Edmonton Oilers are 2-4-1 with some winnable games over the next few days. This organization is a combination of ‘death or glory’ around every turn, around every transaction. This has created a black-and-white, all good or bad feel to the entire franchise.
You know, it’s reasonable to say Jeff Jackson has accomplished much since arriving in Edmonton and should be praised for a series of moves that were astute and often backed by analytics. It’s also reasonable to say that he was the head of the management group that got caught flat-footed on the St. Louis Blues offer sheets. Those things can be, and are, true. It doesn’t make him evil, doesn’t make him a genius, and doesn’t make him an evil genius. What acknowledging these facts allows us to do is examine what is here, what may come and what one should be prepared for between now and the deadline.
The Athletic article today is about the not so hilarious similarities between Jay Woodcroft’s team in October 2023 and Kris Knoblauch’s team in October 2024. It is here.
WHAT TO EXPECT IN OCTOBER
- At home to: WPG, CHI, CAL, PHI (Expected 3-1-0) (Actual 1-3-0)
- On the road to: NAS, DAL (Expected 1-1-0) (Actual 1-1-0)
- At home to: CAR, PIT (Expected 1-1-0) (Actual 0-0-1)
- On the road to: DET, CBJ, NAS (Expected 2-1-0) (Actual 0-0-0)
- Overall expected result: 7-4-0, 14 points in 11 games
- Actual October results: 2-4-1, five points in seven games
- Oilers in 2024-25: 2-4-1, five points in seven games
I thought the Carolina game built on the two wins earlier in the month and can see a scenario where the Oilers collect points in every game between now and Halloween night. There is probably too much wobble for that to happen, but there are things coming into view for this team. A win tonight gets up the final days of October well, and would ensure the gales of November don’t come early.
LET THE MUSIC PLAY
Oilers fans are upset with the success of players raided, traded, lost to waivers and possibly carrier pigeon over the summer and I get it. Ken Holland left the team vulnerable and the rest of management sat idly by, confident the NHL would remain docile when two candidates appeared on the same team at the same time. I don’t know what percentage of blame should be laid above Holland, and it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that no one in hockey ops skates on this one. If anyone in the organization’s hockey ops department spoke up, then that person should get a bigger office and more control. If not, well, all involved should get a share of the blame.
If the Oilers want to erase the headlines about Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway, it’s easy. Win.
One area that isn’t getting much attention is how the replacements are doing. In my article for The Athletic today, I take a brief look at Ty Emberson. He has been heading in a good direction lately, but the coaching staff isn’t playing him enough for Emberson to get noticed. I like Kris Knoblauch, think he’ll be a fine NHL coach, but rookie coaches sometimes elevate veterans over youth and in this case I think it’s a bad idea. If he plays Kulak-Emberson for 20 games in a row, my guess is that Knoblauch will have a pairing he can count on for the rest of the season and into the playoffs.
I also believe Max Wanner may be NHL-ready during the 2024-25 season. Just four games into the AHL season, the Bakersfield Condors shutdown blue has a 5-1 even-strength goal share when he’s on the ice. This isn’t a new thing, either, the young man went 52-42 last season.
I am all-in on a strong debate about this Oilers team for 2024-25. I think it’s fair to be critical of management over the offer sheets. I think the coaching staff needs to settle in with Emberson, Vasily Podkolzin and let the second line cook with Leon Draisaitl, Jeff Skinner and Viktor Arvidsson. Don’t get in the way of optimal deployment. Oilers fans have seen coaches blow past solutions because they didn’t give it time. Edmonton doesn’t have a Miro Satan situation brewing, but there are solutions emerging and I’m not sure the coach has noticed.
It’s a busy Friday on the Lowdown, Sports 1440 beginning at noon. Guests include Mike Stelter (Ben’s Cup), Steve Lansky, Tyler Yaremchuk and Declan Krueger’s Declanations. We’ll talk Oilers-Penguins, World Series, Elks, NFL weekend and more. I’m at Lowetide on twitter, in the comments section here and on the Sports 1440 text line at 1.833.401.1440 directly. We can be heard at sports1440.ca; iHeartRadio; Radioplayer Canada, we tweet out the show after it’s done and you can catch us on Apple and Spotify.
New for The Athletic: Which Edmonton Oilers early-season trends are poised to improve?
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5868717/2024/10/25/edmonton-oilers-stats-trends-2024/
Broberg this season is interesting.
Counting number are very good but his CF, xGF, etc are very meh. 5th highest PDO on the team.
Holloway is basically the inverse.
Hi all. Yesterday, there was some good discussion about the players that left, and someone made a pretty interesting analogy of the Oilers losing Broberg being similar to your buddy having a bad breakup with someone. I’m not explaining it well here but I thought it was pretty good. Follow up comments suggested that Broberg was a cheating ex-girlfriend and that struck me as not reasonable.
This morning, it kind of occurred to me that the salaries in NHL are so mindbogglingly high, it kind of takes the reality out of the situation. I wanted to see what it would be like if the team was actually a bunch of typical office workers.
For the analogy, let’s say that the minimum NHL player cap ($775k/yr) equates to minimum wage ($15/hr so ~ $30k per year). By extension, the salary cap of $88M per year would equate to a manager trying to allocate $3.4M across a team of 23 people.
In reality, Broberg was drafted 5 years earlier, during which time he had total career earnings of $1.178M. His play appeared to earn him full-time play in the NHL in 2023-24, but the Oilers chose to keep him in the AHL another year despite his strong play. When needed, he played in the Stanley Cup Finals and by my eye, he appeared to carry and support Darnell Nurse. After his strong performance, the Oilers apparently offered him a contract of $1.1M/yr (as per multiple sources). Broberg signed an offer sheet for $4.58M with the Blues.
Using the office analogy, a company demonstrated interest in a young person who proceeded to work for 5 years improving themselves (e.g., apprenticeship, post secondary, etc.), during which time they earned a total of ~$46k (over the 5 years). There was work available, but the company chose to restrict his opportunities to earn $21.29/hr working at the office. When called upon, he was paired with an underperforming but more experienced colleague (earning $358k/yr). Broberg did a lot of heavy lifting to ultimately help his partner and him put in a pretty good report. After this great effort, his company turned around and offered him full-time work at $21.29/hr –> $42,581 per year. A competing office saw Broberg’s potential and offered him a pay raise to $177,326/yr, which he jumped at.
Looking at the situation using “more realistic” salary numbers kind of reflects how little Broberg has earned in his career so far, and how little the Oilers were offering him to stay in Edmonton. I certainly wouldn’t characterize Broberg as someone cheating on the Oilers by signing the offer sheet… he probably felt undervalued and good for him for signing a contract to benefit the rest of his life. What kills me is that if they had offered him even $2M or $2.5, it really does seem viable that he would have stayed (but we’ll never really know).
“Oilers fans have seen coaches blow past solutions because they didn’t give it time. Edmonton doesn’t have a Miro Satan situation brewing, but there are solutions emerging and I’m not sure the coach has noticed.”
I don’t agree with this RE: Knoblauch. The coach mixed up lines plenty last year with the express idea of being versatile for the playoffs. Quoted. There was a clear blind spot with Broberg but the hole they were digging out of earlier in the year and the unusual health of the D muddied it. Hard to blame the coach who had never seen the player ala Woodcroft (or Nelson) with his callups. The brief times he did see Bro, he wasn’t strong.
My main concern this summer, was the idea of Kane going on LTIR and the Oilers trying to fill in the space to “VGK-Stone” the cap. I didn’t think Kane would miss the entire regular season, and was worried of what would happen when he came back and we had to clear $5M to fit in him under the cap. The Oilers are extremely limited in terms of roster flexibility. The current roster has the following contract clauses:
Forwards:
Defense:
Altogether, this accounts for around $50 Million of cap space, none of which are able to move very easily during the season.
This means that our moveable roster includes:
Forwards:
Defense:
Goalies:
So assuming the goalies aren’t moving, and I don’t see an equivalent or better replacement at that pricepoint, and eliminating any player making 1M or less ( altogether you would save less than a million by trading all of them for league minimum players), we are left with the following as tradeable assets:
The only players who are moveable for any kind of cap savings are 3/4 of our top 4 D, our 3rd line center, a top 9 winger that we just signed, or Corey Perry.
Truth be told, I don’t see a lot of movement on the team until the deadline. The tradeable players are either too valuable to trade, or they don’t make enough money to make a noticeable difference. You could argue for a Perry/Henrique/Arvidsson swap, but you have to replace them, AND you would be damaging your position in future free agency by trading players you signed less than 4 months ago.
Toropchenko had more goals and more points last season than Holloway had during his entire ELC. Not sure how he’s a fourth line grinder and Holloway a middle six winger worthy of a larger second contract but narratives.
In the end its not about the contracts for each player. The blues had to pay a certain price to acquire the player. Now those details are in the past. It’s up to Holloway to earn that contract. So far he is.. same with Broberg.
Holloway is currently playing 3rd line centre for St. Louis, and has mostly played 3rd line winger, but has also played 1st line winger. Holloway played middle six winger predominantly in the playoffs, and mostly 2nd line winger with Draisaitl the further the playoffs went along.
Toropchenko has been a 4th line winger all year in St. Louis.
I think most of the management criticism on the offer sheets should be directed at Holland, then Jackson and even at Woocroft/Manson vis-a-vis Broberg.
I don’t blame Bowman for trying to grind these guys down contracts in the $1MM range (or $1.2MM for a couple of years of term) – that’s how it pretty much always works for players coming off their ELCs that are not legit established NHL players.
Criticism stems back over the last couple of years with respect to Broberg’s deployment/development and, at least with Holloway, not getting a re-sign done earlier.
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Agree on Emberson – he should be playing nightly – lock him to Kulak and let the man play and develop. 3RD with PK2 time. 16 minutes per night.
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I’d be fine with the line deployment suggested, although I’d prefer Skinner with McDavid and Nuge with Drai but, the main point is, let the players play with consistent linemates. I know its hard when the game isn’t going well, or they lose, but let them play through some tough stretches before blending. It is looking like panic coaching a bit recently
If Emberson doesn’t play 50 games this year, we’ll lose him for nothing.
Not really an issue. If he plays well, he will get an extension, if he doesn’t , then why worry about it?
This line of thinking from some in the fan base to bash Holland every chance they get will be interesting to follow. Especially if they are in a retool for 25 not a playoff spot. Will see what excuses come out then.
He who cannot be named is interviewed at the end of today’s 32 Thoughts podcast. Nothing really of note so it is ignorable for those who are in Sergeant Schultz mode.
I wish the oilers would hire you.
👍
Jeff Jackson is the new Steve Tambellini.
Action Jackson accomplished more in his first year on the job than Mr. Magoo managed during his entire tenure.
What’s the point of a hot take like this?
Will see if you have that same train of thought come Feb and the Oilers are looking like sellers then buyers.
Prospectastic!
It’s a Full House Friday (sans Bob Saget) as every NAmateur could conceivably toil this eve.
Copponi and Berry both found their first crooked numbers yesterweekend but yearn for more.
Mazura co-leads his St. Lawrence St. Lawrencians in points as a senior. Being 6’4″ and 200 lbs., if he finishes the season at >1.0 ppg, does he get a contract? We wait.
Lachance also leads his squadron in scoring. If he continues to Terrierize his opponents thusly, will the Oilers entice him to leave school early?
Flint (Day, Clattenburg) @ 5 p.m.
London (O’Reilly, Nicholl) @ 5 p.m.
Barrie (Wakely, Akey) @ 5 p.m.
Muskegon (Berry) @ 5 p.m.
Vermont (Münzenberger, Määttä) @ 5 p.m.
St. Lawrence (Mazura) @ 5 p.m.
Notre Dame (Fischer) @ 5 p.m.
Boston University (Lachance, Copponi) @ 6 p.m.
Also, the London match will be shown on TSN+. Check your local listings.
All times are two times and are also Hay Lakes time.
Matt Larkin has an article up about the Oilers start. I found it interesting. And disturbing:
https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/news/dont-panic-over-oilers-slow-start-with-one-crucial-exception
10 day old article. Literally old news.
You’re the last person that should critize any post here. Btw on a net basis, thanks for the laugh yesterday.
I didn’t criticize the post or the article. My post merely added context.
Has something changed in the last week and a half that makes it moot?
It is incredible how valuable mobile, shut down defenseman are. Over the years I have tended to lean towards more skill than strength, but am realizing we need a good mix of both.
I have noticed all three of our new righties getting man-handled at various points during the games – Dermott, Emb and Stech are often squeezed on the wrong side of the puck.
Would love to see Wanner next to Nurse for a few games. Leave Emb with Kulak for the season (should have been Bro and Emb!).
As unpopular as this may be, I think a significant upgrade candidate is trading Nuge for a bonafide weapon for 97. The first pick plus Nuge for a guy like Debrincat with 3M retention kinda deal. I know Debrincat won’t be available because Det will be plying forba playoff berth, but he’s a good example of what could make 97s job easier without moving Leon up and caving our depth.
No not popular. I also think they need to keep looking to improve, everywhere. Maybe it’s from cutting my teeth on the 80’s teams, but I like players that are always doing something, pulling their weight most games
I think an issue with this group is sometimes they don’t put enough pressure on the other team, even though they have the puck more. Not all possession is dangerous, putting stress on the other guys, which wears them down
I also think that they at times don’t take care of the puck enough and turn it over where they shouldn’t and it kills momentum and brings the pressure back onto them. I have heard players say many times that momentum builds on shifts. You see the guys before you have a solid one, any line, so your line wants to go out and do the same. It matters, they could be better with it
OR they could’ve easily drafted him in 2016 instead of taking local kid, Tyler Benson.
Nuge has a full NMC for this, and all remaining years of his contract
Oiler fans really need to stop acting like players with NMC and NTC can’t be moved.
Why would Nuge or Nurse waive their NMC?
Isn’t NMC short for “No-Movement Clause”, or do I stand corrected?
Maybe they will when the posters who suggest trading RNH or Nurse tell us how many players have ever waived their NMC mid contract or earlier to move away from a Cup contending team. Limited NTC contracts are a whole different matter.
It’s never going to happen. Nuge, Nurse will be here long after McDavid and Draisaitl.
Trade the teams Swiss army knife for a shooter for a line that has a 60 goal scorer and a 50 goal scorer.. Why not just put Skinner in that spot? Lol
Agreed LT, Jackson is an evil genius.
He’s far from genius. Letting Broberg and Holloway walk away when they could have been signed for much less shows that he wasn’t able to identify their talent properly. The Oilers are old and their window is passing by. Imagine having Broberg instead of Nurse? I know he’s handcuffed, but it’s a nice thought. Nurse’s contract is this team’s kryptonite. At least they made the SCF, but none of us know if the glimmer twins will ever hoist Lord Stanley in Edmonton.
It was a joke based on what LT said. 😉
I thought it was funny. 🙂
Jeff Jackson had no role in the Nurse contract, which is ironclad.. It’s not a choice between Broberg or Nurse, and so this is a disingenuous argument.
The Oilers won many and often without Holloway and Broberg. There is little reason to think this won’t repeat, other than a very small sample size early in the season.
Not in the playoffs.
And everyone on an old team is a year older. The replacement players are older and slower and less physical.
The Oilers were in the conference finals when Broberg was shuffled in?
Holloway had some nice moments, also a bunch that kept causing the coach to shuffle him down the line up.
Its mind boggling that they would try Nurse on the right side before trying Nurse with Bouchard
They don’t want to break up that first pair. I would, I think most teams look for balance first. Ekholm would be a better partner for the other RD options, could mentor them like he did Bouch
But it’s apparently Oiler DNA to go this route, it’s happened so many times post Sather
They break up 97 and 29 intermittently when results show they probably shouldn’t (from a single line standpoint).
It’s odd the sticking point is the top pairing. I think Coffey values partner consistency the most on D.
They don’t want to break Ekholm. The old man’s minutes are much easier physically playing with Bouchard than they would be playing with Stecher, Emberson, or Dermott.
The sum of Ekholm and Bouchard is much much greater than the parts.