Do you remember yesterday, when we talked about getting three real NHL prospects from every draft? In 2015, Edmonton traded a bunch of picks but found a way with strong selections in the fourth (Caleb Jones) and fifth (Ethan Bear) rounds.
Assuming the Oilers draft quality in the first and third rounds in 2020, can we identify a player who won’t go in the first three rounds who is a real NHL prospect?
THE ATHLETIC!
I’m proud to be writing for The Athletic, and pleased to be part of a great team with Daniel Nugent-Bowman and Jonathan Willis. Here is our recent work.
- New Lowetide: A reasonable trade price for the Oilers to pay in pursuit of OEL
- Jonathan Willis: Could it make sense for the Oilers to trade Oscar Klefbom?
- Lowetide: Why Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl won the Hart Trophy and Ted Lindsay Award
- Daniel Nugent-Bowman: Breaking down my ballot for the 2019-20 NHL awards
- Lowetide: Rising talent, acquiring picks key to Oilers’ success at draft
- Lowetide: European leagues are open, and Oilers prospects are everywhere
- Lowetide: Ken Holland and Dave Tippett’s past players: Can any help the Oilers?
- Lowetide: Roster projections for Oilers, including trade and free agent targets
- Jonathan Willis: Why the Oilers should buy out James Neal
- Lowetide: Oilers approach 2020 draft with increased depth in important positions
- Lowetide: Stock Watch: Hot starts and safe landings for Oilers prospects
- Jonathan Willis: There are no good shortcuts for the Oilers with Jesse Puljujarvi
- Lowetide: Potential trades and partners for the Oilers’ offseason
- Lowetide: The Oilers could find a world-class agitator in the draft
- Daniel Nugent-Bowman: Should the Oilers select goalie Yaroslav Askarov 14th at the NHL Draft?
- Lowetide: A bold draft strategy for the Oilers in 2020
- Jonathan Willis: Oilers third-line centre search should include other teams’ cap casualties
- Lowetide: Dealing a defenceman? Taking stock of Oilers’ blueline assets
- Daniel Nugent-Bowman: Q&A: Oilers GM Ken Holland on improving internally, the flat cap and goaltending
- Jonathan Willis: Can the Oilers find value picks among the 2020 NHL Draft’s impressive Russians?
- Lowetide: 10 free agent targets for the Oilers this offseason
- Lowetide: What if the Oilers went scorched earth in front of 2020 free agency?
- Lowetide: Oilers Top 20 Prospects, Summer 2020
- Jonathan Willis: Unqualified RFAs could be top offseason targets for the Oilers
- Daniel Nugent-Bowman: Who stays? Who goes? The most likely players to stay with and leave the Oilers
THE THIRD MAN
In 2015, Peter Chiarelli traded much of the draft but the club was gifted No. 1 overall (Connor McDavid, 351 games), Caleb Jones (60), Ethan Bear (89) and John Marino (56).
The 2016 draft isn’t projecting as hoped, but Jesse Puljujarvi (139 games), Tyler Benson (7) and Filip Berglund are lurching toward ecstasy and I think there’s a good chance at least one of them makes the grade.
The 2017 draft houses Kailer Yamamoto (53 games), Dmitri Samorukov and Phil Kemp, who Craig Button mentioned as a promising player this week. Kemp is a shutdown defender, difficult to assess from here, but I trust Button’s assessment.
The 2018 draft boasts Evan Bouchard (7 games), Ryan McLeod and Olivier Rodrigue as the most promising NHL prospects, and all three are on a trajectory that should see them land in the NHL at least for a time.
The 2019 draft is looking strong so far, but a reminder it’s 15 months since these young men were selected, that’s not much track. Philip Broberg is spiking in real time over in the SHL, Raphael Lavoie is a unique shooter aggressively pushing for opportunity and Ilya Konovalov is enjoying a strong KHL season (his third) and is a free agent in the summer of 2021.
Oilers in 2020
Edmonton has picks at No. 14, 76, 138, 169 and 200. If we assume (and there’s a reasonable chance) Tyler Wright and the scouting staff pick quality with the first two picks, then what should or could they be looking for at No. 138?
I would suggest the team try to grab an overage player, someone who has shown an ability to play at a high level already and who might not be far from pushing for an NHL job.
Artyom Galimov plays in the KHL for Ak Bars Kazan. He turned 21 on September 8. He went 55, 13-10-23 a year ago and this year (8 games) is 1-3-4. He is a center, 5.11, 180 and is 53.1 percent in the dot so far this season. I think he could slide right in at the AHL level now (KHL is a better league) in a feature role.
The Draft Analyst has more in their fantastic draft report: “Quick to the puck and delivering shifts packed with energy and enthusiasm, Galimov can play center or wing and is an excellent penalty killer. He also owns a plus-plus shot that he wires with confidence from the high slot or circles. Although Galimov is too old for junior tournaments, get used to seeing his name on rosters for the men’s national teams, and if he goes undrafted for a final time, there’s no doubt NHL teams will be lining up for his services as a free agent two or three years down the road.”
TYLER WRIGHT
I was asked about Tyler Wright’s track record yesterday, and have written about it before so am going to re-publish a quick review.
- 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.
- In 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.
- In 2014, he moved to Detroit and selected 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. It’s kind of incredible how bad the DRW draft was that season.
- 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).
- Too soon to know about the 2019 draft, Moritz Seider had a strong AHL season as a teenager.
As is always the case with scouting directors, too soon to know. I will tell you that in my soul I believe Ken Holland made the Broberg pick, I’ve suggested it before and been true on this point. We didn’t hear Broberg’s name until after Holland arrived. My point being that it’s looking like a good pick at this point, and Lavoie plus Konovalov are tracking well. I like Denezhkin quite a bit. Maybe this could work out. I still think the club’s scouting department was solid without the shuffle, but que sera sera.
CREDIT DUE
In yesterday’s blog, I linked to a Bob Stauffer tweet about Jesse Puljujarvi possibly signing with the Oilers (sounding like it may happen). I tagged it with a Alex Chiasson-for-Anders Bjork trade rumour that has been online for some time.
A few hours later, one of the folks I met here on the blog sent me a tweet that credited me with the Puljujarvi and Bjork rumours. I want to be very clear here: I always credit the trade rumour to source (in this case, Bob) and if I can’t you’ll see me say “a rumour out in the ether” as I did yesterday. I don’t publish rumours because that’s not what I do. I am lucky enough to receive dozens of rumours a year but I don’t publish them.
Why? Two reasons. I am not a day-to-day reporter of the team as a Frank Seravalli or Ryan Rishaug or Daniel Nugent-Bowman is, so my sources are extremely unlikely to be as credible as the men who are close to the ground. These men do hard work and some wingnut like me offering titillating rumours benefits no one and makes me an ass for pretending to be something I’m not nor do I have any desire to be. Being that guy has no appeal for me. Second, that’s not what this blog or what I write is about, and I want to keep the prose on track for fear of losing my way.
My blog and my writing at The Athletic is designed to chronicle and analyze, to ‘think along with the general manager’ or ‘figure out what the scouting director is thinking’ as I’m trying to do now. So when you see “as per Lowetide” and it doesn’t end “always buy Crown Royal and Ginger Ale before the weekend” you’ll know it’s not me. Thanks.
LOWDOWN WITH LOWETIDE
At 10 this morning, another full boat of guests on the Lowdown. Steve Lansky joins me at 10:20 from the Inside the Truck podcast to talk about the SC Final, Jays in the postseason and who takes Don Cherry’s job. Frank Seravalli from TSN will chime in with the latest trade and draft stories as we get ready for the big two-week offseason where the NHL goes wild. Matt Iwanyk will pop in to talk Jamal Murray, NFL Week 3 and Techmo Bowl. Chris Meaney from FTN Network will preview NFL Week 3. 10-1260 text, @Lowetide on twitter. See you on the radio!
I had considered doing the same thing for Puckiq in terms of sorting alphabetically and running vs elites and all.
How did you solve the time filter issue?
I.e. if you filter defensemen who play 500 min 5v5 against all competition, you can’t also use a 509 min filter vs elites.
That’s a different issue.
I think we all have that now.
It started after Lowetide got off the phone with Godaddy.
It’s some sort of WorsPress security plugin that was added due to the prior Malware issue.
It’s ominous when you first experience it.
It’s like “You are a loser…prepare to fuck off from Lowetide forever” kind of stuff.
hint: just add up the numbers and you should be good to go lol
Inspired by this, but unable to actually post on the blog last night… I don’t code either, but you can download (from PuckIQ) all D vs elites (to get TOI% vs elites) and all D vs all comp (to get the rest of the numbers). Then if you sort by name the players in both lists all line up (I used 500+ minutes, ended up with 195 dmen).
I thought you were on to something with TOI vs elites effecting SV%/PDO, but maybe not?
The R-squared for the correlations of %TOI Elites and:
SH%ON was 0.00861
SV%ON was -0.01508
PDO was 0.00014
The ultimate outlier was Zdeno Chara who lead the entire league with 46.4% of his TOI vs elites but also had a .941 on ice SV% (10th) and a 1042 PDO (8th).
I should note I’m surprised how weak these R-sq numbers are based on what the correlations seemed to show by eye (I’d have thought the SV% ON was 0.15 rather than 0.015 which kinda changes things).
(I just used Excel and the “add trend line”, as well as “show R-squared” function for this – did you do something different?)
On this, I haven’t forgotten that article.
I’m still 100% convinced that defensemen don’t control on ice SV% in the vast majority of cases.
But if you’ll recall this all started a couple of years ago with the rumours connecting Justin Faulk to the Oilers. The discussion (I think) was PDO and after our exchange Faulk promptly had the first even PDO season of his career. I felt alright, but then he followed up his “correction to the meat” with the worst PDO on the Blues this season (by far). His PDO was 984, the next worst Dman was 1008 (and aside from Faulk the other 6 D ranged from 1008 to 1048 PDO).
That’s the kind of thing that makes me wonder if there ARE outliers who can actually affect SV%/PDO. Klefbom also fits that profile, having 1 season with a PDO above even, and actually zero at/above his teammates (the whole team was magic in 16-17).
Whether or not it’s true it does make me wonder. And as I said a few days ago, I just don’t feel OK giving Klefbom full credit for his SF% or DFF% when his GF% hasn’t followed essentially any year. Maybe it will going forward, but there are seeds of doubt.
It sounds like the Sens won’t have much/any trouble reaching the cap floor so Russell doesn’t have value beyond his on ice play @ $1.5M.
He’s fine for that number but I also don’t see the Sens paying anything of much value for him. I don’t think they’d mind taking him but (IMO) he’d be in range of neutral value. So the 2nd piece (IMO) would need to be very material.
On Russell’s trade list, any word on when those needs to be submitted? I guess it wasn’t already in June/July as it should have been?
Who knows what Russell really wants, but even if he wants to stay in Canada above all, he needs to pick 15 teams (ie – 9 US teams as well as at the 6 Canadian teams he doesn’t already play for).
Yes, absolutely.
LT: worth the wait. 🙂
No, I have no idea why the Senators having graduating players would affect their interest in stockpiling picks, as they’ve been doing for a while now. You might recall that not all draft picks turn into NHL players.
You’re saying pick #20 over 2 drafts was important to the Senators, but pick #21 wouldn’t be? That would be strange, no?
Also, having the cap space (which by all accounts they aren’t wiling to spend) to sign UFAs has literally zero bearing on any draft picks they’re bringing into the system.
This is great stuff JP
Our host mentioned the other night he is aware of the problems and is working toward a solution
We’ll all just have to be patient until then
Actually reading the list was good, glad I did.
Yeah AA comes up in places you wouldn’t expect. I’d like to see him signed as well (though I’d also really like some $$ spent on a 3C!).
FWIW, Grabner shows up tied for 100th in G/60 over the 3 years, tied for 81st this season.
This IS hilarious.
I’m back on Safari now. The refresh/logout issue with Firefox returned (I was able to refresh once while still being logged in, then the next time I wasn’t even able to stay logged in on one refresh – ie, I can’t post at all, period). On my phone at least I get one refresh where I can reply/post (with Safari), on laptop (with Firefox) I get zero. Safari generally allows me to refresh/post and not get logged out on my laptop.
The white screen/challenge is semi-random. I’ve posted twice in succession at times and not gotten the challenge at least one of then. Also get it other times. Not sure the rule.
I’m running Mac Catalina 10.15.7
Firefox 81.0 (64 bit) – Firefox has had persistent issues for 6(?) months or more
Safari 14.0 – has been generally good on Mac Catalina until a couple days ago when the challenge started. (also had the homepage pics and edit/delete disappear when others did).
I was thinking an AHL deal for Kemp but who knows what the AHL looks like this year (if at all). He’s got one year left of school – he may not want to give up the scholarship benefits without a real place to play.
Yeah, it just happened to me for the first time
I noticed a banner heading above the URL address window and the banner said “stop spammers”…it appears to be some kind of anti spam mechanism within WordPress and it’s threshold for detecting spam – or what it perceives as spam – isn’t set correctly
I don’t post very often – and rarely post more that once or twice a day – and that would appear why I had never seen it. I posted 4 or 5 times tonight in a short span of time and it detected me as spam
Maybe the 2nd piece needs to be a bit more material but the reason would be finances and, for Ottawa, Russell is a good value for $1.5M.
I’m not sure Russell would be any more interested in going to Arizona than Ottawa – ya, its in the west and more “cowboy” but its also in the US which is likely less appealing to Russell than ever before.
I have am using safari and getting the same white screen occasionally starting yesterday. Answered the math question and bingo I’m back. Occasionally get browser 583 unavailable message as well. Sometimes takes two or three tries in a 10 – 15 minute window to get past that.
and AA was 1.8 P/60 or above for four straight seasons prior to this past one – often with middle six linemates.
Bad seasons happen.
Far from a perfect player, and who the heck knows where he’ll fit, but I’m not sure there will be much more potential production available at his price-point. Driving zone entry, possession and offence from a 3rd line has material value.
I’ll give it a shot but, when the issue first started happening, I switched to Firefox and it happened right away.
Boom: Just happened with Firefox
We are still short of RHD so Kemp hopefully sees this as an opportunity to sign now.
And I tried to reply above to JP and I got the white screen challenging me to enter my email address
Hilarious
I guess posting a couple times a month is the answer LoL
Not me
I’m running Win10 with Chrome
I’ve been business as usual for weeks…we all lost the main page photo and the edit/delete button on the same day when WordPress did an update
I’ve gotten the white screen before, but it’s always been a benign bounce back ie: server too busy or error data base connection, but not the flat out denial of access and then a challenge format ie:”enter your email address and answer this basic math question” – that was news to me tonight
What operating system are you using..?
Athanasiou is also still in the top 60 in 5v5 Goals/60 in the past 3 seasons even with his recent down year. In those years, he’s also top 71 in goals scored at 5v5 with 41. Tied with Dylan Larkin, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Patrice Bergeron, and Kyle Palmieri. All top-line numbers delivered mostly form the 2nd and 3rd lines. That sounds like a great match for a team that has trouble scoring from the 3rd and 4th lines. And if he ever develops some chemistry with McDavid it could spell a 30 to 40 goal scorer. I really hope they find a way to keep him.
jp,
Sorry, switched to Safari. And so far so good.
IIRC the issue that caused me to switch to from Firefox in the first place was every time I refreshed the page I was logged out. That happened on Firefox but not on Safari (though I still get logged out every time I refresh on my phone using Safari).
Is not everyone getting that white screen? I assumed it was standard.
I’m trying now on Firefox (my main browser, but I’d switched to Chrome for Lowetide only some time ago because Firefox was giving issues).
I think Grabner has a great chance to be more useful to the Oilers next season than Russell. And he has a lower cap hit (while also being far cheaper for Arizona, hence their potential interest). Win win on Grabner for Russell in isolation IMO.
If you can use Russell as the larger piece in a package to get one of those players from Ottawa then yeah sure, that would be great. I don’t think that’s at all likely though, and IIRC you yourself have argued a clean disposition of Russell is unlikely to happen. I’m not sure why Russell and a 4th round pick would get the Oilers an RFA who has real value. If nothing else another team could beat that offer I’d think.
Anyway, absolutely great if Holland can pull it off but I’d file it in the “unlikely” category. Add Russell’s willingness to go to Ottawa as another point on the “unlikely” side of the ledger.
Patrick Maroon with the screen on the OT winner
Personally, I think it was a penalty. Benn’s knee swept forward to take out his leg.
Seeing that look on Corey Perry’s face was priceless
Some interesting names on this list
2018-2019 Season
Player – 5v5 Goals/60
Viktor Arvidsson – 1.85
John Tavares – 1.58
Brendan Gallagher – 1.55
Jake Guentzel – 1.45
Alex Ovechkin – 1.37
Auston Matthews – 1.35
Oliver Bjorkstrand – 1.35
Jeff Skinner – 1.34
Cam Atkinson – 1.3
Tyler Johnson – 1.3
Alex DeBrincat – 1.29
Jakub Vrana – 1.28
Brett Connolly – 1.27
David Pastrnak – 1.27
Steven Stamkos – 1.23
Leon Draisaitl – 1.22
Andreas Athanasiou – 1.22
Timo Meier – 1.21
Matt Duchene – 1.21
Jake DeBrusk – 1.18
Nikita Kucherov – 1.17
Joe Pavelski – 1.17
Max Domi – 1.16
Evander Kane – 1.15
Mark Stone – 1.12
That Mac should have come with Safari installed – try launching Safari (or Firefox if you have that installed) and login and browse the site for an hour…make a few posts and see if the problem persists
That ‘white screen” you are getting is almost certainly a WordPress bounceback/error message, I’m suggesting you try another browser for a short time, and if the problem does not follow you to another browser, the problem would appear to be with your Chrome install
Try uninstalling/reinstalling Chrome
Right, the signing bonuses – thanks.
MacOS Mojavi 10.14.6
Chrome Version 84.0.4147.125
Right, but they’re still paying him $4M in signing bonuses. Of his remaining $11M salary (after removing the signing bonuses) they still have to pay him $7.333M.
So the Senators save a total of $3.667M, and also have to replace Ryan on the roster for 2 years. If they do that for $833k per year (not a given since most ELCs are more than that) then they save $2M real dollars.
I dunno, the move doesn’t make a ton of sense to me. Maybe the player wants to move on?
Kemp isn’t blind to the fact the Oiler organization’s strongest asset is its young defencemen.
“(Evan) Bouchard is very talented, (Philip) Broberg too, (Dmitry) Samorukov is an outstanding young defenceman. They have a great defensive core on the AHL (American Hockey League) team. Be awesome to be a part of that. I think I could learn a lot and to be competing with them would be awesome,” said Kemp.
What operating system are you using..ie: windows 10 or ?
and what browser and version ie: Chrome v 85.0.4183.121
I recall reading a piece about him earlier in the year and there was no indication that we had an issue with the Oilers’ org and even expressed that Bakersfield would be a good place for his development.
Is he willing to sign a contract now or the future to be an Oiler? I’m always apprehensive about American players.
If Craig Smith’s agent is holding out for over $4M in free agency, well, he’ll likely be holding for a long time.
What the eff does the first sentence have to do with the conversations – we have 3 years of consensus that the contract was not good – that is just you being a total ass.
As I’ve already said, and you’ve read, the Sens likely won’t have an issue getting to the cap floor but they $4M is of absolute zero consequence to them – all that matters to them in this situation is the $1.5M of real money Russell is owned and Kris Russell is absolutely worth $1.5M and, no, I don’t think they could easily find better value in free agency – in particular with a player willing to sign with them.
I’ve already acknowledged the Oilers would need to add a piece to the proposed trade.
Craig Smith heading to free agency.
https://www.prohockeyrumors.com/2020/09/craig-smith-to-test-free-agency.html
Well they should have thought of that before signing him to that contract.
I know the cap hit is of no concern to the Senators but with the buyout of Ryan, the buyout of Phaneuf and the LTIR for Gaborik, the Sens have already got almost $10 million in dead money to get them to the floor…they hardly need more.
The question then becomes, is Russell the answer for a team that is running Chabot, (who plays almost half the game) Reilly and Wolanin at LD or can they find a better player in free agency.
That should be a no brainer and they certainly won’t have to give up a draft pick for the privilege.
Perhaps, if the Oilers threw in a good prospect, the Sens might consider it but I doubt even that would interest them since they are so loaded already.
The buyout costs the Sens $1.8M X 4.
$1.5M
vs.
$4M
You do understand that the $4M cap hit is of little concern to the Sens – potentially a benefit, right?
Yes, at a cap hit of $1.5M, Russell would be MUCH more valuable to the Oilers.
Here is a paste of the white screen with message that I get:
Access Denied
Allow Request
You have been blocked from entering information on this blog. In order to prevent this from happening in the future you may ask the owner to add your network address to a list that allows you full access.
Please enter your email address and a short note requesting access here.
e-mail for contact (required):
message :
Please prove you are not a robot.
Enter the SUM of these two numbers: 7 + 8
About 3/4 of the times when I try and post I get some screen asking me to put in my e-mail and other information in order to be unblocked to post.
I have to log out and log back in prior to being able to post.
Every once in a while I will be able to make consecutive posts without the issue but often every time.
Could they fetch one of the Sens FOUR second round draft picks for his rights/trade???
The same reason Katz’s kid attends the draft.
There only has to be one.
And perhaps the Senators won’t be setting their sights so low.
My initial thought is that, yes, Rusty likely has Ottawa on his no-trade list and may simply say no to waiving that.
On the other hand, I’m not in Rusty’s head and I don’t know what matters the most to him a year from free agency.
He very well might be looking directly at that next contract and realizing he’d have a more substantial role in the nation’s capital – that may be very welcoming to him, not only for contract reasons but also because I think the dude just wants to play hockey and compete.
On the other hand, maybe his desire for Western Canada take precedent for him and he won’t waive.
I doubt there will be many d-men available for $1.5M that will provide more value for a young Sens’ team thank Kris Russell.
I think it only saves them $2M real dollars (and that’s assuming they replace him on the roster for 2 years with someone making ~$800k).
Great value…heh.
If he provided great value the Oilers would keep him.
It’s much more likely they would be interested in someone like Tyson Barrie who is likely to take a huge haircut on his next contract…and that would provide great value.