The Edmonton Oilers are leaving too many points on the table to be considered a serious contender to win the Western Conference, and one doubts the Pacific Division title is within the team’s grasp. The Oilers have a goalie problem, but can run Stuart Skinner in 15+ games down the stretch in order to secure a reasonable playoff spot (avoid Dallas!). How many goals can one blame on Jack Campbell from last night’s game? Enough to know the difference between victory, defeat and a Bettman. It matters.
THE ATHLETIC!
- New Lowetide: Edmonton Oilers prospect Tyler Tullio is outplaying the high picks
- DNB: Why more vintage Kailer Yamamoto outings could solve Oilers’ right wing woes
- DNB: Why the playoff lineup should be even better than last year
- Lowetide: Edmonton Oilers spring signing season preview
- Lowetide: Edmonton Oilers winger Kailer Yamamoto and the balance between value contract and injury risk
- DNB: Why Mattias Ekholm is a big addition for an Oilers team that needs to win now
- DNB: Oilers trading Jesse Puljujarvi was an unavoidable and necessary solution
- Lowetide: Oilers’ mediocre February shows importance of protecting the puck
- DNB: Connor McDavid records his first career 50-goal season
- DNB: Inside Brad Holland’s scouting process
- DNB: Oilers captain Connor McDavid surpasses 800 career points
- Lowetide: Revisiting Oilers’ choice of Philip Broberg at the 2019 NHL Draft
- DNB: The Ben Stelter Fund is a legacy his family, Connor McDavid and the Oilers will proudly carry
- Lowetide: Will Oilers prospect Phil Kemp have an NHL career?
- Lowetide: Oilers prospect Raphael Lavoie turns a corner, now NHL-ready
- Lowetide: Oilers top 20 prospects, winter 2022
WHAT TO EXPECT IN FEBRUARY
- At home to: TOR, WPG (Expected 1-1-0) (Actual 2-0-0)
- On the road to: WPG, BUF, BOS, TOR (Expected 2-2-0) (Actual 0-1-0)
- At home to: OTT, DAL (Expected 1-1-0) (Actual 0-0-0)
- On the road to: SEA (Expected 1-0-0) (Actual 0-0-0)
- At home to: SJS, ARI, VGK (Expected 2-1-0) (Actual 0-0-0)
- On the road to: ARI, VGK (Expected 1-1-0) (Actual 0-0-0)
- At home to: LAK (Expected 1-0-0) (Actual 0-0-0)
- March expected result: 9-6-0, 18 points in 15 games
- March actual result: 2-1-0, 4 points in three games
- February actual result: 4-3-4, 12 points in 11 games
- January actual result: 8-2-2, 18 points in 12 games
- December results: 7-6-2, 16 points in 15 games
- November results: 7-7-0, 14 points in 14 games
- October results: 6-3-0, 12 points in 9 games
- Oilers in 2022-23: 34-22-8, 76 points in 64 games
The Calgary Flames are doing all of the heavy lifting for Edmonton, Winnipeg, Colorado and Seattle. In fact, the Nashville Predators represent the final challenge to the top eight teams. The Oilers could make the playoffs with a point-per-game finish (18 more games, 18 points, 94 standings points should get them in) but playing the Dallas Stars in the first round is less than ideal. Finishing in the top three Pacific is absolutely within the range for this team, but Jay Woodcroft can’t play Jack Campbell again until the games don’t matter. Even back-to-back. It’s that bad.
Leon Draisaitl, Connor McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins are on fire currently and its a joy to behold. Not winning games in the regular season when the trio is playing this well is a damn shame, but in the playoffs it would be tragedy. Draisaitl’s interception, deke and backhand goal was ridiculous, and Nuge once again showed elite passing skills on the Mattias Janmark goal. McDavid had several incredible chances but was stoned by Connor Hellebuyck again and again. A great game by these men, I thought Kailer Yamamoto was the only winger on their lines who showed well. Mattias Janmark was good-not-great, Zach Hyman has faded in the last few games, Derek Ryan just isn’t the guy to move that far up on the depth chart and Warren Foegele had moments good and bad. Nick Bjugstadt blocked a shot early in the game and looked uncomfortable, thought he was a goner. He played well, scoring in his Oilers debut. Jim Playfair and Jesse Puljujarvi also scored in their first Oilers game. I’m going to predict Nuge-Draisaitl-Yamamoto and Hyman-McDavid-Bjugstadt in Buffalo. Evander Kane can’t get healthy soon enough for this roster.
I mentioned in yesterday’s review of the Friday night game “Evan Bouchard looked good to my eye, if he plays that well tonight I suspect the boxcar Gods will bless him” and it happened just this way. It’s funny, hockey players are just like baseball players who are coming to the end of a slump when they are hitting the ball hard even if it finds leather. Good for Bouchard, glad he had some success. Mattias Ekholm had another solid game, but I can see the knives coming out already in online comments. I love his mobility and ability to stand up at the blue line, but expected it. He is a better passer and transporter than I imagined. Darnell Nurse had a good game, Cody Ceci did not and I’m not sure how the coaching staff will proceed with that duo. Ekholm will be Edmonton’s No. 1 defenseman at five-on-five in the playoffs. For the record, in the three games they have played together, Darnell Nurse’s total five-on-five minutes (51:49, 2-3 goals) exceed’s Ekholm’s (50:31, 6-1 goals) by a thin margin. Philip Broberg had a strong game, Brett Kulak is so much better on third pair despite last night’s numbers and Vincent Desharnais played in some bad luck in Winnipeg.
THE GOALS
- First goal: Mattias Janmark lost his stick, tried some kind of rockettes move to block the point shot, but Mark Scheifele did a nice job deflecting it in. No fault on the goalie.
- Second goal: Josh Morrissey scores from range, it deflected off Vincent Desharnais in front. Ryan McLeod needs to do a better job of clearing the puck out of the zone. No fault on the goalie, would be nice if he was in position to block some of them but the deflection was late and severe.
- Third goal: Adam Lowry with a nice deflection, I don’t think Campbell had a chance.
- Fourth goal: Kyle Capobianco scores from range. Campbell has to stop that shot. A huge goal in this game.
- Fifth goal: Morgan Barron breakaway goal, he’s a defenseman, that move he made was telegraphed. I don’t think faulting goaltenders for allowing breakaway goals is wise, but one can say Campbell needed to make a stop somewhere and Barron isn’t McDavid. That one hurt.
- Sixth goal: Josh Morrissey scores with a second left in the second, it was going wide. Absolute killer. Campbell had been poor before this but the game was in the balance. Dreadful.
- Seventh goal: EN.
The Oilers can’t play Jack Campbell in games that matter until a strong playoff spot is secure. Among goalies who have played 1,000 or more five-on-five minutes this year, Stuart Skinner (a rookie) sits at .927 (No. 8 among qualified goalies). Jack Campbell and his .891 SP ranks No. 41 of 45 goalies who qualify.
If worse comes to worse, Calvin Pickard (.911 SP in all game states for Bakersfield Condors of the AHL) is the only real option to replace him from Edmonton’s depth chart. Olivier Rodrigue (.907) and Ryan Fanti (.884) are also on the roster.
After the season, a buyout will be preferable to trade (the Oilers have only four draft picks left for 2023 and the prospect list has taken some hits) and the cost of buyout is reasonable but for a long time (eight years, it ends in the dirty 30’s).
I doubt that happens, but if the Oilers have a front office shuffle then it could be an option.
One thing I wanted to mention about the current situation is just how much an organization depends on evaluation. As fans and observers, we can recognize missteps (the Griffin Reinhart trade) but I’m fairly certain the man blamed for that deal (Bob Green) would have been central to the selection of Stuart Skinner. We all keep score in different ways, and I do think fans have wanted every member of hockey ops fired at one point or another, but every transaction matters. The discussion should never be black and white.
DRAFTING SUCCESS
In the book “On the Clock” I argue the Oilers began implementing analytics after the Mitchell Moroz selection. By 2013, and Craig MacTavish as general manager, there is plenty of evidence in the book regarding a new draft model for the team. The 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 drafts have all produced three or more men who have played in at least one NHL game.
Connor McDavid leads the way, with Jesse Puljujarvi, Kailer Yamamoto and Evan Bouchard representing the first-round haul. Second round selections who have played include Tyler Benson and Ryan McLeod, the third round producing Stuart Skinner, Markus Niemelainen and Dmitri Samorukov.
The later rounds have been splendid. Caleb Jones, Ethan Bear and John Marino (all 2015) are NHL regulars, Marino a bona fide part of a team that could win the Stanley Cup. Markus Niemelainen, Vincent Desharnais and Dylan Wells were part of the 2016 crop, a star-crossed group that could be saved by the seventh-round selection (Desharnais). Mike Kesselring made his NHL debut this week, he was a 2018 sixth-round pick.
The point of the book “On the Clock” is that when Edmonton fishes where the fish are, the team has success. That is certainly the case since 2015, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest the club continues to do good things in the draft.
I would look very positively at a first round matchup with SEA – don’t care who has home ice – that one would go 5 games max.
Campbell once in a while makes extremely athletic saves while Skinner never seems to need to…
Skinner once in a while makes routine saves while Campbell . . .
Colorado and Seattle not tied in the 3rd.
Now 2-2
2:30 to go.
Going to OT.
3-2 Seattle
Hindsight being what it is but we probably could have used that Soup, Kane, and Kulak money elsewhere, like on a Ceci upgrade
You don’t think Kulak and Kane are performing per their contract costs?
I’d say their fair value.
Fair value is hardly doing justice to Evander Kane. Over the past 3.75 seasons his scoring rates have been similar to players who have recently signed (or about to sign) significantly larger contracts:
Kane: 0.42 G/GP, 0.82 P/GP
Meier: 0.39 G/GP, 0.81 P/GP
Horvat: 0.42 G/GP, 0.80 P/GP
Campbell is getting the run on this blog, as well as outside this blog – one thing to keep in mind I guess – we all agree on a reset, whether AHL waiver or not (OP says we can’t do this now due to the rules – shit?).
Is Campbell having issues outside of his hockey life? Could literally be anything but still – maybe he just needs a timeout. Goaltending is massively mental.
I hope he recovers in general – even if it is just bad play.
Kesselring assigned back to the AHL – from the numbers, a solid start in his first game – he’ll back in the show.
How was Kuemper not the obvious choice in free agency? I didn’t hate the Campbell signing, but I thought it was vastly inferior to pursuing Kuemper. Kuemper’s performace and established track record were so clearly beyond anyone else’s. Sure, people were concerned about term….but we just acquired Ekholm through age 36 at $6M/year because he fit a specific need.
I thought Kuemper was the blindingly obvious choice at the time, and repeatedly said so. Maybe behind the scenes, he didn’t want to come to Edmonton, but he’s a Saskatoon boy, so that seems unlikely.
Imagine how much better we would look with a .910 guy who won a Cup last year…with Skinner as a solid 1B?
My recollection was that people here were proposing various low-risk vet bets as a bridge.
The idea is to limit your exposure since goalies are so unpredictable. Kuemper would have been a better bet, but still not the idea choice given his age and contract.
I defended the Leafs for trading for Matt Murray even though people here were laughing pretty hard at the trade.
Murray’s been okay, but often injured. The Leafs are smart about some things and taking on his contract with a third and a 7th and retained salary wasn’t so bad.
They can buy him out this summer, if needed, for under a million in cap penalty over 2 years.
Many people here wanted Husso. We didn’t have the draft pick to trade for him though (kassian trade). He would have been a better bet.
I recall people laughing at the Georgiev bet Sakic made. I was surprised how good he is this year, but Sakic lacks a blunder of the Athanasious trade / Campbell signing on his resume.
I kept reiterating. The smart teams want goalies under 30 and to avoid taking on contract term.
Likely the poster child for this is the Hurricanes.
They had no issues moving on from goaltenders who were about to get paid and opted instead to go short term with Freddie Anderson and Antti Raanta.
Neither is shooting out the lights but both have been sufficient and both are UFA at the end of the season.
The Hurricanes have the second best goals against in the league.
I liked Samsonov
but I don’t think anyone thought soup would be all dented and moldy
LA and Toronto did.
He has always had spells of very poor play.
I think partly because Kuemper looked like dog shit against the Oilers in that one playoffs game he played last year and put up only a .902 in the playoffs.
I recall being relatively pleased that the Oilers went to Campbell instead of paying the premium for the cup winner Kuemper who looked pretty close in quality. But then when I saw that Holland had give Soup the same dollar value and same FIVE YEAR contract based on a short resume… Well, I was much less happy.
Tampa with ZERO shots in a period, the day after coach dumps on his star players….trouble in paradise?
My hope is people here will look at Campbell’s and Skinner’s win/loss record and their stats and see how much random chance can effect a statistics with smaller sample size.
My secret hope is that people will see such an obvious example of statical noise in small sample sizes and realise that even if the win/loss record agreed with sv% the win/loss record is still just as unreliable. But I don’t have much faith that will happen.
It’s a remarkable feat of run support.
This season Jack Campbell has an execrable .333 Quality Start %. Despite this, he has an incongruent 17- 9 record. I know some posters liked to use his W-L record, up until recently, to defend his play.
To put Campbell’s quality start percentage into perspective. Jonathan Quick has a better quality start %: .370 [!]
Conversely, an .882 sv % should give you (using older data) a .277 win %.
It’s not that complicated. The quality start % is indicative of Jack Campbell’s play while his Win Loss record is a reflection of the team.
Jack Campbell is in the bottom five (out of 43 goalies) in goals saved above expected per 60. (Bottom 4 in SV%)
Summarizing!
Petrov (5 SOG) and Chiasson each picked up two assists in their respective victories.
Prospecting takes a break until Wednesday.
We are past the trade deadline, Campbell isn’t eligible for the AHL. I forgot about this until now.
I… I… I… …pardon?
This is why Shore and Broberg were sent down and then recalled same day on Friday – so they are eligible for the AHL.
Section 13.12(j) of the CBA:
(j) A Player may be Loaned to a club of any league affiliated with the League at any time up to 3:00 p.m. New York time of the fortieth (40th) day immediately preceding the final day of the Regular Season (the “Trade Deadline”). Following this period, no Player may be Loaned, except that:
We’re Oiler’s fans … we don’t let such things as pesky rules get in the way of our bellyaching. We’re still going shout to the high heavens to send Campbell down to the AHL every time he lets in a bad goal. That’s just how we roll.
But seriously, someone ask Mike Smith to take Campbell under his wing and instill in him him some irrational confidence.
Rules! We don’t need no stinking rules!
13.8 Conditioning Loan. Unless a Player consents, he shall not be Loaned on a Conditioning Loan to a minor league club. Such Conditioning Loan shall not extend for more than fourteen (14) consecutive days. The Commissioner may take whatever steps he deems necessary to investigate the circumstances under which a Player is Loaned on a Conditioning Loan. If the Commissioner has reason to believe or determines that the Club has used the Conditioning Loan to evade the Re-Entry Waivers, or otherwise Circumvent any provision of this Agreement, he may take such disciplinary action against the Club, as he deems appropriate. The Player shall continue, during the period of such Conditioning Loan, to receive the same Paragraph 1 NHL Salary, and be entitled to the same benefits, that he would have received had he continued to play with the Club.
Not sure whether “or otherwise Circumvent any provision of this Agreement,” would restrict the use of conditioning but teams have sent players to AHL for stints without them being injury rehab
1) I think you are looking at an old CBA as the pasted provision refers to Re-Entry Waivers which don’t exist any longer.
2) With that said, the current 13.8 is substantially the same so we can discuss.
3) First issue, that requires consent of the player.
4) Second issue, there would be no cap relief so couldn’t call up Picard without also sending down another
5) That would be very clear circumvention of the CBA and not only would the league not allow it right away, we’d probably be forced to send a draft pick to the flames.
Thanx…?😪
You’re kidding right? It’s not April 1st.
Nope – not at all.
Isn’t this just for eligibility for the AHL playoffs, and NOT for the AHL regular season?
AHL Communications
@AHLPR
Reminder: Per NHL rules, a player must be on an @TheAHL
roster at 3 ET today in order to be eligible to be sent down from the NHL at any time for the rest of the season. #NHLTradeDeadline
Nope – I posted the relevant section of the CBA.
Jack Campbell looks like he’s trying to play goal with someone else’s equipment rn.
I do feel bad for him because he is an incredible person.
He just looks like his confidence has left him.
All our collective hopes & dreams lie with that Magic Mustache,
God speed young Stuart
Wonder if Cooper is sitting his 1st line again in the 5-0 whupping the Canes are laying on the Bolts…
I wonder if Cooper had lost the room.
Looks like Tulsky hit another home run.
The Ghost with 1G 2A.
And it looks like you’ve jumped on to another Exec’s bandwagon.
I just made the mistake of looking at Skinner’s numbers since January 1st.
And his (slightly more relevant) numbers from February 1st:
https://www.nhl.com/stats/goalies?reportType=game&dateFrom=2023-02-01&dateTo=2023-03-06&gameType=2&playerPlayedFor=franchise.25&filter=gamesPlayed,gte,1&sort=wins,savePct&page=0&pageSize=50
LT likes to use Christmas as his cut off:
https://www.nhl.com/stats/goalies?reportType=game&dateFrom=2022-12-25&dateTo=2023-03-06&gameType=2&playerPlayedFor=franchise.25&filter=gamesPlayed,gte,1&sort=wins,savePct&page=0&pageSize=50
I know Campbell had a bad game, but in his defence, the first three goals are deflected.
Goal 4 he probably wants back but it’s a laser shot to the perfect spot. Hellebyuk probably wants the Drai backhand roof back too but sometimes you gotta give it to the players.
Goal 5 is bad play by Ceci but also a friendly Winnipeg bounce that ends up in a breakaway.
Goal 6 is power play and he probably should have it, but it comes through so much traffic.
Campbell seems to struggle with shots that change direction and come through traffic. The Oilers are not great at clearing lanes, in fact I think they are coached to clog them up. A lot
of times, the shots deflect away or not into the net. Jack is sliding around in the net trying to anticipate but he’d be better served playing positionally (like Skinner). Or, the Oilers should try to clear more lanes than get in them and let Campbell see more of the shots.
Get Soup away from this team before he does real damage.
I made the mistake of rewatching the highlights. Just ghoulish goaltending and I think Woody was a fool for not yanking this running joke and plunking Stu back in. Crappy coaching allowing this festering mess to ruin more games and leave points on the board.
Cant believe they haven’t waived him yet. What in the actual hell are you waiting for Ken?
Lightning, currently in a bit of a funk, have as many shots as the Canes [spits] have goals. 0-4 thru two
Wow, TB with only 4 shots in the first period followed by a bagel in the second period. Hope they straighten themselves out for their games against VGK and WPG this week!
Campbell will almost certainly get a second chance next year, but I think swapping Campbell and Pickard is the right move at this point.
Campbell just has to go play (and play alot) where there is no pressure for awhile, to give him a chance to get is game in order to be a backup during the playoffs.
He has shown he cannot fix what is broken in practice.
A real Sophie’s choice.
Pickard’s recent work in the NHL is as bad if not worse than Campbell’s performance this season.
Assuming one of the 2 starting goalies gets injured it’s basically a crime not to have a replacement ready in one capacity or another.
Like, as in what the fuck is the point of having a farm team?
Campbell is as good as trying to play goal with a broken arm. Oilers need to jettison this clown asap to the AHL. “Oh but it makes the Oilers look bad” lol who cares??
Take it easy, he isn’t playing well but no need for name calling. He may recover his game in the future.
Taking away the fact that Campbell is not eligible to play in the AHL this season, what is with the comment re: farm team and replacement ready goalie?
The Oilers have Cal Pickard as that 3G in the AHL and that’s about as good as it gets for solid veteran 3G given, you know, you can’t just send players down to the AHL without giving other teams the option to claim them. You can’t just hide legit NHL talent down there (unless their contracts are prohibitive).
You could recall Pickard though.
They certainly could (and send down Shore or, apparently, Kostin, which would require waivers….).
I don’t imagine they would/will do that but they certainly could.
If anyone is wondering what’s going on in Flames Fan Land:
-“hmm maybe we shouldn’t have signed a 32 year old to a 7 year contract based on an outlier year”
-“Huberdeau is closer to 0 points than he is to his last year totals.”
-“Treliving, Sutter, Huberdeau and Kadri need to go”
-“moneypuck has a 46% chance for the Flames to make the playoffs. I still think they can push out the Oilers for the final wildcard spot”
-“Nurse has the worst contract in the league but he still does more for the Oilers than Huberdeau does for the Flames”
-“fall for Bedard”
Thanks for that haha. The 2nd point is especially heartening.
All this Jack Campbell talk today has me wistful for last season’s Mike Smith craziness … give me an egomaniac goalie with irrational confidence any day of the week over a goalie that beats himself up on every goal. I’m now totally fine with our goalie yelling at the D or having a running dialogue with his posts. The crazier the better.
I’d rather have a goalie that can quickly shake off a bad goal and focus on closing the door the rest of the way, than a goalie with Jack Campbell’s body language from last night. Mike Smith was broken physically, but Jack Campbell is broken mentally.
Mike Smith was handicapped and hated in our parts from the moment his name came across the news wire. He was erratic at times, unconventional at all times, and often got the job done. But he was old and had the other kind of face from the Klefbom one the world always has more patience for.
He carried this team on his back to the Western Conference Finals despite an unseemly number of 10 bell chances surrendered by the poor Oilers defensive structure every single game. He stopped most of them, sometimes all of them.
I have much respect for the old guy. We could sure use him now in place of a 5 x $5 million dollar Campbell signing, a name that received infinite more fanfare before and after the news.
Skinner-Smith. Damn. The possibilities.
I wondered what you were talking about as Mike Smith is a pretty handsome guy:
/revision/latest?cb=20140124215736
Then I went and looked at a picture of Klefbom. Geezus. I think it moved.
That’s an old pic of Mike Smith from his 20’s. He’s a lot more ‘grizzled’ now.
Post more, girl. 🙂
Nonsensical comment.
Mike Smith got more flack because he’s less handsome than Klefbom?
By this metric – and I’m not sure I’m qualified to pick out the more handsome players, but – Ryan McLeod should be vilified by the fanbase and, I dunno, who’s handsome?… Broberg? gets the benefit of the doubt because his features are even and he has all his teeth?
Yeah, keep these nuggets of wisdom coming.
Where’s that eyeroll emoji?
Lost in the Campbell embarrassment is the play Cody Ceci. At times, Cody can’t even work up the gumption to dump the puck in properly.
Really losing my patience with watching his lame clearing attempts from the D zone at times. Soft margarine clearing attempts:
1) that does not leave the zone at all and allows for further opposition entry.
2) barely leaves the zone but allows for opposition to enter right back with speed.
Ceci has earned this, truly.
GF: 43 / GA: 48
The Oilers have a goalie problem, but can run Stuart Skinner in 15+ games down the stretch in order to secure a reasonable playoff spot (avoid Dallas!). How many goals can one blame on Jack Campbell from last night’s game? Enough to know the difference between victory, defeat and a Bettman. It matters.
******************************************************
Truth.
As the praise for Kenny’s deadlines deals continues to roll in…Jack Campbell is signed until 2027.
Stuart Skinner has appeared in 50 NHL games.
As LT correctly points out, Oiler’s really can’t start Campbell anymore.
NHL_PublicRelations
No defenseman in NHL history has accumulated 200 🍎s in fewer games than Quinn Hughes of the @Canucks.
#NHLStats: media.nhl.com/public/live-up…
Quinn Hughes – the only good thing Vancouver has to look forward to for the present and immediate future.
I wonder how long until Vancouver tries to flip him for assets.
I wonder how long it is before Quinn Hughes asks for a trade out of Vancouver? Over/under of 1 season … I’ll take the under.
Marcel Dionne has a lot of really nice scoring stats.
This does nothing to minimize the young man’s accomplishment.
The list just below him is a HHOF roster.
Its unfortunate that some people are so tribal they cant appreciate when a young player makes the game better for all.
“Its unfortunate that some people are so tribal they cant appreciate when a young player makes the game better for all.”
Reminds me of the season Matthews was on his way to 50 goals and you made a post for nearly every goal he scored. And then raved about how historic it is.
If you truly appreciate all young players in the game equally, one would think you would be hyping up McDavid more, no?
I think you have posted more about Jason Robertson than you have McDavid. Funny how those posts have stopped after the first 3rd of the season..
You are such a loser. To come here and call us tribal. Bait bait bait bait bait. That is all you do. Go away. No one likes you here.
Calling us tribal is the ultimate gaslighting HH.
This is an Oiler’s fan-site … we come here to discuss OUR team. The majority of today’s comments are about how how disappointed we are in one of OUR players. We’re not a bunch of puck bunnies that look past the warts of this team, it’s management or the organization. Sometimes we are guilty of over-rating our players, coaches and management … sometimes we are guilty of being too hard on them. But we all come here to consider each others view, and this better helps us understand what we are seeing on and off the ice.
We all have Twitter, along with the SN and TSN apps giving us constant updates on our phones about the going ons in the NHL. We don’t need you to repost the things that we’ve already been notified about by our phones 10x per day.
You do it to troll us … you pump the tires on the players, coaches and GMs of other teams only when it suits your purpose of trolling us. Then you turtle when those you hold up here in such high esteem are no longer performing well enough to use as trolling material, and jump ship to another bandwagon to continue the trolling process.
And then you whine like a b$tch when we throw it back at you.
Quinn Hughes is a good player who’s having a good season on the tire fire that is the Dys … but he’s more Phil Housley than Brian Leetch.
I have none of those apps.
And I appreciate HH’s notifications of league-wide notable’s, just as much as I do Woodguy v2.0’s contributions.
The vitriol aimed at HH, as I’ve witnessed over this season, has been… un-appreciated.
FTR – I simply ignore, more of your posts than his.
Maturity counts.
You sound just like HH …
this is untrue
Players from all over the league are celebrated here while we kick dirt on their teams names.
Everyone sees that you have no desire to celebrate the players you ever mention, you’re only intention is to use it in some fashion to fling shit at the tribe.
If you’re looking for a group to champion your comments may I suggest Twitter. Surprisingly enough all 17 of your favorite teams have Twitter accounts, go from there and find your tribe!
I posted on twitter that it’s unfortunate the Flames won’t make the playoffs and the reaction was very strong. I think people see things through their own eyes as you and I do. I have no idea what you intended, trolling is your main sport but you’re a smart fellow and bring interesting thoughts.
For me, I believe the 1980’s Oilers would never have soared as high as they did without the Flames. Winning against Calgary last year was so much fun, certainly more fun than it would have been if there was no history.
Anyway, sail on, you extremely well-adjusted and not unusual at all person!
Your role in this tribe appears to be Benedict Arnold.
So we lose the second of a b2b which was also the third game in 4 nights. And next up, the 4th game in 6 nights. Dammit…
Our opponents were playing a b2b 🤷♂️
Yes, although not their 3rd game in 4 nights so maybe fresher legs…? After wining the first one, I had yesterday as a loss. The fact it turned out to be a winnable game well, that sucks. Reminds me of game 1 vs the Avs last year… winnable game but for the goalie.
I think Winnipeg played just as poorly as Edmonton. And Helleybuck wasn’t lights out either – just better than Campbell.
Yep Helly was bad in two straight games against us. But at least he wasn’t staring up at the heavens or slamming his head on the ice after each goal. Kept his cool and didn’t let his emotions show.
And if you’re going to let your frustration out, then Campbell’s doing it all wrong … you smash the hell out of one of your goal sticks. That’s the way we did it back in my day, and it always made me settle down and re-focus.
Either that or you get into a fight with the next bozo that gives you a snow shower … take your blocker and just tee off on some random player like Mike Smith used to do.
Self-flagellation is not something you want to see your goalie do each time he gets scored on.
Petrov procures an apple as the Battalion opens up a 3-0 lead late in the first.
In all this Jack Campbell talk, lost is the revival of the Leon Draisaitl at the top of his game and looking fully healthy. On a heater, scoring at 5 on 5, crushing the PP and, well, gearing up for 50 X 3.
Soup has been bad and there’s no denying it.
But I saw 5 deflection goals and breakaway.
Can’t really blame the goalie here IMO that’s just shit lucky to get 5 tip is.
When was the last time you saw a team score 5 deflection goals in one game?
The issue isnt not saving one of the goals. The issue is not saving any of the goals. This has been an issue all season. The numbers dont lie. An average goalie would have given up now 21 less goals this season.
Soupy is now almost 30 all situation goals GSAA behind his rookie partner
His numbers are historically bad*, yet Skinner is posting above average numbers. Is it all just bad luck?
*see my posts below for where his numbers place him in Oilers history.
Last night I posted someone’s tweet that said Campbell had the worst save % of any Oilers goalie who played over 10 games since 2007.
Either Jack is the unluckiest Oilers goaltender since 2007, or he’s just not playing well at all.
I can’t remember a team who scored 5 deflection goals in a game, but that’s probably because the goalies prevented that from happening.
Also, while Campbell is rocking the worst Save Percentage since Jussi Markanen’s 2005-06 number and 6th worst (tied with 2 of Andy Moog’s mid-80’s seasons) in Oilers history (minimum 30 GP), Skinner has the 10th highest (tied with Ty Conklin’s 2002-04 number).
We can and should blame the goalie. All goaltenders have bad games, but Campbell is rocking a 3.57 gaa and .882 s%. There’s no defending that. He’s making $5m a year for the next 4, he needs to stop some of those goals.
Goal number 4 was not a deflection goal.
Goal number 6 was a deflection goal by Jack Campbell – deflecting a shot going wide in to his own net.
As far as breakaways go, that was about as stoppable as they come.
Arguing about this stuff doesn’t really matter at this point, but..
I agree with Genjutsu, #4 was deflected by the defender. A long distance deflection though, so obviously not the same degree of difficulty as the first 3 goals against.
Saw LT mention that. Did you see a reply that showed he deflected it and/or that it was going wide?
I couldn’t tell in real time, and none of the replays on NHL.com show an angle where it looks like that. I don’t recall anyone mentioning it last night either.
I think there were three deflections. But goalies have to actually position themselves well enough to stop one or two of them.
What a terrible shame that this whole Campbell fiasco would have been avoided, without the benefit of hindsight, by an obvious better choice at the 2021 draft. I believe the dominoes falling from that draft will cost this team Stanley cups.
The Oilers at the time had no present goalie and no significant goalie of the future. They were thought to be targeting Cossa who might be around when they were drafting at 20 (when the consensus best goalie Jesper Wallstedt was picked top 10).
The tumblers fell the Most perfectly since 2015 and Wallstedt was passed over in the first 14 picks. Yzerman was sure to pick him and with non goalie targeted teams like Winnipeg in front of them, local boy Cossa would fall to Edmonton.
In another stroke of great fortune Yzerman chose Cossa, the non-goalie teams stayed away…and Holland effing traded down. Minnesota jumped at the chance to draft Wallstedt and Holland picked a mid sized skilled winger in Xavier Bourgault.
And now a few years later Scott wheeler ranked the Wild as the best prospects in the NHL and JS as the best of the best. Separately he was ranked as the top goalie outside the NHL in February’s rankings.
Meanwhile Bourgault was an honorable mention with about 70 other names on Wheelers accompanying “skaters” list.
I know, I know Wheeler and Pronman are biased hacks and XB will jump from his .4 Ppg numbers in the AHL any day now.
Obviously all overly dramatic but one terrible and obvious choice has such a domino effect. Stu emerges..the Oilers have their near and far future handled…and they choose to pay for an older stopgap for the early McDavid years,..say Korpisalo.
We could have had Korpisalo (+Skinner) plus 5 million to say use on Erik Karlsson (minus Brett Kulak and some firsts) plus the best under 23 goalie on the planet coming in the next wave. Now it’s ALL on Stuart Skinner.
The miss on Wallstedt and the subsequent signing of Campbell likely cost this team Cups.
I’m not sure I understand how choosing XB over Wallstedt led us to signing Jack Campbell. Drafting Wallstedt doesn’t change any of the goalie calculus going into this season or even for another year at least.
It now means you have your near term and long term solutions in place. You just need your immediate fix assuming you don’t trust skinner.
There’s no chance they sign Jack Campbell x 5 with Wallstedt and his last two years of development and Skinners solid play last year.
You probably offer someone 2 years and reevaluate.
Christ even this one season of Skinner is enough that they likely wouldn’t sign a 30+ year old for 5 years.
It was a desperation movie and I believe they were desperate because they passed on Js.
I’m not sure that theory passes the sniff test for me to be honest.
I think the org already believed they had the long term solution in place in Skinner, and they still went out and tried to get a veteran starter. I think the idea was to run Campbell as the starter for the first couple years of the contract and then offload the journeyman starter when Skinner is firmly in place to take over. JW pushing for a backup job in 2-3 years doesn’t really change the math on the Campbell acquisition.
Not really true. In summer 2020 Skinner was just a guy. Lowe tide had him ranked well behind Ilya Konovalov and Olivier Rodrigue.
I don’t know why they passed on Wallstedt but it seems improbable that “blocked by Skinner” was any part of it.
Holland tends to eventually move on from his mistakes so it will be interesting to see how long this plays out.
Not addressing it at this trade deadline could be a huge blow.
Don’t know if this would have prevented Holland’s blunder signing Campbell for 5 years, but I definitely wanted Wallstedt and would rather have himm than Bourgault. I was ticked when Holly traded down. Bourgault looks very underwhelming so far, but there’s still time on him.
There were some that didn’t want Holland to sign one of the two “big name UFAs” this off-season as the first option but were hopeful to trade for one of the veterans with one-year left on their contracts to pair with Skinner as a one-year stop gap to see how Skinner developed – options included Talbot, Varlamov, Reimer, Allen.
Some cited, many times, Skinner’s development curve being better than Husso at every stage of post-draft development including the AHL/NHL split season prior to full time NHL duty.
Well – only Talbot got moved this past year, but only after the UFA period started, the Wild signed Fleury and Talbot then demanded a trade … and Guerin initially stated he had no interest in moving Talbot until Talbot’s agent gave Billy the gears.
It takes two to tango, and none of NYI, SJ or Montreal wanted to trade their veteran goalies this season, and two of those teams have been out of the playoff picture for months.
The verbal at the time of the Campbell signing was that Edmonton needed to make a splash on day 1 of the UFA period. There was a lot of pressure coming from fans and the media (both MSM and the blogging community) to sign someone immediately, as previous years the Oilers got left without a definitive starter when the music stopped. And it would have been foolish to be over-confident in Skinner being able to handle the load of being a number 1, let alone that he’d even survive the season as the backup.
I had wanted them to go after a cheap option in Eric Comrie … in retrospect, aside from one great game against us early in the season where we got ‘goalied’, that would have been a bad choice. But he’s just one of many examples of goalies with great AHL stats that never translated to the NHL. Skinner could have easily followed suit.
That’s not to excuse our management … they should have scouted Campbell better … that said, they were careful not to give him much in bonus money. The structure of the contract makes it palatable to buy out … it’s almost as if they expected they might have to, and structure the contract to provide them with that contingency.
While that is speculation on my part, I’d point out that there is a lot that happens behind the scenes that we are not privy too … e.g. making an offer for Timo Meier … lol, we all thought they were still talking about a Karlsson trade.
My beef is that they missed on Washington’s goalie fire sale of Vanacek and Samsonov … I have no idea if they knew that those goalies would become available or not, but they should have. I’m sure that Washington would have preferred to send both guys out of the Eastern Conference.
Of course it takes two to tango but just because those goalies didn’t move doesn’t mean they couldn’t have been. I’m not confident that exploring the trade market for this type of tender was something Holland even contemplated. It was brought up to him in a pre free agency media avail and his response was along the lines of “I guess” when asked if it was an option.
The Sharks had three goalies and everyone knew they were going to trade one. They ended up moving Aidan Hill but I would think that Reimer wasn’t untouchable.
I understand the verbal was all about one of the two big-name UFA goalies – I was quite clear and persistent with my opinion on what I’d prefer while fully acknowledging it was unlikely to happen.
Musing this morn on the financial landscape leading up to Draisatl’s UFA in two seasons…
As currently constructed, here are my thoughts on the possible pressure points re cost of UFA and TFA resignings.
For 2023 offseason (per CapFriendly) – UFA Derek Ryan will be a 35+ contract. If still has juice not an expensive resign. No major cost pressure.UFA Janmark 30 years old, no price pressure. UFA Shore 28 years old and useful tweener, no price pressure.Nick Bjugstad 30 years old, currently a bargain because of retention, likely to go from 450 to 900 give or take.Klefbom/Smith/Murray (LTIR) are all UFA and off the books. On the farm, Justin Bailey UFA 27 years old, ding ok on the farm possible AHL deal or a one way deal on the farm as a good soldier with little intent to recall to the bigs. Koekkoek UFA and is gone. Demers UFA and gone.
RFA’s without arb rights – Bouchard, Lavoie, Rodrique. Kenny will squeeze where he can but in a respectful way as he has leverage. I suspect he may give a little more juice (but not much) to Bouchard on a short deal to get them to when the Cap starts a normal trajectory again so possible he gets a ne year with the promise to do better after the league escrow deficit is resolved.
RFA’s with arbitration rights – Philp, Benson, Kemp, Dineen. None have much leverage based on current role and prformance so only moderate cost ressure.
For 2024 offseason it goes thus: UFA’s Foegle has moderate cost pressure but will be near his peak at 29. Desharnais is good but will be 27 and a third pairing defensive defenceman. Very mch has value but won’t break the bank at all. Seth Griffith, Brad Malone and McKegg are all 30 plus and not impactful of the NHL roster in any way. Calvin Pickard will be 31 and no impact on the NHL roster umless he wakes up as the next Duane Roloson.
RFA’s withut arbitration, Broberg, Holloway, Savoie, Hamblin, Fanti. Again, unless they explode (which is a GOOD problem to have) the play is a short term bridge of some sort with minimal cost pressure. RFA’s with arbitration are Neimalainen and Yamamoto. Could be interesting with Yamamoto.
In the 2025 offseason when Leon is a possible UFA, the UFA’s are Cody Ceci, RFA’s are Bourgault, Petrov, Tullio and Wanner. None of them have arb rights.
So main price pressure points comes down to Bouchard this offseason and possibly again in 2024 or 2025 if he signs a bridge deal, and Yamaoto next year. Overall, we are in a very good position for both Draisatle’s and McDavids possible exrensions.No looming time bombs littering the landscape leading up to them.
I am relieved.
Sorry for the wall of text. I like to be thorough when it comes to numbers.
Awesome synopsis!
My thoughts on Campbell and the entire situation:
When a deflection is possible, a goalie needs to get as close as possible to the point of deflection (cut down the distance that the puck changes direction on the deflection) and “build a wall” Upper legs together in butterfly, elbows tight to body, stick in the middle and angled to deflect pucks up. I saw none of this from Campbell.
Good points. This goes to what I said last night. When screened, it seems that Campbell actually makes himself ‘smaller’ and tends to flinch or not move at all.
It’s the in back of net before reaction seen part that’s throwing me off
His tracking is looking poor.
Not great positioning plus meh tracking is frighteningly bad combo.
According to capfriendly, Smitty is still on the team. If we go with a 20 man roster he fits. In the worst case there is still time to “get Smitty going!” 🙂
“We gotta get Smitty up and running” – Ken Holland, 2021-2022.
“Mike Smith has chronic neck and ankle issues” – Ken Holland, February 2023.
Ullmark in Boston struggled most of year and finished well but had lost the job to Swayman last season. Same thing this year with the Oil. This year Ullmark is vezina front runner.
Optimistic Sunday, but I expect they’ll start next year with Campbell and run both again. Hope he recovers and provides at least average goaltending . And buy him out that summer or dump.him on Arizona perhaps in a trade to clear cap if he doesn’t improve.
It’ll be Campbell and Skinner till end of next year. Campbell will improve but might never be the starter. But we have a good starter in Skinner, so I’m not worried next year.
This year. Maybe you bring up Pickard and run Campbell for a few weeks in minors to get confidence back. But it’s Skinner’s net outside of back to backs. So it’s kinda a non issue.
Is that you OP?
Of course they will. No one serious is discussing buying out Campbell. As much as I am uncomfortable with the idea, he’s going to get next season to see what he can do before the org pulls the plug on his contract.
Thanks for trying to put an optimistic spin on the situation. Today’s post had me feeling blue about passing on Wallstedt.
This is right. Zero percent chance they will buy out Campbell this summer. Plenty of goalies have had terrible seasons and bounce back/are given a chance to bounce back.
Last year, Ullmark had a 2.45 GGA and 0.917 Sv% … I’m pretty sure Campbell would love to be ‘struggling’ like that.
Ullmark was also .922/2.52 through December 31 of last season – playing 12 out of the 14 games.
His early season “struggle” wasn’t even so.
The optimistic comparison to point to is Markstrom who, IIRC, struggle in his first year as a flame and then was Vezina level in his 2nd (prior to being broken by the Oilers….).
Jonathan Quick on moving to Vegas.
https://theathletic.com/4274800/2023/03/04/jonathan-quick-golden-knights-trade/?source=user_shared_article
I would love for LV and LA to play each other in the first round – Quick can still play well in stretches, as we saw in last year in the playoffs. Wouldn’t that be awesome if Quick knocked his old team out of the playoffs, after they gave up a 1st round pick to send him away! The Kings could then double down on this year’s Ben Chariot and sign Gavrikov for too much money and for too many years.
Drance: Canucks’ familiar stubbornness shaped disastrous trade deadline
Time to put all the ex oilers who live around town and Mike smith into an arena in st albert and start firing shots?
Just to get way ahead of ourselves, if they do buy out Campbell, who’s the target this summer?
One upside: Skinner’s emergence and stellar-looking contract over the next three years might allow them to shop in the $2-3M aisle rather than the $5-6M aisle, which, combined with Campbell’s buyout number, would leave them cost neutral-ish at the position.
Best upcoming UFA Gs:
Varlamov (likely best available, reportedly not interested in coming here)
Andersen
Talbot
Jarry
Nedeljkovic
Blackwood
Reimer
Raanta
Korpisalo
Dell
Brossoit
Hill
There’s a lot to pick from here, and a solid chance they can get 30-35 good games out of one of these for $2-3M.
The worry is that whatever pro-scouting process that brought them Campbell informs this shopping trip, too.
Don’t like the buyout option for this offsason. We are just getting out of a lot of dead cap deals, and that would be on the books for 8 years. Ouch. I would rather try a swap with sweetener/cost difference less than or equal in value to the buyout cost. I would look at teams in rebuild mode with a serviceable goalie who may be a tad old for their upcoming age cluster as a start. I REALLY would avoid buyout eexcept as a last resort and only after one more year at least to lessen cap impact.
The good news is that we are (hopefully) not shopping for a starter anymore. Getting a backup to play 30 something games for whatever money is freed up by buying out Campbell is doable.
Whether they buy out Campbell will likely depend on how the Oilers and Skinner fair in the playoffs … if they go deep, then Campbell is as good as gone, cause Holland has not been shy to walk away from his bad moves.
I wonder if Patrick Roy would consider leaving the Remparts as HC to become the Oilers goalie coach? Would that be seen as a lateral or downward move or does the NHL cache overcome the role downgrade from HC to GC?
Just curious–what makes you think he’d be a good goalie coach?
Clearly Roy would scare Campbell into stopping pucks. Or possibly teach him the age-old secret of Pure Glove Hand
Or pull Campbell himself, throw on the KOHO’s and light up the playoffs with the Oil.
It’s hard to win back to back games against the same team. It usually ends in a split especially when teams are evenly matched. The Oilers are a better team with Skinner in net.
The Campbell head slump dramatics after every goal is getting old. His last five games have been awful. He is collapsing into a small ball on every shot and everything is going by him. Not sure what to do with him but if he plays like this the Oilers won’t win any games. I think a Pickard look might be reasonable. Only because vets like him seem to play well for a short time on call ups. So I guess we have our answer. It will be Skinner in the playoffs. Hopefully the young man can handle it.
Good sign these days how well Draisaitl and Bouchard are playing. Bouchard looks like a new man with Barrie gone. It’s almost like Holland traded for a new Evan in that deal.
What about swapping Campbell for Binnington in the off season
It is about the only potential viable trade out there.
Woof – no thanks to Binnington. His performance has been in steady decay for a few years now. And his contract has a higher AAV with the same number of years left on it, and costs more in dead cap hit to buy out.
More data on Campbell. I list his GP, GSAA, and GSAA rank among all goalies who played more than the pro-rated equivalent of 600 minutes (this excludes the odd goalie who had a hot streak in limited action). 2019-2021 was a 70 game season, 2020-2021 was 56 games. This is from NST.
2018-19: 31 9.9 14th
2019-20: 26 -0.6 38th
2020-21: 22 4.9 18th
2021-22: 49 1.7 35th
2022-23: 32 -16.6 68th
So, prior to signing he’d been the main guy once (age 30 season) and averaged 4.0 GSAA in somewhat limited action the previous 4 yrs. He didn’t have wild year-to-year swings. Holland’s bet was that Campbell could be at least league average for a few years at $5M a yr. To judge if this was a good bet, I would like to have known how Campbell’s record compared to goalies with similar career trajectories in the past. Absent context, this year’s drop off would have seemed unlikely–a worst case scenario. Given context, perhaps the risk of having a season like this was at least moderately high.
I see the logic of sending Campbell down to the AHL and recalling Pickard. Campbell is costing us games. But Pickard is a risk too. He’s playing well in the AHL, but has only played 15 NHL games from 2018-19 to 2021-2022 with a SV% of .867. I still think recalling Pickard is the call. There’s a chance he could be adequate or at least stink less than Campbell. Campbell seems broken, unable to come back this year.
Everything rides on Skinner’s health and ability to carry a heavy load down the stretch and into the playoffs. His career high in GP is last year at 53 (13 NHL, 35 AHL, 5 AHL playoffs). He’s at 36 this year.
The entire comments section and LTs writing was about Campbell, and it certainly warrants discussion, but let’s not lose sight of 2 things:
Neither of these points refute the suggestion that Campbell likely lost them the game (and has likely lost them his last four starts). That’s potentially the division lead, up in smoke. I feel for the guy, but totally unacceptable at this level.
They do if you agree with LTs take on 3 of the goals.
iIf we don’t want deflection goals against then, for example, McDavid should have tied up Lowry’s stick or impeded his progress, even a little bit, to the scoring area. McDavid marked Lowry at the blue line and then proceeded to do nothing. Sure Campbell could have stopped it, or maybe even should have stopped it, but if McDavid puts in any defensive effort it’s a nothing play.
Jack Campbell has a 4.95 Goals against average in his last 5 starts. In these 5 starts he is 0-1-3. He has let in 24 goals in this 5-game span and many of them are on him alone. He is not playing at an NHL level and it is costing the team.
If feel bad for the guy, but he is getting paid very well to play well and he is not coming close to meeting that expectation.
He is putting up historically bad numbers for this franchise at a time when the entire Western Conference is ripe for the picking. This is also at a time when the team has several elite-to excellent NHL players putting up career numbers. The team has Stanley Cup aspirations, meanwhile it’s highest paid goaltender is dragging the team down due to his awful play.
If they expect to win games, he isn’t worthy of a roster spot right now.
For the record, this season Campbell has the 14th highest goals against average in a single season in franchise history, minimum 30 GP. Only Grant Fuhr (5), Bill Ranford (4), Eddie Mio (2) and Andy Moog (2) have put up higher numbers in a single season. Ranford’s 1995-96 season is the most recent season on this list.
When it comes to Save Percentage, of Oiler goaltenders in NHL history Campbell’s 0.882 is the 6th lowest, matching Andy Moog’s 2 worst save percentages in his Oilers career, minimum 30 GP.
Straight out of the NHL Guide & Record Book*:
1 – Eddie Mio 1980-81 43 GP
Grant Fuhr 1982-83 32 GP
0.867
2 – Eddie Mio 1979-80 34 GP
0.868
3 – Grant Fuhr 1988-89 59 GP
Bill Ranford 1995-96 37 GP
0.875
4 – J.Markkanen 2005-06 30GP
0.880
5 – Grant Fuhr 1987-88 75 GP
Grant Fuhr 1986-87 44 GP
0.881
6 – Andy Moog 1986-87 46 GP
Andy Moog 1983-84 38 GP
J.Campbell 2022-23 32 GP
0.883
*Actual source is here: https://www.quanthockey.com/nhl/team-season-records/edmonton-oilers-goalies-nhl-season-records.html
Any word on Kane playing in Buffalo ?
A few days ago Holland said zero chance he’s playing Monday but possible for Thursday or next weekend.
Wonder if Holland had a sit down with Campbell and asked him if he wanted to go down to the A and play a lot to get his game and confidence back, if he would go?
Campbell really doesn’t have a say in this. If he was a skater, he would be in the press box or in the AHL. He’s cost the team enough points and been given a really long string to play himself into form. That’s what the AHL is for,
LAK and EDM have weirdly similar “assumed 1G” starting goalie and AHL goalie situations this year. LAK has handled it differently than EDM so far. We’ll see what happens next.
This summer:
LAK – signed Petersen to $5M x 3.
EDM – signed Campbell to $5MM x 5
Petersen previous 2 seasons:
72 gp; .904 all situations SV%; -0.21 Goals Saved Above Expected/100 shots (as per @EvolvingHockey)
Campbell previous 2 seasons:
71 gp; .916 all situations SV%; -0.02 GSAx/100
This season:
Petersen 10 gp; 0.868 SV%; -4.12 GSAx/100 (unreal bad number); then sent to AHL where he has .912 SV% in 27 gp
Campbell 32 gp; 0.882 SV%; -2.50 GSAx/100; still on roster.
AHL goalies:
LAK had Copley who put up .913 in 46 AHL games this season and last. Swapped him for Petersen early December.
Copley has put up a .899 SV% with +0.55 GSAx/100 with LAK
EDM has Pickard in AHL
Put up a .915 in 70 AHL games this season and last.
Still in the AHL.
Copely’s 19-4-2 record with only a .899 indicates that LAK didn’t need a goalie to steal games, just one not to lose them.
Petersen had a 5-3-2 record when they sent him down (0.600 pts%)
Campbell was ok in the middle 1/3 of the season but with him putting a .845 SV% in his last 5 games with -6.95 GSAx/100 (that’s ghastly) maybe its time to let him find his game in the AHL?
EDM’s in a wildcard spot and cannot afford to let him find his game in the NHL imo.
EDM would have 7 more points in Campbell’s last 5 starts even is put up “average back up” results, but he’s been horrible.
EDM is 6 Bettman’s back of VGK. They should be in 1st.
Rob Blake even gave Holland the verbal needed for when he sends down Campbell:
Link to Blake (paywall): https://theathletic.com/3960380/2022/12/02/la-kings-coyotes-nhl/
Link to my twitter thread on this from 7:23 am:
https://twitter.com/Woodguy55/status/1632386380130324486
Blake’s treatment of his goalies would not have been well received in Oil Country if Holland had handled the situation in a similar manner.
In one season, Blake banished the supposed heir apparent to the AHL before the season was even halfway finished after he signed a 3 year deal with the team. He then banished former franchise cornerstone Quick to Columbus.
If you are the GM of a team based in LA, the players and agents will let a lot more slide, than if you’re the GM of a team based in Edmonton. I think Holland and Woodcroft have shown Campbell enough patience though.
So yes they should banish Campbell to the AHL … he’s a complete liability right now. And yes, they should buy him out this summer. The cap space is needed to pay for Skinners new deal and to get him a backup. The dead money is a sunk cost of a free agent signing that was a mid-step.
Oilers fans just want to win.
Quick has already been traded to Vegas who have both their regular goaltenders on IR.
I’m pretty sure Kings’ fans are already over the shock.
Great stuff as always.
what’s interesting is that the Oilers have a better points % with Campbell in net than with Skinner.
I think this team is incredible upfront. But goaltending will be the downfall of this team.
Hi Padre,
Since Feb 1 Campbell has a .500 pts% and Campbell .642 in games they started
Weird dynamic earlier in the year where Skinner would let in less than Campbell and lose games while Campbell won due to more run support.
Since Feb 1: In the last 5 games he’s started EDM has 3 of 10 points, but have scored 4, 4, 5, 5 and 5 goals. Unreal that they got a .300 pts% when scoring that much.
Campbell has had amazing goal support. 14 starts in 2023, the Oilers have scored 4+ in ALL of them, averaging 5.14 GF/GP. They won the first 9 of those starts, somehow have lost the last 5 despite scoring 4, 4, 5, 5, 5 goals.
One big difference I think is that Peterson signed his $5M x 3 extension before the 21-22 season, then posted an .895 SV% last year.
He was in his 2nd season of major struggle when he was sent down, even though it was only year 1 of his new deal.
I think Campbell to the minors becomes a lot more reasonable (I know many think it’s the only option today) if he continues to struggle through 2 months of next season.
I still don’t think sending Campbell to the minors is the right play today.
And regardless of what’s right, I don’t think the Oilers sending Campbell down now would be comparable to the Kings sending Pederson down mid way through the 2nd year after his extension was signed.
Good points
jp adds good context to this discussion.
It’s easy for us to sit here as arm chair GMs and state that Holland should demote the guy, but we are not the ones who have to deal face to face with the player, or his agent, Kurt Overhardt.
If we want the Oilers to remain a destination that UFAs will consider, then we have to accept that Holland will need to let this situation play out further. Step 1 – demotion to the AHL, for Campbell to get some games in. If he does well, then he gets a chance to come back next season, and reestablish himself in the NHL. If he continues to crater, then Step 2 may be a buyout.
When we signed Pickard it was considered a good move because he could step up and fill in as a back-up. It’s time to see if he is capable. If not, we need to find someone who can for next year and Campbell has to show he’s an NHL goalie. If Campbell isn’t better then he needs to be in the AHL next year and bought out after the season if he can’t pull it together.
Hey poster who down votes everything I post, you missed the one I’m responding to.
Is this for me? I haven’t downvoted any of your posts today, and rarely if ever do other times.
(you’re quoting your reply to me here, if you were intending to address someone else then carry on)
Maybe this blog is a little too rough and tough for you…
Have you tried Twitter?
😉
lol WG
I’m pretty busy!! i’ll get to it!!! 🙂
There are 68 goalies who have faced at least 500 shot attempts against in all situations this season.
Skinner ranks 19th in Goals Saved Above Expected per 100 shots against (usings @EvolvingHockey
‘s GSAx)
Campbell ranks 66th.
Link to post on twitter with visuals: https://twitter.com/Woodguy55/status/1632392684173414401
Glad the numbers bear out the eye test.
I said he was unplayable last night. Thouhht Jay shoulda pulled him. Team may have won the game.
Anyway. Skinner is our Man now !!!
WC standings March 4/23 using points percentage shown as points over/under fake Bettman .500
Pacific
VGK 18
LAK 16
SEA 14
Central
DAL 18
MIN 15
COL 13
Wildcard
EDM 12
WPG 11
Out of playoffs
NSH 8
CGY 4
STL -3
VAN -7
ARI -11
ANA -13
SJS -15
CHI -15
WC teams +/- fake Bettman over the past week:
MIN 4
DAL 3
LAK 2
SEA 2
NSH 2
ANA 2
VGK 1
VAN 1
EDM 0
COL -1
WPG -1
STL -1
CGY -2
ARI -2
SJS -3
CHI -4
EC standings March 4/23 using points percentage shown as points over/under fake Bettman .500
Atlantic
BOS 41
TOR 21
TBY 17
Metropolitan
CAR 28
NJD 25
NYR 16
Wildcard
PIT 9
BUF 7
Out of playoffs
NYI 7
OTT 6
FLA 4
WSH 4
DET 3
PHI -5
MTL -6
CBJ -17
Cheering for BUFF & OTT. Some new blood. Fun young teams.
Would love to see BUF and OTT grab the wildcard spots
Fading enquiring minds want to know, was Hyman a big supporter of the Campbell signing? Tinfoil conspiracy minds want to know if Zach’s declining play is related to Jacks.
I guess that’s a no then.
“Markus Niemelainen, Vincent Desharnais and Dylan Wells were part of the 2016 crap,”
Hi LT, I am going to go ahead and assume this was meant to be “crop.”
I imagine this is more an autocorrect/typo than a Freudian slip, but if it was neither then it is a hilarious line and bravo!
Oh my God. I re-read the article four times and that’s four typos now! Thanks, Todd, I meant crop. Honest!
You are welcome! Last thing I want to be known as is the spelling/grammar police but this seemed worth mentioning given the context. There sure are some drafts that could be a described as a big crap but did not think 2016 fit the bill haha.
Hi from 1990
Campbell’s play causing havoc with your word recognition
Fifth goal: Morgan Barron breakaway goal, he’s a defenseman, that move he made was telegraphed.
Wrong Barron brother LT. Winnipeg’s Morgan is a forward.
The team as a whole does a horrible job tying up sticks, I’ve lost count of the number of tipped goals that have gone in. I worry about that more than the goaltending, to be honest.
Excellent post LT… and lots of great comments on Campbell and scenarios regarding him so far…