Joe G’s offensive season was miles better than Currie’s in my opinion.
His minutes with Nurse, Russell and Benning were top 4 and need to be excluded from that analysis.
Looks like I have an incorrect memory of the minutes Bear played – apologize for that and thanks for the info.
The 20 vs 21 age thing is a good point except, to my eye, the areas that Bear struggled in at the NHL level continue to be his deficiencies and I don’t see any material improvement in these areas at the AHL level.
We do. And it will be fascinating to see how they sort themselves out (unless they all flop).
Strength in numbers.
Agree on all points. They’re all promising youngsters but we need more NHL samples.
I’ve got a feeling Lagesson is a solid bottom pair guy if he can bleed a bit more chaos out of his game. Another year or part there of for Jones and Bear would benefit both, but I figure Bear is gone as a part of a package with Jesse.
Joe G is a good PB – 14th forward guy for his age and style of game, and he’s the type of player (youngish, strong recent up arrows) you take a flier on with waivers if he’s eligible this year.
That’s all fair, and I agree.
My main point when beginning the post was that “Jones was excellent in 3rd pairing minutes” isn’t supported by the numbers, limited samples as they are. Not intending to decide anything with this.
(Side note: single year penalty killing samples are always too small to have much meaning)
The sample is too small for both Jones and Bear. Jones “looked” good and he has excellent speed. His AHL numbers show (ev goal differential) he has a bit of an edge over Bear (none over Lagesson). As always, defensemen don’t develop in straight lines. There’s a danger in looking at 123 minutes and deciding anything.
Josh Currie has progressed every year of his career and had better numbers than Gambardella last season. I hope he gets a shot to see how high age can go.
The earliest of early, but still great to hear. Thanks for these reports, they’re much appreciated.
The notion that Jones was really good in 3rd pairing minutes last year is I think a bit overstated too.
He played 132:28 at 5on5 with Larsson and 158:00 away from Larsson. Without Larsson he was with Gravel (65:50), Benning (39:19), Petrovic (22:09), Nurse (14:00), Russell (10:51) and a few minutes with others (consistent with 3rd pair use).
Various metrics with Larsson vs without Larsson
CF% 43.6 48.9
FF% 41.1 45.9
SF% 41.2 46.4
GF% 31.3 42.9
xGF% 43.3 43.5
SCF% 51.2 52.9
HDCF% 56.9 38.0
PDO .952 .986
OZS% 36.8 55.9
He got buried with Larsson (36% ozone starts!) but he was absolutely not keeping his head above water away from Larsson either. He did saw off the minutes specifically with Gravel, but otherwise it wasn’t pretty.
I like Jones, but hopefully there’s a fair and open audition for NHL jobs in camp. Looking at this it likely is fully open who’s going to with them (the AHL numbers don’t show really any separation between the prospects either).
Jones played 33.5% vs elites compared to 29.2 for Bear so he did get slightly tougher minutes. But agreed that Bear didn’t play exclusively 3rd pair. He was much less sheltered than I realized.
Overall Bear had CF% 44.9, DFF% 40.9 and 7GF/16GA (30.4%).
Jones managed CF% 46.0, DFF% 43.1 and 9GF/19GA (32.1%).
Jones’ results were a tiny bit better in just slightly harder minutes. Not much to choose, and really the reasonable conclusion should probably be that both of them were quite bad in their first go round.
You are correct, sir. The knee looked good. He was carving up the ice. Didn’t help our game that started next but not much could help us out there.
Cheers!
Craig The Keg,
Cool story, thanks for the update! When you say “the knee looked really” I assume you meant to say good there also based on the rest of the story.
Awesome – thank you.
I play hockey in a beer league in Toronto at the Scotiabank Pond arena. Our game was last night at 7:30pm. Well, who should have the ice time slot before us?? None other than Mr Connor McDavid himself.
He was out on the ice with only a skating instructor. She was wearing figure skates and they were doing edge work drills. The knee looked really. Boy, can he skate like the wind!!
I didn’t see him shoot any pucks but a couple of the guys that had been there earlier said he took a couple of shots from center ice.
After he was done he walked off towards his dressing room right by us. He was nice enough to take a picture with a young boy. And we even asked if he would sub in our team. He just laughed it off. Good kid.
Anyways, this concludes your random (and largely pointless) McDavid update.
Russ, the Oilers bottom 6 had a NHL record fewest goals ever scored last year.
Gregor from Oilersnation and TSN 1260 ran the numbers after the season ended. They were historically gawdawful. The Oilers bottom 6 produced less goals than the bottom sixes of every team in the NHL since the modern era began. Every. Damn. Team.
I’m not going to deny that attention to defense is important, because that’s assinine. EV Goal Differential is important, and half of that is what you prevent from happening.
But when you can’t score a little, that’s a real problem. No player can expect to stop every scoring attempt against and go 0-0 in differential for the season, so you need to be able to put the puck in the net AND prevent the other team from doing the same.
So… since the guys last year couldn’t score, I’d rather have guys who look like they can score and see if they can prevent their opponents too.
Odds are good if they can score a little, they’ll be more effective than the group from last year.
Ergo – team performance improves.
Skellefteå lost in a shootout against Modo(currently in allsvenskan and the club where Peter Forsberg, Viktor Hedman, Markus Näslund etc etc started out), Modo tied the game, 3-3, in the last second of play. Didn’t watch the game myself but according to a local reporter Philip Broberg was ”without a doubt” the best player for his team. First game of the preseason so take it for what it is but still encouraging to hear that he’s showing well early, crucial when with a new team. He played RD with (imo overrated) veteran Arvid Lundberg on what was written as the first pair in the lineup but it’s preseason so the pairs were likely just sharing the toi.
Filip Berglund wasn’t mentioned by the reporter and from what I could gather had a quiet game.
Pete and his scouting staff left Ken a shitload of prospects the best pipeline in our franchise history Holland won’t fuk this up adding Neal could be huge I’m bullish on Benson maybe we hit 7’s on him this year.
Feels like we’ve been gambling on kids to breakthrough forever now. The house always wins. Another veteran winger is critical.
Buy Bitcoin. Buy Gold. The crash is near.
They better know how to play defence because this team will be hard pressed to score goals other than the usual suspects.
So Skellefteå plays today.
My Swedish is rusty so I’m not sure but I’m assuming it’s. Preseason game.
Hoping for a Beglund or Broberg sighting.
ArmchairGM,
Wouldn’t it make more sense to parse Bear’s results against the three tiers? A quick scan on my phone over his puckiq splits shows he spent most time against the middle and had the best results there. Interestingly enough he did better against elite competition than against the grittensity level. Probably due to QoT?
I’m not sure this is a fair characterization though as Bear played above 3rd pairing quite a bit: his top 2 partners were Russell and Klefbom, both of whom (according to puckiq.com) played in the top-4 in 2017-18.
TOI with:
Russell: 140:46
Klefbom: 76:31
Nurse: 32:10
Sekera: 24:03
Auvitu: 13:55
Benning: 2:10
Larsson: 1:31
Lowe: 0:43
Puckiq.com vs Elites:
Larsson: 35.1%
Nurse: 34.9
Klefbom: 32.3
Russell: 31.1
Gryba: 29.9
Bear: 29.2
Benning: 24.8
Davidson: 23.1
Auvitu: 19.5
Sekera: 19.4
Lowe: 0.1
This shows Bear as a 3rd pairing guy, but his most common partners as 1st and 2nd pairing players. I don’t think it’s fair to judge him too harshly – if he had been sheltered like the other young players his stats might have looked better. Remember, too, that he was just 20 at the time, whereas Jones was 21 during his stint.
Jordan,
It seems our fanbase as a whole vastly prefers scoring goals then preventing them. A 3-2 win counts just as much as an 8-5 win.
There is a role for those forwards who are not prolific scorers, cycling in the opposition zone to keep possession and helping in the defensive zone 5×5 and on the PK. Not to mention, many of those players labled as “grinders” scored 10 goals last year, so our secondary scoring should improve overall.
Some forwards have to step up and do this hard work, something that has been badly lacking in recent years. I’m hopeful we’ll see better results with the new group Holland has brought in for Tippett’s defensive style and systems.
The 80’s ideal of full steam ahead and hope the goalie bails you out has little relevance in this era when you look at the teams that are successful, especially in the postseason.