The Oilers have been shuffling the scouting deck quite a bit in recent years. Stu MacGregor was scouting director for Jordan Eberle, Taylor Hall, Nuge, Yak, Nurse and Leon. Bob Green was in charge for McDavid, JP and Yamamoto, Bouchard. I’m going to say Ken Holland was scouting director for the Broberg pick, and that’s a good starting point for our conversation today.
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 Athletic, check it out here.
- New Daniel Nugent-Bowman: The 5 games that define Leon Draisaitl’s Hart Trophy-worthy season
- New Lowetide: Final Oilers report cards: Second-half impact defines a successful season
- New Jonathan Willis: Does Filip Berglund’s new SHL contract mean he’s done with the Oilers?
- New Daniel Nugent-Bowman: Evolution of a star: Why Leon Draisaitl was our Hart pick
- Lowetide: Oilers get good news from the farm as second-half performances spike
- Lowetide: Should Oilers prospect Philip Broberg play in North America next year?
- Daniel Nugent-Bowman and Jonathan Willis: Which former Oiler has the best argument to have his jersey number retired?
- Lowetide: Which Oilers veterans are in roster peril?
- Jonathan Willis: How good is Anton Slepyshev and what will an NHL return mean for the Oilers?
- Jonathan Willis: Peter Chiarelli wants to be a GM again. Has he learned from his Oilers mistakes?
- New Lowetide: Oilers’ challenge could be finding relief with a low cap ceiling
- Lowetide: Projecting Oilers prospects Raphael Lavoie and Kirill Maksimov
- Lowetide: What does Jesse Puljujarvi’s Liiga season tell us about his future?
- Daniel Nugent-Bowman: How Oilers plan to help arena workers unclear with games postponed
- Lowetide: NHL season on hold might impact Oilers evaluations, summer plans
- Daniel Nugent-Bowman and Jonathan Willis: Key questions surround Oilers in wake of NHL’s coronavirus suspension
- Daniel Nugent-Bowman: Q&A: GM Ken Holland on Oilers’ playoff push, offseason plans and Hart thoughts
- Jonathan Willis: Evan Bouchard, Tyler Benson and more: 20 observations on the Bakersfield Condors
- Lowetide: Caleb Jones represents Oilers template for development success
- Daniel Nugent-Bowman: Determining Connor McDavid’s linemates remains a pressing and perplexing problem
- Jonathan Willis: Which players pose the biggest threat to Leon Draisaitl winning the Hart Trophy?
- Lowetide: Is the OHL still the Oilers’ primary resource at the draft?
Let’s start with an easy question. Who have the Oilers employed as scouting directors and what years did they fill that role? Fraser (1979-2000, he was here during some of the WHA era, too); Kevin Prendergast (2001-2007); Stu MacGregor (2008-2014); Bob Green (2015-2019). Keith Gretzky came in during the Green era and had a positive (imo) impact on procurement. This year it’s Tyler Wright.
What’s the management group look like from the scouting director up? Ken Holland is GM, Keith Gretzky is AGM, Wright is scouting director, Bob Green is chief scout.
How the hell does that work? Hell if I know. Maybe Green and the scouts come up with a list and Wright oversees the process. I imagine the top end of the amateur procurement group see the best prospects several times and that would include Holland.
You seem to think Holland ran the 2019 draft. I wouldn’t say ran the draft, but he probably had an impact on the first round pick. I’ll never know, but it is interesting that the Oilers started talking about Philip Broberg after Holland arrived. In early June I wrote “Since Ken Holland arrived on the scene, Broberg’s name is mentioned in the media daily. That’s a tell.”
Is that how Holland will run the draft this season? The addition of Tyler Wright probably allowed Holland to put in place his previous system. What that looks like God only knows. In the book Behind the Moves, Holland said “Every manager needs four or five real key people that help you to be successful. A head coach (Tippett) and an assistant manager (Gretzky), one or two people running your amateur draft (Wright, Green) someone in player development (Howson) and your coach in the AHL (Jay Woodcroft).”
What does Wright’s drafting record look like? The best look I’ve seen is from Daniel Nugent-Bowman (here) and I came away thinking the Oilers had hired another Kevin Prenderast.
What the hell does that mean? Prendergast’s first selection was Ales Hemsky in 2001, and he had more first-round successes (Devan Dubnyk, Andrew Cogliano). However, KP added more outside the first round (Jarret Stoll, Matt Greene, Kyle Brodziak, Jeff Petry) and that made his drafting record better than it looked at first blush. Wright has some of the same elements.
Who are Wright’s hits? He had a solid draft with Columbus in 2012. Ryan Murray was the first rounder, injuries have derailed him. Joonas Korpisalo has emerged as a good goaltender and Josh Anderson is a substantial player when healthy. That was a good draft.
What about 2013? No home runs but Oliver Bjorkstrand in the third round was quality. Alexander Wennberg was the first round pick, he should be better than he’s shown but we’re several years on now.
And 2014 he moved to Detroit. Yes, and drafted Dylan Larkin at No. 15 overall. That’s his best pick, no question. The 2015 draft looks like a miss, shocking because there was so much talent available. However, in 2016, when Edmonton was having a hard time, the DRW grabbed Filip Hronek in the second round (Dennis Cholowski in the first). I really like the 2018 draft (Filip Zadina, Joe Veleno, Jonatan Berggren, Jared McIsaac, Alex Regula). Moritz Seider had a strong AHL season as a teenager.
Are you impressed with the group? I can’t answer that, we haven’t seen them in action. The procurement department will have their first-round pick and they need to make it count. That hasn’t necessarily been a strength for Wright, but the Oilers as a group have been hammering like Dick Pound at a Habitat for Humanity barn raising since 2010 in the first round.
Predict Edmonton’s first round selection in 2020? I’ll say Mavrik Bourque.
LOWDOWN WITH LOWETIDE
A busy and fun show this morning, we start at 10 sharp, TSN1260. Jonathan Willis from The Athletic joins us at 10:20, we’ll talk Leon Draisaitl as Hart Trophy winner and what the NHL might do to save the season. Jeff Krushell pops in at 11 to give us a view of baseball’s situation and when we might see Astros hitters getting beaned. 10-1260 text, @Lowetide on twitter.
Yes. Reality keeps overrunning all of the pretend.
Am I crazy, or is Decidedly Skeptical Fan the alter ego of Harper’s Hair (aka DSF)?
I don’t think he is, although it would be funny.
So, the answer is no to my question.
Very disappointing but not surprising even though it should be an easy one to admit as, well, its obvious and express.
Nope, try again. I know your stock and trade is hyperbole, but please don’t crap on educators or put us all into one box that fits your narrative. Grade inflation is certainly real in some schools and in some nations, but it’s not universal.
I can assure you that I give relatively few A level grades, a few more A- grades, but plenty of Bs, some Cs, a few Ds and even the occasional F if it is earned. My colleagues both in my department and in the University sector more broadly speaking are much the same. I can’t speak to K-12, other than my fiancee, who teaches grade 5. She refuses to teach down to her students or inflate grades to feed the egos of the parents, even if it means catching a bit of crap from them from time to time.
If a student gets a B or B+ and tries to suggest that their effort level entitles them to an A, I ask to meet with them to go over their work and show them what worked and where to improve. Sometimes I miss things (or my TA misses things) and they’ll get a grade change, but other times they’ll actually learn something, recognize an area for growth and walk away totally satisfied with the original. I’ll do the exact same with a C student who wants to level up and learn how to do it. In my classroom, I won’t let any student slip through the cracks.
Even now as we’re doing online teaching, I’m holding virtual office hours over google meet, letting students workshop their assignments with me in advance and discuss the issues they’re having, both with school and with life while we’re all figuring out what the hell the world is going to look like when this is over. If a student wants the support, I’ll do everything I can to provide it, something I know they really need with all the uncertainty in the world right now. Setting students up for success is quite a bit different than grade inflation.
end rant
Munny,
The car thing is happening now. 3 provinces have shut down show rooms and test drives. All communication around the purchase is on line or through telephones. Service departments are open and considered essential services. And yes, the occasional person is buying a vehicle. LOL. almost said car but other than Honda, who sells cars anymore?
Globalization isn’t done. However the rush to globalize is finito. Does that make sense?
China, however, is done. Their economy is going to take a long long long time to recover. Other countries, businesses etc are not going to forget this. Considering the economic problems they were having prior to Covid, even a sovereign default is not completely out of the question. Their banking system is completely fucked among other things. Communism will likely only survive by returning to a more extreme form of authoritarianism, even heavier propaganda, and cutting some ties with the rest of the world at the citizen level.
This transition away from China won’t be as disruptive as you might think to global supply chains. China’s manufacturing has largely moved to cheaper countries and China is now known as more of an “assembler” than a “manufacturer”. That’s not to say there isn’t manufacturing going on in China, of course there is. But it is a significantly smaller part of their economy, and what they do for say, Apple (assemble iPhones), can be done elsewhere.
Open borders… Well I think it is safe to say that global travel and tourism are going to drop significantly. Because things happen at the margins, even a 15 percent drop would be lethal to many dependent businesses. I don’t think there’s any doubt that we will see temperature scanners installed at every airport and border crossing… and very likely there will be a lot of public willingness for even more restrictive measures.
High Density living and mass transit… as defmn, has already said, these things aren’t going anywhere. You just can’t take cities the size of Tokyo, London, NYC etc and break them into little pieces. And while there ay be some migration away it will be short-lived and easily replaced by others willing to endure urban life.
We will likely see the budgets of these cities skyrocket as they try to find ways of dealing with their inherent fragility and risk exposure, but they aren’t disappearing.
What is going to change forever is auto purchasing. By the time people’s savings recover enough to buy new autos again, ride-on-demand will be firing up in the US. Millennials have already been exhibiting different attitudes towards driving than the generations that preceded them. These attitudes will become even more entrenched, Car buying and financing on the levels we’ve seen before are not likely to ever return.
Shopping malls? Well I wouldn’t want to own one. This crisis is going to give on-line shopping a big boost. More tele-commuting, video conferences etc., sure. But these things were already trending in that direction…
“Climate Crisis”… Will people’s attitudes change? Will the MSM relinquish its propaganda efforts? Will the governments stop buying “science”? Will environmentalists suddenly change their tune? I think this is at best a wait and see, but highly unlikely. It’s more likely we will see the pandemic linked to global warming somehow. This is an industry that is not willing to go gentle into that good night. Don’t expect it to.
Health Spending… I think it will now be political suicide to be seen scrimping in this area. Whether that is reflected in more privatization, or bigger budgets probably depends on the country/jurisdiction, but it’s going to look different than the way it has in recent years.
Oh and I should add… the economies of the world will become even more zombified than they were.
And people are not going to forget for a long time the fear they are experiencing over simply paying their bills. That can manifest itself in many different ways.
The original paper I wrote that I referred to in my post provided details to a lot of your comments but this is not exactly the place to discuss the minutiae of such a wide ranging topic. I merely meant to sketch an outline in principle.
I’ve deleted that post.
It doesn’t appear to be optional for the Canucks. Either they make the 2019-20 playoffs, in which case the pick moves to Tampa, or they miss, in which case the pick changes to 2021 draft.
They also had a full blown spring break happening after self isolation and social distancing we’re getting pushed across the media and everywhere else had already canceled mass gatherings for weeks. The Governor there should face jail time.
IIRC… The Governor had actually closed state beaches. The ones that remained open were under local jurisdiction.
OriginalPouzar,
Do you ever use the Chewbacca Defense Theory? I heard in lawyer circles this is actually a thing.
He’s corporate, not criminal.
Do you think the Canucks will give up their first pick this year are roll the dice on next year with the not as deep draft class.
Exactly where are these democracies? There are a few dying embers of democracy left in the Commonwealth countries, and maybe in Scandinavia, but that is about it.
Most of the world is either autocratic or neofeudalist. Autocracies or oligarchies or trending that way.
By my strictest definition there none. Zero.
1. You have to be solvent (and more than in just name). This is of course applicable to all nation-types, not just democracies. You cannot be sovereign unless solvent.
2. You cannot have Democracy without both political democracy AND economic democracy.
Those two prerequisites eliminate pretty much every country presently operating under the auspices of democracy. Singapore and Lichtenstein might survive the test, maybe a couple of others.
Well this season started on Oct. 2nd, so very early October. Bouchard turns 21 this Oct. 20th.
If we’re ball-parking things, shall we say McDavid had his 4th straight 100 point season? That Pettersson is a PPG player? That McDavid and Draisaitl have both scored more points in a season than any Canuck ever has? That Brogan Rafferty was one of the 10 defenders to spend time on the Canucks roster this season? Or would that be silly?
Let’s back up another step.
Is Bouchard actually 19?
I believe it was canceled, but there was an earthquake in Kitimat.
Tsunami watch issued for Hawaii after magnitude 7.8 earthquake east of the Kuril Islands. Earliest poss arrival would be 10:42p local time (about 5 hours from the time of this tweet). More info from the NWS: https://forecast.weather.gov/wwamap/wwatxtget.php?cwa=hfo&wwa=tsunami%20watch
When do the locusts arrive?
The locusts are all in the horn of Africa. Really. All of them.
A very unsexy underreported story.
Correct. Locust issue is huge, yet underreported. I fear the impact of the double whammy of covid + locusts across that region.
Bruno is long gone it’s Dmitriy and Alexey running the show and I would advice you not to mess with the Russians.
The last five years haven’t been a cake walk for my family and me. With the current Alberta government trying to “balance the budget”, whatever that means, nearly all the medical services we need have been withdrawn from anywhere north of Edmonton. So I have been looking for work closer to the big smoke. So essential services are also a huge draw for many.
C’mon Jethro…you’re already pretty.
How much more cosmetic surgery do you need? ?
I hope you find a solution for your family.
I’m going for Beautiful Squidward 🙂
Not Donald’s vision – the United States has squandered the opportunity to lead by itself – the democracies, however, are still strong enough working together in an organization similar to the UN without the autocracies.
As to people leaving the cities that is a longer discussion but I doubt it. The lure of restaurants, arts, and friendship work against that. It isn’t making the money that pulls people together so much as the things they can spend it on that accomplish that. At a higher pay scale it is why cities like Edmonton have more trouble attracting free agents than NY.
Lets back up a step – firstly, are you willing to admit that you were simply wrong last night – you presented an opinion as object fact and criticized those that that didn’t agree and presented a different potential scenario. Turns out they were right and you were wrong, are you willing to admit that?
An ELC can have greater than $3M of potential performance bonuses per season – they are not boiler for those picked outside the top 3 or so.
Yup, he is likely to receive games played bonuses – which in no way means that he’s going to hit those bonuses – that’s up to the player.
Lavoie received a games played performance bonus in each if the first and second year of his contract and he has all but zero chance of vesting in year 1.
Call Bruno in Vegas and see if he pro-rates bets.
Thanks so much.
It seems that you’ve pretty much defined Donald Trump’s vision of the world (as much as we can discern he actually has a vision).
I think he will find his positions on China and the UN will find much more traction in the future and his recent outreach to India may be a bellweather of exactly what you’re proposing.
As to density and transit, I think you will see a sea change in the way people live and work as this current situation will demonstrate that brick and mortar workplaces are becoming almost obsolete and many, many people will depart the mega cities for another option.
Not just places of work, but retail too. I foresee retailers becoming merely mini-warehouses, if that. Just a place to pick stuff up. The “storefront” will be online. Your order will be waiting for you. That’s if Jeff Bezos isn’t ruling the retail world by then.
Cash is nearly dead in its physical form. At least one form of smart tech will be made available and affordable, if not it will be mandatory to have your retina scan among other identifiers in the system for transactions of any kind. This may be brought in under the guise of Corona vaccination records.
Hopefully there’ll be so much meta-data that wherever it’s stored buckles under the weight of all those bits.
I fear this is the way of things for education as well – Ford was already on record discussing a move towards more online teaching in the K-12 (though mostly high school) and university sectors.
To an extent it is a workable idea, but to another extent it’s really not. I’m about 2 weeks into this sudden shift to distance education and there are significant issues with delivery of information, with student engagement and with assessment. Obviously with time, practice and actual investment into the infrastructure (as well as re-training existing educators on how to really use the technology effectively), it’s entirely possible that it will work relatively ok.
However, one of the best parts about both teaching and learning (at least for me) are those almost spontaneous moments of collaboration when ideas are flying faster than people can think or speak. As nice as the zoom/google meet sessions have been, it’s still particularly challenging for that sort of thing to take place in those spaces.
It’s looking like Mcdavid going to beat out Mackinnon for the $100 we bet. I’ll be more than happy to take you for another C note that Bouchard is on the ice for opening day in Oilers silks.
This article is exactly where I stand with the Coronavirus
http://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2020/03/covid-19-and-some-thoughts-on-data-analysis.html
Old news.
Like we say about Hockey Analytics, sometimes you just need to watch the game.
The always notorious Kevin D. Williamson:
“And so we must approach the cliché of the moment — “Is the cure worse than the disease?” — with a degree of humility. And with a high degree of caution about the incentives that shape the decisions of political actors: The authorities in Beijing tried to cover up the facts of the coronavirus epidemic for reasons of narrow political self-interest — they did not wish to create a crisis that would undermine the economy. President Trump made rosy pronouncements about the epidemic in its early days, contradicting some of his most intelligent advisers, for precisely the same reason. It is worth keeping in mind that the administration’s efforts to prevent a stock-market selloff were entirely unsuccessful and that the president’s optimistic public-health pronouncements did not come to pass. Which is to say, the effort to stave off present economic pain in the face of some notional future public-health crisis prevented neither the economic pain nor the public-health crisis. It would be a bitter thing to repeat such a mistake in such a short period of time.”
The Show is opening in Broadway this week and rehearsing to go on the road. No one will need analytics. Seattle is losing top billing. No one at Amazon or Microsoft needed gov’t folks to tell them to go to ground. Nor will any one else shortly. Gov’t folks had best focus on their only job. Focusing on what they should have done two months ago to create the conditions for whatever new normal follows.
Getting your facts from an anti-trumper. Try harder. The article I posted was not about politics, you chose to find a guy who hates Trump.
Hang on. I post facts and you ignore them. The one time you identify an opinion piece as matching where you stand I offered a paragraph that matches where I stand. Even labelled the author as notorious to make it clear its purely an opinion piece.
Hated by the hard left and the hard right, so quite happy to agree with him when he makes sense about holding the course for a month or two, not losing ones head.
I care zero about US politics and whether he likes or dislikes the current or any other U.S prez. That’s your problem not mine.
Ha ha you knew how bad in January how bad CoronaV was, were all stupid but you and Trump’s travel restrictions before anyone from China was racist.
Trump’s #’s are going up with his handling of the virus.
‘Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts
Rondo,
Are you real? Scott Gottlieb FDA head 2016-19 and still on DT’s speed dial did multliple op-eds laying out what needed to be done within 3 months. Looks like the US is finally doing those things. Travel bans and/or quarantines both bought months of time. Whichever prez screwed the testing up over a month was lost. Canada had tested as much with 1/10 the population. Whoever is in charge they’d best not screw up the next 2 months.
Then what, exactly, do you think they’re negotiating?
Performance bonuses are also pretty much boiler plate.
They will likely be NHL games played and team performance IF HE IS ON THE TEAM.
I have a little pea brain myself but I’ll take a stab. I wrote a paper in the early 90’s as the Soviet empire was falling apart suggesting that circumstances would never be better to grow democracy. Not because democracy has no flaws but because the alternatives are less appealing.
To this end I suggested that the western liberal democracies slowly withdraw from the United Nations as they pooled their resources into a new organization – the United Democracies built upon preferential trade policies, reciprocal defense treaties and foreign aid packages by members coordinated along the Marshall Plan type objectives for select countries rather than the current helter skelter approach primarily motivated by less savoury considerations.
I would say that the country to bolster first is India rather than Mexico. The geo-poliical advantages of having a strong democracy in that part of the world as a counter to Chinese belligerence are of significant advantage.
Whenever I hear people promoting ‘free trade’ based upon Adam Smith’s musings I always assume they have never actually read his ‘Wealth of Nations’ since there are a few considerations that render his major premises either undesireable, untenable or anachronistic but there are certain principles that make international trade amongst democracies desirable.
High density living and mass transit are not going away with populations approaching 8 billion worldwide but the delusion that democracies have enough in common with autocracies to justify an organization that makes decisions based upon democratic principles where the majority are ideologically oriented to the idea of destroying democracy is a bad idea we can no longer afford.
If you value democracy India seems like a great choice! (not)
Did Lowetide give your essay a B-?
Yes…that will never change.
The question is, will Bouchard ever catch up?
Yes, I am quite happy the contract sounds like its imminent.
Are you as positive about them discussing a “games played guarantee” as you were the Berglund had moved on from the Oilers organization based on their middling defensive depth ahead of him?
Are you going to argue this until the cows come home?
Perhaps you will be honest and admit that an NHL games played soft guarantee from Holland goes against his 30 year history with prospects and, maybe, just maybe, they are talking about performance bonuses – you know something that does get negotiated in ELCs?
By that time your boy Rafferty will be 25 and 4 months. What is the age cut off for rookie of the year. He must be close not being eligible. ?
Panarin was 34 when he won it.
Stan. Weir was 50…the WHA & NHL merger allowed him to qualify.
Yes, and Rafferty will be 25.
They are 4.5 years apart and I think that makes a difference in the 20-25 year old age range.
I don’t imagine they plan on being out of playoff contention at the deadline in 2022.
His birthday is in October.
When does the season usually start?
Oh, look…it’s October.
I know you’re as giddy as a schoolboy about the Oilers being in negotiations with Berglund.
But what, exactly, do you think they’re “negotiating”?
Since ELC’s are pretty much boiler plate, it would seem they are likely discussing NHL games played guarantees.
Do you, honestly, think that’s a good idea?
You’re counting on a delayed start to the season to make your point?
I said nothing of the sort.
I did say, at one point in time, that Skinner was a better player. And he was.
There has been a massive exodus of NYC residents to Florida to escape the virus…unfortunately they are bringing it with them.
Florida’s population is also quite elderly on average so this won’t turn out well.
You can’t win em all..although Colborne’s career was severely hampered by injury. 🙂
At least the Wild won all those cups!
As you say, New York & Florida are in a dead heat but I submit that Louisiana might make it a 3 horse race as they are coming hard on the outside. They are now leading Everyone in the world for new cases. Like Sam Jackson once said: Hang on to your ass…?
New Orleans is not marked as atypical only due to insufficient data.
Ignoring the heatmap and looking at the John Hopkins PER CAPITA data Louisiana is neck and neck with New Jersey and France and about to leave Washington State in the dust.
I’ve spent the day reading and thinking about what the world is going to look like when this crisis is over.
Seems to me globalism, open borders, high density living, mass transit, the “climate crisis” and using China as the world’s workshop will be viewed through a very different lens very soon.
On that last point, I think we’ll see a massive shift in North America to seeing Mexico as a replacement for China for manufacturing and procurement.
There are some very big brains here and would appreciate any thoughts on this.
I agree that whether it’s for supply reasons or financial punishment, getting out of China is something that needs to be done. Cartels in Mexico may not make that possible. Many chess pieces need to be manipulated to make that work. Either way, China & many other SE Asian countries need to be clamped down regarding the wet market industry. Can’t these people just eat spam?
I was of the same opinion which is why I remember. The Colborne comparison to Draisaitl, on the other hand?
I think you would agree now that that was a swing and a miss. 😉
Exactly so…and I would still take Seguin over Hall all day long.
I would tend to agree with this stance.
Bouchard is 20 and will be 21 when (if) the next season is played.
Rafferty turns 25 in May at the start of next season will will be 25 and 4 months.
OK. I have seen you mention several times that there should be quite a few so I thought maybe you had a list in mind. I agree Smith should not be re-signed for another year. I think we were lucky to get as many good games out of him this year as we did.
Maybe they are walking him to trade deadline day in a few years. Pump his points as much as possible. What could the return be? We are good on left side.
Ummm, no….
IoT thermometer map of America that tracks the flu season. Roughly a million devices out there.
https://www.healthweather.us/
Click on the graphic tab for “atypical” and watch Florida glow from space.
I thought with the crushing news of our New York today that Florida was now in distant second place, but then I found this link and now it looks like a dead heat again between them both.
The grey part in central Florida is where they haven’t sold enough product to have a confident reading. But apparently these items are selling like hotcakes—if only China would make more.
I’m too ignorant to post links but Youtube is showing Oilers finals with the dynasty hammering various valiant but doomed adversaries the Boston Bruins, Philly Flyers(who gave the Oilers a super series in 1987 my personal fave Oilers goal of all time the 3rd one), and the NY Islanders who were poised to join the 1950’s Habs for extraordinary drama.
Something to do for a cold spring day.
ps: Oilers were pretty good back then 😛
Have you had a chance to list all the possibilities you think are out there and rank them in order of preference?
I should have noted the risk as the downside on that deal. I just couldn’t make the numbers work back when I thought I had $84.5 to play with if Nurse came in at over $7 on a longer term deal. Things can always change, of course, but I think Nurse sees himself as an Oiler long term but you are right that it didn’t work out well the last time the Oilers signed a dman to a show me contract.
Smith was a god-send for certain stretches of the season – October and January but, overall, well, given the goalie market looks absolutely flush with options of all skill level, cost and pedigree, I think the tender with a longer potential impact and larger upside can be found.
DeSmith would be a solid trade option and there are a couple other teams with 3 goalies – Rangers, Yotes.
There are some solid veteran 1B type guys out there if the price is right – guys like Khudobin, etc.
I just gave Holland a B+ and I don’t hand out accolades easily.
Lowetide’s grading is simply brutal lol but it accurately reflects his prescience. It raises his overall accuracy to near pro level. Kind of like Holland not running around like a headless Chiarelli; instead letting things play themselves out properly and correctly.
Good management is the gist of it.