The Copper & Blue

The End

2009-04-13T12:48:00.000-07:00

And, much like the Oilers' season, my time here is finished. Unlike the Oilers though, I'm a long way from being finished.

This will be the final post on this blog, because as of today it's moving to the Sports Blog Nation family of blogs at a new site: www.coppernblue.com. I hope you guys all follow me to the new location, which is sharp-looking and has a whole bunch of very cool tools. In addition, they're affiliated with both Yahoo and NHL.com, and I'm very excited to see where things go from here. Plus, the head of the NHL wing of SBNation is none other than James Mirtle, so I know that the group is in excellent hands.

Thanks to everyone who has read this site over the past year, and we will see you over there!

Cutting The Captain Some Slack

2009-04-12T11:37:00.001-07:00

In Joanne Ireland's column today, she reveals something about Ethan Moreau that hasn't been common knowledge - he's been playing with a broken hand since December (h/t to Bringing Back The Glory).

Moreau's had an up and down season; many (including myself) have been harshly critical of the sheer volume of senseless penalties he takes. This is fair criticism. He's also been outchanced at even-strength, has an ugly Corsi number (along with the usually reliable Pisani) and has said some funny things for a team captain.

On the other hand, he has been playing tough competition all season long, often in unfavourable circumstances and with underqualified linemates. He's also been a consistently physical presence on a team that occasionally lacks that quality.

So, while I tend to agree with Shepso at Bringing Back the Glory that it's incredibly frustrating to watch an injured player put into tough situations night in and night out while useful parts in Dustin Penner, Marc Pouliot, Kyle Brodziak and Robert Nilsson are relegated to lesser roles or the sidelines, there's a positive upside to all this - namely, that Ethan Moreau's performance could plausibly improve by a significant margin next season.

And if that improvement can turn the captain into a physical player who holds his own at even strength against tough opposition, he could be a very useful part of this team going forward. If the amount of attention his reckless penalties have gotten this season motivates him to change his ways (and to my eye he did improve in this area down the stretch), he may even be a player that I applaud next season.

Just Play The Kids...

2009-04-12T08:28:00.000-07:00

Taylor Chorney got his NHL debut in the second-last game of the season, and he played again last night. He had the worst plus/minus on the Springfield Falcons at -29, and it seemed obvious he wasn't ready for the NHL. With the season already over, the Oilers decided to give him a quick look.

2GP - 0G - 0A - 0PTS, -4

The worst plus/minus mark on the Oilers is Patrick O'Sullivan's -7. The worst mark by a defenseman is Ladislav Smid's -6. In two games, Taylor Chorney moved himself almost to the bottom of the pile. It's a small sample, but it jives with his AHL numbers, and shows the difficulties most prospects have adapting to the professional game.

Jeff Deslauriers also got shelled last night, after playing very well the night before. Here are his numbers on the season:

10GP - 4W - 3L - 0OTL, 3.34 GAA, .901 SV%

That shouldn't be a surprise; he put up a .906 SV% in his AHL conditioning stint and in his best year (last season) he put up a .912 SV% in the AHL. After his good game against Calgary in game #81 of the season, I read in a few different places that Deslauriers should get 50% of the starts next season.

There's a simple rule that I like to follow when making decisions like this: prospects who are average or below average in the AHL very rarely turn out to be immediately good in the NHL, no matter how nice it would be if they did. It amazes me how few people understand that.

Poverty

2009-04-11T11:15:00.000-07:00

There was a time when Doug Weight was easily the most important player on the Edmonton Oilers. He was the team captain, and its leading scorer – in his final year with the club, Weight’s 90 points were 20 ahead of the next closest player (Ryan Smyth).

At one point, Weight was the best player on a pretty good first line – he played with Bill Guerin and Ryan Smyth, and the biggest concern the Oilers had was that they were only a one-line club offensively, as a series of failed experiments (Pat Falloon, Alexander Selivanov, Sergei Zholtok and Dan Cleary to name a few) came and went on the second line.

To close out his time in Edmonton, Doug Weight played between Cleary and Zholtok while Mike Comrie centred a soft-minutes scoring line with Anson Carter and Ryan Smyth.

In the summer of 2001, Weight was sent away to St. Louis for Jochen Hecht, Marty Reasoner, and prospect Jan Voracek. He was soon to be a free agent, and Edmonton couldn’t afford him. It was perhaps the definitive mark of the EIG’s time in control of the Oilers – many good players were sent away (including both of Weight’s best wingers, Guerin and Smyth) because of money issues.

One of the best things about Daryl Katz’s purchase of the team was the promise that there would be no more complaining about money; the owner was wealthy, and wanted to see a winning team.

Even if that’s true, he’s not above pleading poverty to get his way, and maybe things haven’t changed so much since the days of the EIG – he even uses the same spokesman. Some quotes from Patrick Laforge in today’s Calgary Herals:

However, the drop in the value of the loonie took about a $6-million chunk out of the revenue stream, says Oilers president Patrick LaForge.

"That really bites into what you have for other things," says LaForge. "We've had to make adjustments on expenses elsewhere when we could."

A 6-million dollar drop (assuming we can believe the Oilers’ figures) is hardly chump change. On the other hand, the Herald sites a Forbes magazine report which pegged the team’s revenue as 85-million dollars and their expenses as 63.8 million dollars. That’s still quite the profit margin (a little over 21 million dollars). If we accept the Forbes figures and subtract Laforge’s 6 million, the Oilers still made a profit of about 15 million dollars.

LaForge says not making the playoffs won't break the team, but a couple home games would've bumped up the bottom line. In the longer term, the team's financial fortunes seem to be tied to hopes of building a new arena…

"We have the smallest arena in the NHL. We are the least equipped to serve our customers and in-house clients," says LaForge. "We want an arena that's bigger and better with more things to do."

(bolding mine)

Maybe we’re past the days of players leaving town because the Oilers can’t afford to pay them. But we certainly aren’t past the days of Patrick Laforge (undoubtedly under ownership’s direction) citing impending financial ruin to squeeze whatever he can out of the fans and out of the city.

Perugini Injured

2009-04-11T10:46:00.000-07:00

The Stockton Thunder played their first playoff game last night. They're the only team under the Oilers' umbrella to make the post-season, with both Springfield and Edmonton out of the picture, and it doesn't seem likely that they'll make it out of the first round.

Halfway through last night's game, Stockton lost their starting goaltender, Andrew Perugini. It's a right leg injury, and at this point it is uncertain how sever the injury is, but Perugini could not finish the game and will be re-evaluated today.

Perugini has easily been the best goaltender on Stockton's roster; here's a quick comparison between him and backup Bryan Pitton:

Perugini: 21-13-3, 2.81 GAA, .908 SV%
Pitton: 9-19-3, 3.39 GAA, .886 SV%

Last night, Perugini allowed 2 goals against on 19 shots. Pitton allowed 2 in the 10 shots he faced in relief. There's a big difference in their relative levels of ability, and it may cost Stockton a chance to advance in the playoffs.

Getting past the comparatively minor issue of Stockton's post-season, the real question is how serious this injury is and what sort of repercussions it will have on Perugini's career.

MacTavish and Roloson

2009-04-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

The way I understand it, there are still people out there who doubt Lowetide's frequesnt assertion that Criag MacTavish will easily get another NHL job once his time in Edmonton officially ends. Familiarity breeds contempt, I suppose, so perhaps that's the reason why many Oilers' fans don't give him the credit he's deserved after his work with many Oilers teams - the group last year certianly over-achieved, like others during his time here.

The respect that the hockey world as a whole has for MacTavish was reinforced by a Sun Media report today:

At the same time Craig MacTavish is contemplating turning in his resignation as coach of the Edmonton Oilers, Sun Media has learned he is about to be asked to consider becoming head coach of Team Canada at the world hockey championship in Switzerland.

"We have him on our short list," Hockey Canada president Bob Nicholson said. "Craig certainly has a shot. He's definitely in the mix."

According to the report, that short list consists of MacTavish, Lindy Ruff in Buffalo and Barry Trotz in Nashville. That isn't a bad group to be counted among.

As for Dwayne Roloson, we've been reading things over the last month that indicated the Oilers were strongly leaning towards bringing him back for at least another season.

Jim Matheson's column today quotes Roloson as saying that he felt he could play "another three or four years," and further suggests that a two-year contract would be a good length.

Even more frightening, Matheson says that those two years would give the Oilers "time to see if Deslauriers can take over." I hope that Matheson's speculating here, but given his contacts within the organization it is impossible to be sure.

I do know this - if I were in charge, I'd do two things:

1) Do everything possible to get Roloson back on one-year contracts only.
2) Get him a backup that the coach can have confidence in.

I actually really like Jeff Deslauriers; he's been badly mismanaged and suffered through some awful developmental years for a team that didn't make development a priority. But the bottom line is that the Oilers cannot afford to have a question mark in net behind their 40-year old goaltender. It's too big of a gamble.

So I'd argue that if Roloson is coming back, Deslauriers should be sent on his way and a veteran option (from the Jason Labarbera class) should be brought in to serve as a 1B goaltender.

Turnover

2009-04-09T09:45:00.000-07:00

The idea that the Oilers need to make significant roster changes seems firmly ensconced in the minds of both the media and Oilers fans. One example is Adam Proteau's latest piece in the Edmonton Metro News:

What I will be fault [Oilers fans] for is continued faith this summer that the current group of Oilers management and players will guide them out of the muck and toward consistent Stanley Cup contention. Miss the playoffs one year, and perhaps you can blame bad luck for it. Miss the playoffs two straight years, and maybe you can add “key injuries” to the list of excuses as to why you just weren’t good enough. However, miss the playoffs three straight years, and you’ve officially got an overestimated collection of players on your hands. And no amount of text messages, tweets, or carrier pigeon notes sent by owner Darryl Katz can convince me otherwise.

A team that misses the playoffs three straight years without changes, is simply not good enough - that seems like a fair assertion to me. Proteau continues with his vision of the Oilers' work this summer:

Now, that’s not to say they should “blow it up” and start from scratch. Nevertheless, if at least 25 per cent of Edmonton’s roster hasn’t been reshaped significantly by the team’s next training camp, you can expect the Oilers to finish next season the same way they finished this year.

This is all based on a false premise, though - the notion that the Oilers who missed the playoffs this season are the same Oilers who missed the playoffs in 2006-07. Let's revisit that roster, and note how it's changed (players ranked by total points, only players with 10+ games included):

Ryan Smyth - gone
Petr Sykora - gone
Ales Hemsky
Shawn Horcoff
Jarret Stoll - gone
Raffi Torres - gone
Joffrey Lupul - gone
Fernando Pisani
Marc-Andre Bergeron - gone
Marty Reasoner - gone
Steve Staios
Patrick Thoreson - gone
Toby Petersen - gone
Daniel Tjarnqvist - gone
Marc-Antoine Pouliot
Jason Smith - gone
Ladislav Smid
Matt Greene - gone
Brad Winchester - gone
Jan Hejda - gone
Tom Gilbert
Peter Nedved - gone
Dwayne Roloson
Mathieu Roy - in the minors
Zack Stortini
Danny Syvret - gone
Bryan Young - gone
Jussi Markkanen - gone
Jean-Francois Jacques

So, of the 29 players to appear in more than 10 games with the Oilers in 2006-07, how many are not currently on the roster? 19.

That means that since 2006-07, 66% of the roster - two out of every three players - has been turned over. That's not just 25% change; that's 33% change every year! In other words, the idea that this Oilers team has been static and needs to change that pattern is manifestly false.

Of course, the Oilers will likely make significant roster changes this summer, but I'm not convinced that they are necessary - this is a team with a young, talented core that will continue to get better. I'm not arguing for the status quo, but I think some incremental change is probably the best course of action at this point. When 2 out of every 3 players are gone from a team in just two years, the time for massive overhauling should be over.

Since I Do So Little Writing...

2009-04-08T16:11:00.000-07:00

...I'm going to do a little more of it.

Starting today, I'll be doing my regular bits here and at Oilers Nation, but I'll also be doing some work for ON's newest site, Canucks Army. Today I did a little piece on Scott Arniel, the coach of the Manitoba Moose and the latest AHL Coach of the Year, as well as another bit on the perpetually underrated Sedin twins, and what they mean to the Canucks' season so far.

It makes a certain amount of sense - I live in B.C., my dad and most of my friends are Canucks fans, and I'm one of the few Oilers' guys out there who doesn't hate them.

I will still be doing Oilers' stuff, though - today at ON I did a bit on Linus Omark moving to the KHL and a breakdown of primary and secondary assists on the Oilers this season, sparked by some comments Robin Brownlee made about Tom Gilbert.

In any case, I just wanted to mention the new site quickly. Carry on.

The Rather Predictable Mathematical Elimination Terry Jones Column

2009-04-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

From Terry Jones' latest burst of apoplectic rage:

We've seen it over and over and over so I don't know why we ought to be shocked by this team not being able to bring anything resembling interest much less intensity, desire, desperation, will, character and anything resembling a refuse-to-lose mentality.

Five minutes in the shots were 9-3! Not long later they were 13-4!

To his credit, Jones includes one sentence with any significance to the game as a whole later on, although it's buried between his typical ham-handed rhetoric:

To their credit they took the game over in the second period.

No kidding. I know Jones (and his readership) don't want to focus on the positive, or even on a fair, balanced picture, but here's some fun with the shot clock.

Five minutes in the shots were 9-3!
Not long later they were 13-4!
Form that point until the end of the second, the Oilers out-shot the Kings 21-9!
Then the Oilers out-shot the Kings 14-8 in the third period!

A fair assessment would be that despite a poor first period, the Oilers outplayed the Kings for the vast majority of the game. However, because in previous games they had put themselves in an untenable situation, their inability to get the win eliminated them from the playoffs mathematically. It's unfortunate that they didn't outperform teams all season like they did last night; things would have turned out differently.

But that's Jones for you. He has a point that he wants to make, and he'll grasp whatever straws he needs to get it across - regardless of whether that's the best description of reality or not.

One

2009-04-07T12:10:00.000-07:00

This is Joni Pitkanen. A year ago today, I wrote my first post on this blog, a projection for Rob Schremp. Later that same day I revisited Kevin Lowe's work from the summer of 2000 and guessed that when Pitkanen was traded it would be similar to the Roman Hamrlik deal; an established player leaving town for youngsters.

Not so much, as it turned out. The slow return to grace that I envisioned for the team never transpired; instead, Kevin Lowe made a serious of moves designed to pay immediate dividends. If he'd done a more thorough job of it, we likely wouldn't be watching the final hours of the Oilers' season (and likely Craig MacTavish's time with the team) dwindling away.

Back to Pitkanen. I wrote about him a lot that summer; his name consistently popped up in rumours until he was finally dealt, and as a result I've ended up talking about him (on this site) this past year more than any other individual player. Here's the list of subjects I've considered, based on post tags:

1. Scouting - 19 posts
2. Joni Pitkanen - 16 posts
Kevin Lowe - 16 posts
4. Sam Gagner - 15 posts
5. Craig MacTavish - 14 posts
Dustin Penner - 14 posts
7. Jeff Deslauriers - 13 posts
Rob Schremp - 13 posts
9. Sheldon Souray - 12 posts
10. Andrew Cogliano - 11 posts
Marc Pouliot - 11 posts

A lot has happened since I started this blog; I've started writing for OilersNation and let this place lapse into inactivity, and only recently restored it to it's previous level of volume.

I'd like at this time to share some of the analytical information I've collected on this site over the past year. It's an incomplete picture, because I didn't start tracking visitors until July and then later, when I switched the format of the site over to it's present form I lost tracking information for almost two months. Still, there's some fun stuff to see:

- some 20,000 or so unique visitors
- 100,000 page views
- visitors from more than 60 different countries and every continent save Antarctica; I'd never imagined that people in places like Tripoli, Surco, Melbourne, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, Kuwait, Athens, Istanbul, Paris or Zurich would be reading my writing. It's humbling.

I'd like to thank everybody who has helped bring traffic to this site; like most Oilers bloggers out there I owe a lot of thanks to Lowetide, not only for directing people this way but for introducing me to blogging and an entirely different way of seeing the game. I'm not going to thank everyone individually but many of them are found on the blogroll to the right, and my current state of knowledge would be much less if not for their insightful writing.

As for the next year, I'm not going to get into details but I think there are still some surprises to come.

Linus Omark Update (Or: Does Anyone read Swedish?)

2009-04-06T13:06:00.000-07:00

There's a new article in a Swedish paper on Linus Omark (h/t to Korpen2009 of HFBoards). The problem, of course, is that I don't read Swedish. So, I plugged it into an online translator, with some funny results, but also with a couple of points that may or may not be accurate.

- Omark will receive a new contract offer from the Oilers some time this week.
- Omark's shootout goal has been very well received in Sweden, with many comparing it favourably to Peter Forsberg's (Foppa criminal) goal in Lillehammer.
- The offer from an unidentified KHL team is more money than Omark will earn in Edmonton, but his dream is still to play in the NHL (the title of the article is "dream")

The key quote comes at the end of the article, regarding Omark's negotiations with Edmonton:

"That I have heard on the bid date has not been good enough. I do not know if they believe in me fully and I'm not interested in farmarhockey"

That's a fairly sketchy translating job, but it seems to me that Omark has changed his mind - he was quoted earlier in the year as saying he would be willing to play in the AHL to get an NHL job, but if "farmarhockey" means what I think it does, that would not appear to be in the cards.

Is he worth a one-way contract? I think so. It's a far better risk than offering that same contract to Mathieu Roy or Jeff Deslauriers.

Draft Position Update

2009-04-06T12:43:00.001-07:00

Out of reach: Colorado, Phoenix, Los Angeles, NY Islanders, Tampa Bay, Atlanta, Toronto (recently departed in bold)

8. Ottawa – 78 PTS, 4GR (MAX: 86)
9. Dallas – 80 PTS, 3GR (MAX: 86)
10. Edmonton – 83 PTS, 3GR (MAX: 89)
11. Minnesota – 83PTS, 3GR (MAX: 89)
12. Buffalo – 85 PTS, 4GR (MAX: 93)
13. St. Louis – 86 PTS, 3GR (MAX: 92)
14. Nashville – 86 PTS, 3GR (MAX: 92)
15. Anaheim – 88 PTS, 2GR (MAX: 92)
16. Florida – 89 PTS, 3GR (MAX: 95)
17. NY Rangers – 89 PTS, 3GR (MAX: 95)

Realistically, Anaheim, Florida and the Rangers are all out of reach as well; there would need to be a combination of the Oilers doing incredibly well and those fringe playoff teams doing incredibly poorly down the stretch for the Oilers draft pick to fall that low. Ottawa, St. Louis and Nashville are also probably out of reach, for good and bad.

As it stands now, the real question is whether Edmonton and Minnesota are going to switch places or not, and the likely range for the Oilers pick in June will be between 9th and 12th overall. In the entire history of the Edmonton Oilers, they’ve only had one draft pick in that range – the guy pictured above.

The Kind Of News You Only Get From Oilers Pipeline!

2009-04-06T08:49:00.000-07:00

The Edmonton Oilers Pipeline is the organization's official newsletter of the organization, and one of the things it does (more than anything else, in point of fact) is fill me in on all sorts of good things the organization is doing in the community. Because that's what it is really; a PR tool.

In any case, here's the lead from today's memo:

The Globe and Mail announced today the Edmonton Oilers have been chosen as a 2009 Great Place to Work®. The Edmonton Oilers are the first NHL team given this distinction. The Great Places to Work® list and related stories appears in a special national report in today’s Globe and Mail.

“We’ve always known the Edmonton Oilers have a phenomenal group of people supporting our hockey club, but recently our organization has made a concentrated effort to make our workplace one that our employees love coming to each morning,” said Edmonton Oilers President and CEO, Patrick LaForge. “This distinction is a great honour for the Oilers.”

What a great story. It's funny, but every time I see Patrick Laforge's name, even in text, I detect insincerity. On the list of people who I distrust despite the fact that I've never met them, his name fits in somewhere like this:

1. Patrick Laforge
2. Various politicians

Anyway, from the last paragraph on the release:

This year, 230 organizations submitted nominations and nearly 30,000 employees across Canada participated in the 209 (sic) Best Workplaces in Canada survey. Seventy-five organizations were named a 2009 Great Place to Work®.

In other words, of the 230 businesses to submit applications - the vast majority (all?) of whom aren't NHL hockey teams - the Oilers have the distinction of finishing somewhere between 26th and 75th (only the top-75 businesses get the distinction, and only the ones after 25 don't get a specific ranking). And by way of a final comparison that a lot of Oilers fans should have knowledge of, Devon Canada finished 20th.

Draft Position

2009-04-04T10:24:00.000-07:00

This is Sam Ganger flanked by Kevin Prendergast and Kevin Lowe at the 2007 NHL Entry Draft. Picked 6th overall, Gagner was the highest Oilers selection since Boyd Devereaux back in 1996.

The Devereaux picks was one in a span of three drafts that show how an inept scouting department can screw up even high picks. Edmonton had four top-six picks between 1994 and 1996, selecting Jason Bonsignore, Steve Kelly, Boyd Devereaux, and Ryan Smyth - only one of whom would go on to help the Oilers on the ice in the future.

Fortunately, the Oilers scouting department seems much better than it was back in the sunset years of Barry Fraser, and Sam Gagner looks to have been a solid selection. It's doubtful that the Oilers will have nearly that high a selection this year, but with the Oilers all but mathematically eliminated, I thought it might be a good time to see how high their pick could be this season. Every team currently within reach of Edmonton:

1. NY Islanders - 59PTS, 5GR (MAX: 69)
2. Colorado - 64PTS, 5GR (MAX: 74)
3. Tampa Bay - 66PTS, 4GR (MAX: 66)
--
4. Los Angeles - 73PTS, 5GR (MAX: 83)
5. Atlanta - 74PTS, 4GR (MAX: 82)
6. Phoenix - 75PTS, 4GR (MAX: 83)
7. Ottawa - 76PTS, 5GR (MAX: 86)
T8 - Toronto - 78PTS, 4GR (MAX: 86)
T8 - Dallas - 78PTS, 4GR (MAX: 86)
10. Edmonton - 81PTS, 4GR (MAX: 89)
11. Minnesota - 83PTS, 4GR (MAX: 91)
12. Nashville - 84PTS, 4GR (MAX:92)
13. St. Louis - 85PTS, 4GR (MAX:93)
14. Buffalo - 85PTS, 5GR (MAX: 95)
15. Anaheim - 86PTS, 4GR (MAX: 94)
16. Florida - 87PTS, 4GR (MAX: 95)
17. Columbus - 88PTS, 5GR (MAX:98)

A lottery pick is still mathematically possible, but highly unlikely for the Oilers, and anything outside of the top-twelve is also unlikely. With a bit of luck and some Jeff Delsauriers-goaltending though, this bunch of Oilers could conceivably jump all the way to the 7th overall pick.

A Mild Surprise Compared To Last Night's Surprising Surprise

2009-04-03T08:43:00.000-07:00

Jason Strudwick is the Oilers' nominee for the Bill Masterton Trophy. Strudwick has more than 500 career games, but he's never played more than the 68 games that he's played this season.

It's a nice gesture for a hard-working player whose chief calling cards are character, versatility, and a physical game. I'm rather surprised that Steve MacIntyre didn't get the nod; he suffered a serious injury this season and it was only two years ago that he was playing in the UHL. He's bounced around in leagues I've barely even heard of, and he's done it for years.

Dwayne Roloson was the other obvious candidate, recovering from losing his starting job last year to put together one of the finest seasons a goaltender his age has ever had. Still, he can take some consolation in the fact that he's certainly earned another contract from somebody - likely the Oilers.

The Transcript of Kevin Lowe's Statement To The Media

2009-04-02T23:04:00.001-07:00

Kevin Lowe: "First of all I want to say that Daryl is extremely passionate and emotional about the game, and I think that’s why the fans are going to really love this guy. He said that he was extremely disappointed and somewhat frustrated by the fact that we’re in the middle of a playoff race and all of the discussion and the focus was on the future of our head coach. He found that rather odd, and even odder the fact that it was on the pregame show that he was listening to the discussion on the future of our head coach. He just wanted to suppress that once and for all. It’s as simple as that. He’s an emotional guy who is driving to the rink, listening to the radio show and heard all this discussion – he’s excited, as the fans are, to come to the game and he wants to hear discussions about the players and the playoff race and not about the future of the head coach. It’s exactly the way I described it – he was feeling a lot of emotion, just riding with his wife to the game and hearing all this talk about the future of the head coach. Quite frankly I kind of find it odd myself when there’s five games left in the season and that’s consuming the airwaves or the news waves, but I’m not going to tell you guys how to do your job. I can’t say that I disagree with him by any stretch, and I was feeling the same way. I just think that I’m explaining his position and obviously we’re disappointed in the game tonight, but that’s why I’m here, to discuss what just happened."

---

300 words, all together (maybe a little more with the word whiskers left in), and it can all really be boiled down to one sentence: Daryl Katz doesn't want Craig MacTavish's future discussed before the end of the season.

That's unfortunate for Daryl Katz, because tonight's press conference only served as fuel on the fire.

---

UPDATE: David Staples has a great post on the press conference over at Cult of Hockey, and he picked up on the same thing I did: Kevin Lowe refused to answer the question of whether Craig MacTavish would continue as the Oilers' head coach next season.

He also managed to get a written record of Dan Barnes' question and Kevin Lowe's answer down, which I'll include here:

"When he says, 'MacTavish is not going anywhere,' It's vague enough for us to ask, Is he (MacT) coming back in some other capacity?" said Barnes.
"Uh, I think you can probably ask that to Daryl at the end of the season, but I'm not going to delve into that," Lowe said.

I alluded to it in my "fuel on the fire" comment above, but I didn't expand the way Staples does: this press conference is the surest sign we've had that Craig MacTavish will not be coaching the Edmonton Oilers in 2009-10.

People Will Never Accept Advanced Statistics (Or: You Can't Win If You Don't Buy A Ticket)

2009-04-02T10:22:00.000-07:00

People as a whole will never accept advanced statistics because they are bad at math. The MSN website has an article up on it's main page right now talking about the odds of winning the lottery; here's the relevant portion:

Lotteries are often used as examples of innumeracy or financial illiteracy because it's common to misunderstand the probabilities on which the games are based...

We can digest the big numbers involved in the probabilities of winning the Lotto 6-49 in the very same way. The nice folks at the lottery assure us that the odds that any particular number will be drawn is one in 13,983,816. To state that same statistic in another way, any number may be expected to win 0.000007 per cent of the time.
So the next time you buy a 6-49 lottery ticket, you can be 99.999993 per cent confident that you will not win the big jackpot. Now, go ahead and compare that to your conviction about, well, pretty much anything else. (For instance, based on the most recent Transport Canada stats, on average you're more than four times more likely than that to die in a motor vehicle...today.)
Talk about buying with confidence! There may not be another product about which you can be so certain. You are virtually guaranteed not to win. In fact, you may as well just tear up your lottery ticket right in front of the clerk who sold it to you, and cavalierly toss the scraps in the trash.

And yet, people continue to buy lottery tickets.

Now, I understand that there are real and identifiable problems with advanced statistics right now. But the simple fact of the matter is that people as a whole will never accept them, even if they are proven to work 90% or 95% of the time. It's something that I need to remember, something that anyone interested in pushing this viewpoint needs to remember.

Keep in mind that I'm not attacking people who don't accept these numbers now - because they're a long ways from being proven. My point is that no matter how well grounded the argument eventually becomes, large portions of society will not accept it, because some people simply won't have the necessary faculties to process the information. It reflects more on them than on the argument itself.

I don't really care how arrogant that sounds because it is true. In any society where lotteries such as 6-49 can make tremendous profits, there are just too many people who aren't capable of comprehending basic mathematics.

Quote of the Day: Justin Bourne

2009-04-02T09:41:00.000-07:00

Justin, actually, not Jason.

Justin Bourne played four years at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, and he's bounced around the AHL and ECHL over the last couple of seasons. The last little while, he's also been writing a blog over at THN.com. He's got a nice quote in today's edition, about the value of confidence:

Talent is what it is, you’re either good or you aren’t. When you get the puck, you make good plays or you don’t. Confidence plays a small part in these decisions, but it comes from successes and failures. False confidence, like your Mom’s “great game” after playing like a donkey for 60 minutes, means as much as “Mission Accomplished” from George W. Bush.

Confidence is a tricky thing; its presence is frequently cited as the reason players perform well, and its absence blamed for their failures. I think that Bourne has it right here: confidence comes from success, not the other way around. You can be more successful because you're confident, but the success has to be there first. The same holds true for the absence of confidence and failure.

Oilers Sign Jeff Lee

2009-04-02T08:43:00.001-07:00

With seasons over or nearing their conclusion for junior and college teams across North America, professional teams are signing undrafted prospects to tryout contracts. Yesterday, the Stockton Thunder signed Brandon Naurato, and today the Edmonton Oilers have signed Jeff Lee (far left) of the Oil Kings to an amateur tryout.

Lee has had an interesting, albeit unspectacular amateur career. Here are his numbers:

2005-06 (AJHL): 54GP – 12G – 21A – 33PTS
2006-07 (NCAA): 34GP – 2G – 4A – 6PTS, -8
2007-08 (NCAA): 2GP – 0G – 0A – 0PTS, +1
2007-08 (WHL): 47GP – 7G – 12A – 19PTS, -11
2008-09 (WHL): 72GP – 22G – 40A – 62PTS, +2

Lee played for a very bad Sherwood Park team in 2005-06; his 33 points represented just under a quarter of the team’s total offense. He moved on to the University of Alaska-Fairbanks in 2006-07. That team was outscored 128 to 100, and Lee seems to have been a bit player on the team. He came over to the WHL just two games into the next season. In his first season he was just one more middling player on a bad team.

This past year, Lee had a very decent season on a lousy team; his +2 led all players on the Oil Kings (the team was outscored 191 to 252) and he tied for the lead in team scoring.

In the grand scheme of things though, Jeff Lee turns 21 in June and has but one decent junior/college season to his credit, and even in that season he wasn’t a dominant scorer. On the other hand, he should at least be comfortable in Springfield - he's never played for a good team.

"Battle" of the Backups

2009-04-01T14:17:00.000-07:00

Outside of Dwayne Roloson, three goaltenders have a) played in the NHL and b) been Oilers property this season. Mathieu Garon was dumped after failing to live up to his performance last season, while Dany Sabourin has been stuck in the minors. The third goaltender is the current backup, 2002 2nd round pick Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers.

Frequent commenter Dennis made this statement over at OilersNation:

Garon’s a proven netminder and he isn’t making big dollars but he’s dealt for a package that doesn’t help us now and doesn’t promise to provide much help in the future.

I'm not convinced that Dennis is right. Here are the NHL numbers for all three goaltenders this season:

Sabourin: 19GP, 6-8-2, 2.85 GAA, .898 SV%
Garon: 18GP, 7-9-0, 3.25 GAA, .890 SV%
Deslauriers: 8GP, 3-2-0, 3.57 GAA, .889 SV%

As with my post on ECHL goaltenders the other day, there's one point that I think is noteworthy: of the three, Dany Sabourin is the only one currently stuck in the minors.

Now, I'm not about to jump on the Dany Sabourin bandwagon, since we all know what he is: a journeyman goaltender who is quite capable as a #2 goaltender if there's a reliable #1 goaltender. What I will say is that he's a) having a better season than Garon and b) not the question mark that Deslauriers is. Both of which make me wonder why he wasn't recalled to give Roloson a night off at some point.

Stockton Signs Naurato

2009-04-01T10:29:00.000-07:00

The Stockton Thunder have signed undrafted free agent forward Brandon Naurato out of the University of Michigan. He is expected to join the team for their Friday game against Las Vegas.

Naurato has had an unspectacular career for a very good team. Here are his statistics, courtesy of the University of Michigan's official website:

2005-06: 31GP - 7G - 3A - 10PTS, -3
2006-07: 40GP - 12G - 11A - 23PTS, +4
2007-08: 34GP - 7G - 11A - 18PTS, +5
2008-09: 25GP - 6G - 7A - 13PTS, +3

Fully one third of Naurato's NCAA goals were scored with the man advantage. He has a very good shot, as attested to by multiple scouting reports and a career 11.1 SH% in college hockey.

Naurato may help the Stockton Thunder in their playoff drive, but he's unlikely to ever get close to an NHL roster.

Quote of the Day

2009-03-31T14:16:00.000-07:00

The player in this picture is Theo Peckham, the guy who is likely the best defensive prospect currently in the Oilers' system (with all due respect to Jeff Petry). He's going to draw in tonight for the injured Ladislav Smid. Taylor Chorney's been recalled to take Peckham's spot in the pressbox.

Craig MacTavish was asked about Peckham in his press conference this morning, and the exchange went like this:

Reporter: Will Peckham take all of Smid’s minutes, or is it going to increase the workload for the rest?

MacTavish: No, it’ll increase the workload for the rest. With Smid and Strudwick there’s a real comfort level defensively with those two. You don’t want to put a young defenseman in a position where he has to go against the top line or even the second line. (italics mine)

That's why the player behind Peckham is Ben Guite, who has four goals on the season and posted a career-high 22 points last season. Because matchups matter, and for a young defenseman the best place to start an NHL career is on the bottom rung - playing weak opposition.

It's also a big part of the reason why teams breaking in a bunch of young players go nowhere fast - there simply aren't enough 3rd and 4th-line forwards to match up against, so somebody ends up getting burned.

A Quick Thought On Goaltenders Under Contract

2009-03-31T12:27:00.000-07:00

This picture is of Glenn Fisher from his days at the University of Denver. He was an unremarkable NCAA goaltender except in his final season where he posted a .919 SV% and earned a professional contract.

Fisher is also one of three goaltenders connected to the Oilers' organization currently playing in the ECHL. Here are the three, and their stats lines for this season:

Fisher: 12-7-2, .926 SV%
Perugini: 21-12-3, .909 SV%
Pitton: 9-18-3, .888 SV%

I still think Perugini's a better prospect than Fisher based on age and context (Fisher's numbers come on a very defensively sound Las Vegas Wranglers team) but Fisher seems to have bounced back nicely from a miserable 2007-08.

The one point that I think needs emphasis is this: of the three, Bryan Pitton is the only one who has an NHL contract.

KHL Scoring Leaders, 2008-09

2009-03-26T10:04:00.000-07:00

With the Edmonton Oilers still rumoured to be looking at Jaromir Jagr as a possible option this summer, I thought it might be a good time to take a look at some of the other players in the KHL. Let's use Jaromir Jagr as the cut-off point, and move on from there.

T7. Jaromir Jagr - 55GP - 25G - 28A - 53PTS (.96 PPG)

We all know who Jagr is. He recorded 71 points in the NHL in 2007-08, a total preceded by seasons with 96 and 123 points. He's a first-ballot hhall of famer when he retires, and would likely help the Oilers next year.

T7. Alexander Korolyuk - 55GP - 21G - 32A - 53PTS (.96 PPG)

Korolyuk's been in Russia since the NHL lockout. The Sharks stole him with a 6th round pick in 1994 and he spent his entire career in San Jose (although he was New Jersey Devils property for a while), managing 142 points in 296 games. Never an elite offensive player, Korolyuk managed 37 points in 63 games in his final NHL season (2003-04).

T5. Alexei Tereshenko - 55GP - 29G - 28A - 57PTS (1.04 PPG)

Tereshenko was drafted by Dallas in the third round of the 2000 NHL Entry Draft, and has spent his entire career in Russia so far. The 29-year old had far and away his best season ever, nearly doubling his goal total from the season before. He could be a late-bloomer, or he could come back down to Earth.

T5. Kevin Dallman - 53GP - 28G - 29A - 57PTS (1.08 PPG)

Dallman was an offensive force in junior, and put up decent point totals in the AHL, but never came remotely close to his numbers this past season in 150 NHL games spent in Boston and Los Angeles.
4. Denis Zaripov - 56GP - 34G - 31A - 65PTS (1.16 PPG)

Zaripov's a player who might be of interest to an NHL team. He actually played in North America in his draft year, putting up a 62GP - 23G - 8A - 31PTS stats line for the Swift current Broncos in his draft year. He was not drafted despite the goal scoring and some decent size, and he's been an elite player in Russia for three years running now. He's still young; he turned 28 today.

3. Alexei Morozov - 49GP - 32G - 38A - 70PTS (1.43 PPG)

Jagr gets the press, but if the Oilers are interested in adding some KHL scoring, Alexei Morozov could be a better option. He had three nice seasons with Pittsburgh before the lockout, but returned to Russia for 2004-05 and has been a difference maker there ever since. The KHL typically is a much lower-scoring league than the NHL, and it seems reasonable to think Morozov could be a big help to an NHL team right now.

2. Jan Marek - 53GP - 35G - 36A - 71PTS (1.34 PPG)

Marek was drafted as a 24-year old in 2003 by the New York Rangers, but has played exclusively in Europe. He's smallish but has been an offensive difference maker in the top czech league since the year before he was drafted, and has been a point per game player for three years now in Russia.

1. Sergei Mozyakin - 56GP - 34G - 41A - 75PTS (1.34 PPG)

Mozyakin (on the left, talking to a bundled-up Alexei Yashin) was a Blue Jackets' pick in the 9th round of the 2002 draft. He spent four games in the QMJHL in 1998-99, but other than that seems to have played exlusively in Russia. He's been a star over there since 2005-06, and is still only 28 years old. He is another smallish forward, but you have to wonder if he couldn't help an NHL team.

Jim Corsi and His Statistic

2009-03-25T11:44:00.000-07:00

Jim Corsi, who spent his entire NHL career with the Edmonton Oilers, is a rather interesting guy. He took an unusual road to the NHL, through Canadian university hockey. He spent three years with the Canadian Olympic soccer team during that time as well, before leaving soccer to focus solely on hockey.

Corsi played two seasons with the Quebec Nordiques before the World Hockey Association folded at the end of 1978-79. The next year, Corsi went 8-14-3 with a 3.65 GAA for the 1979-80 Edmonton Oilers, a team that featured 18-year olds Mark Messier and Wayne Gretzky, along with a 20-year old Kevin Lowe. They lost in the first round that season, although Corsi had already moved on, being dealt to Minnesota for future considerations. He spent the next decade in Italy and represented them at the world championships eight different times.

Corsi holds a graduate degree in engineering, and speaks four different languages. He’s been the goaltending coach for the Buffalo Sabres since the 1997-98 season, and during his tenure the Sabres have been a reliable producer of NHL goaltenders (Ryan Miller, Martin Biron, Mika Noronen).

Keith Loria of NHL.com interviewed several NHL goalie coaches, including Corsi, for a January 29th piece, and he talked a little bit about pregame preparation and also what he does with the Sabres’ minor-league goaltenders:

On the road, you give your goalie an understanding of the surroundings, how the boards work, how the glass works, video and stats of the opposing players. I have to coordinate with the coaching staff and give a general idea on how the opposition prepares itself in the offensive side of the game and power plays."

"One of my duties is to work with our Portland team and we have various technical ways of following our goaltenders and draft picks playing in college. We'll look at videos and watch tape. We stay in contact with them as best we can. It's not always easy because you can see how the player is playing in a game but you don't always know the emotional part, so you try to be hands on with all of them."

I thought there were some interesting points in those quotes. Jim Corsi is best known for the statistic that bears his name, the Corsi number; and as a result he’s frequently mislabeled as someone who only uses numbers in his work. Such a label is obviously wrong: the statistics don’t tell you how pucks bounce off the glass or the boards. He also talks about the difficulties of managing players spread out across the country, saying that it’s difficult to coach when “you don’t always know the emotional part”.

Yet, from his quote we can also get an idea of the technical difficulties of following just the goaltenders already drafted by an organization. There are hundreds of players in the NHL, thousands more playing in Europe, the AHL and the ECHL. Then there are the players in various junior leagues around North America, and going the college route; even with a large scouting staff, it is difficult to keep tabs on everyone. The Sabres have resorted to doing the vast majority of their scouting via video, a decision that may end up making some sense – is it better to see a player a few times live or many times on video?

This is one of the real advantages of statistics over watching a player live: sample size. The short-hand for this is what I call the Brian Boucher effect. Boucher is an NHL journeyman; he’s currently the backup goaltender for the San Jose Sharks. He’s had some ups and downs in his career, occasionally taking over the starting job and sometimes getting stashed in the minors.

On December 31, 2003, Boucher posted a shutout over the Los Angeles Kings. He posted another in his next game against the Dallas Stars. Over the next week, the Coyotes would beat the Carolina Hurricanes, Washington Capitals, and Minnesota Wild, with Boucher posting shutouts in all five games.

Now imagine, for a moment, that Boucher were a little used junior goaltender, and the scout watching him caught just that five game segment. Without statistical context, what assumption would likely be made?

That is the first difficulty. The second lies in trying to gauge all 18 skaters playing in a single game. It’s a difficulty that Gare Joyce ran into when he tagged along with Columbus scouts for his book Future Greats and Heartbreaks. Joyce attempted to do scouting reports on all of the players, and found his notes a confused and nearly useless mess. A long-time scout advised him to focus on just one player for an entire shift, following him exclusively, because that’s how he isolated players for his reports. Joyce did so, with superior results.

I’ve used that technique myself. I’m hardly a scout; I imagine that there are so many things picked up over the course of a lifetime in the game that a fan like me doesn’t start to comprehend. Still, by choosing one player and following him, you can get an excellent idea of his quality. On the other hand, such focus comes at a price; you miss much of what else is happening on the ice.

The combination of these two problems is where statistics become useful. Of course, they’re limited by some of the same problems: let’s say Player X spends 90% of his ice-time with offensive stars, and 10% with the rest of the team. In the 10% segment, his line scores 3 goals and allows 3. In the 90% segment, he puts up very good numbers playing with good players. But is he a good player, or is he being carried by his line-mates? It’s very difficult to tell, based on the numbers.

This is where the Corsi number comes in handy. It’s not a common statistic, so I’ll give a brief explanation. The NHL tracks shots on net, missed shots and blocked shots. The Corsi number is the total of all shots at net (incl. misses and blocks) for and against while a player is on the ice. To make it more accurate, this is often measured only at even-strength. Because the vast majority of shots come from the offensive zone, this statistic is a fairly good measure of who is spending a lot of time in the offensive zone, and who is getting stuck in the defensive zone.

Suddenly, that 10% segment is much bigger. Instead of 3 goals for and 3 goals against, we can expand it to 21 shots for, and 40 shots against. If we toss in missed shots and blocked shots, we could be looking at a Corsi of +60/-100, which tells us that our Player X was likely spending too much time in the wrong end of the rink. Over the course of an entire season, a first-line player is on ice for about 2000 shot attempts in one direction or the other, and even a fourth-line player generally sees around 500. Thus, this statistic gives us a big-picture view of which direction the play is going when any given player is on the ice.

This isn’t to advocate turning control of a hockey team over to a shot-counting computer (although it probably wouldn’t do any worse than Doug MacLean or Mike Milbury). Jim Corsi, who created the statistic, talks about the importance of the emotional state of a player, and different visual variables like how pucks react along the boards of a given arena, and the same holds true for scouting. As one example, the numbers tell us that Ales Kotalik is an elite powerplay performer; but only by watching the games or video do we realize that he’s scoring goals by playing the left point. How a player gets his points is certainly a major consideration when acquiring him, and it’s only one of the things that the statistics don’t show well.

On the other hand, what the statistics do show is overall effectiveness. They don’t do a good job of show the process, but they do an excellent job of showing the results. Sticking to the Kotalik example, by using various advanced statistics we know that at even-strength he’s been playing a third or fourth line role for years (and starting in the offensive zone more often than not), and that he really hasn’t produced much offensively relative to his ice-time 5-on-5. This is something that Oilers’ management either didn’t pick up on or chose to ignore; they put Kotalik on the top line despite a proven track record of not being a difference maker 5-on-5, and the results were predictable.

The other thing statistics do is catch stuff that has been missed, much in the way video does. Don Cherry was coaching when Roger Neilson started the push towards video, and he said something to the effect that he saw the game well enough from behind the bench and didn’t need to review tape. Now, every team in the league does - because coaches are human, and have human limitations. The scope of the game is too broad to catch everything in one go. As one quick example – is the Strudwick pairing deployed more frequently in the offensive or defensive zone? Without the numbers, I’d say defensive; Strudwick doesn’t put up points and has a solid reputation as a tough, physical, stay-at-home guy. In point of fact, no defenseman on the team is deployed more in the offensive zone (relative to ice-time) than Jason Strudwick – and that’s an important thing to know when evaluating his performance this season.

In short, statistics are a useful tool for talent evaluation; they don’t predict the future, but they show where and how a player has been used, and what his results have been in different circumstances – against different players, with different players, in different zones, with lots of icetime, with little icetime. They do it for the entire league, providing a broad picture for every player to spend significant time in the NHL. They can tell you who to watch and what to watch for; if a player is putting up negative results, video can be examined for the reason. They aren’t meant to replace visual observation; they’re meant to augment it, focus it and refine it.

As a final point, statistical analysis is frequently mocked by journalists and other fans as something that bloggers came up with and use because they don’t have access to the team, or as something that nobody who ever played the game would use. In reality, statistics have been developed by experienced NHL personnel, and are used at that level. We’re just trying to catch up to the things done by people like Jim Corsi, Ron Wilson, Roger Neilson, and the like – observing and copying a trend, not starting one.

This article is also posted at Oilers Nation.

Ken Hitchcock Doesn't Like Slow Practices (Plus: Good and bad media!)

2009-03-24T10:44:00.000-07:00

Like any Oilers' fan who followed this team from 1997 to 2003, I harbor deep animosity towards the Dallas Stars. On the other hand, I have a ton of respect for their longtime coach, Ken Hitchcock. Hitchcock's record is excellent, and his work in Columbus is only adding to his reputation.

It was interesting to hear that he blew a gasket in practice this morning. From the Columbus Dispatch's Puck-Rakers blog:

About 20 minutes into the morning skate in St. Pete Times Forum, Blue Jackets coach Ken Hitchcock brought practice to a screeching halt with the blow of his whistle, summoning all the players to center ice.
What followed was a expletive-filled tirade that could not be printed in a family newspaper, much less a family newspaper's blog.

The reason for this tirade? Aaron Portzline speculates that "one could surmise that, after giving the Blue Jackets an entire day off on Sunday, the coach was just waiting for a reason -- maybe even looking for it -- to grab the players attention". Portzline goes on to point out that the blue Jackets' opponent tonight, the Tampa Bay Lightning, are the second-worst team in the NHL. If Portzline's guess is correct (and I think it is), Hitchcock could just be looking to ensure that there isn't any lapse in effort against the Lightning tonight. It seems like an idea that has a decent shot at working out for him.

Kevin Allen of USA Today polls some notable sportswriters for their opinions on the major trophy races in the NHL. It's an article that features some excellent analysis and some rather notable blindness. To begin with, the good, which surprisingly comes courtesy of Pierre McGuire:

"Without (Ovechkin), the Caps would have a tough time being a home ice playoff team. He makes everyone better as teams tailor make their game plans to shut him down. That opens up room for the other players to get things done offensively."

(bolding mine)

McGuire makes an excellent, and often overlooked point with that second sentence. Teams generally tailor their gameplans around the opposing team's best player (I imagine a bunch of people going "so?" right now). Here's the point: what do teams do to tailor their gameplan? They match lines.

This is why Quality of Competition matters, why it's important for people watching the game to see not only who is playing on their team, but who they are playing against. When McGuire says that Ovechkin "opens up room for the other players", he means that because the other team's best option to contain offense (be it an old-school checking line or the more common power-vs.power alignment) is being deployed against Ovechkin, meaning that everyone else sees easier opponents. It makes a difference, and I can't even begin to understand the sort of mindset that dismisses it out of hand.

As for the bad, I'm very glad that it's NHL GM's, not the sportswriters, who vote for best goalie. Allan's panel awarded points in the following order:

1. Tim Thomas - 47
2. Steve Mason - 40
3. Niklas Backstrom - 22
4. Evgeni Nabokov - 22
5. Miikka Kiprusoff - 13
6. Pekka Rinne - 9
7. Roberto Luongo - 4
8. Martin Brodeur - 3
9. Henrik Lundqvist - 2
10. Cam Ward - 2
11. Tomas Vokoun - 1

That's atrocious. I can see a conversation between myself and whoever thinks Kiprusoff has been one of the five best goaltenders in the league right now:

ME: Kiprusoff has a .904 SV% on one of the best teams in the NHL. That's pretty brutal.
RANDOM WRITER: But he has 42 wins, and most importantly the Flames play with more confidence in front of him!
ME: That's because his backup is Curtis-freaking-McElhinney, a guy so bad that the Flames brought in the decaying corpse of Curtis Joseph last season because even after he dropped his walker he was more likely to make a save than McElhinney. Well we're at it, he was equally as likely to make a save as Kiprusoff last season, and this year he's getting lit up on an inferior team.
RANDOM WRITER: But.. confidence.. (unintelligible)

While we glance through this stupidity, let's note that Martin Brodeur (who has only played 22 games) somehow gets points, but Mike Smith - who has a .916 SV% for an incredibly bad Tampa Bay Lightning team - is omitted entirely. What more do people want to see out of Smith?

I Hope There's A Really Good Plan B

2009-03-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

On March 21st, Dan Barnes of the Edmonton Journal gave us the following information:

Team sources confirm the Oilers will definitely chase younger offensive alternatives this summer and Marian Hossa is atop their list.

That line was a footnote in a tremendous article that explained the Jagr situation and gave the most plausible method the Oilers could have used for sneaking him through waivers. From that article, it would appear that Jaromir Jagr will be a player the Oilers will consider if they're shutout of the Hossa sweepstakes. (As a side-point, the work of Barnes and Matheson is the biggest reason why the Journal is the newspaper that's worth reading when it comes to the Oilers).

Speaking of Hossa, he made some recent comments about his thought process this summer:

"To be able to stay as a Red Wing, I am prepared to take less money, but a fair deal, so both sides are happy. That's what I'm looking for. I know if I go somewhere else, I could have more, but I'm willing to take less to stay here. Hopefully things work out."

I sure hope that Steve Tambellini is ready for Plan B, because I'm thinking that he's going to need it. Hossa had a rich offer last summer and turned it down, and there's little reason to think that the same reasons won't drive his decision this summer.

Jaromir Jagr isn't a great Plan B (he's old, he's a RW, etc.), but I suppose he's better than no plan at all. As a likely-unrelated side point, Jagr's good buddy Martin Straka is probably avialable this summer too.

Glass Ceiling

2009-03-22T09:34:00.000-07:00

Ulf Dahlen is one of the few Europeans to ever gain much traction in NHL coaching or management. Alpo Suhonen and Ivan Hlinka both had one year in the job in 2000-01 (Suhonen resigned after the season, Hlinka was fired four games into 2001-02). They were the first European head coaches at the NHL level since Johnny Gottselig back in the mid 1940's.

Dahlen spent a few years as an assistant coach to the Swedish National Team before he was hired as a European scout by the Dallas Stars (the team he played his final NHL season with). He served in that capacity for a single season, joining Dave Tippett's staff in 2006-07. He spent two seasons behind the Stars bench before heading back to Sweden to be the head coach of the Frolunda Indians, guiding them to a third-place finish in the Elitserien (25-20-10 - 10 being ties, not OT losses). My Swedish is a little bit nonexistent (slutspel=playoffs, yes?), but from their official website it looks like they've cleared the first round, beating Lulea (current home of Linus Omark) in five games and are now tied at one game a piece with HV 71 in the second round.

This would seem to be the glass ceiling of the NHL; there have been a handful of European assistants (Ulf Samuellson serves on the staff in Phoenix, as an example) but very few head coaches. It may be that the level of coaching talent is lower over there; based on Dave King's book it would seem that line-matching is still a foreign concept to most. On the other hand, it's hard to believe that none of the more successful European coaches could accomplish anything in the NHL.

Leaving aside coaching, the likeliest candidate to have serious success in the NHL would seem to be Jarmo Kekalainen. Kekalainen spent four years as the General Manager of IFK Helsinki and the chief European scout for the Ottawa Senators, subsequently joining the Senators full-time in 1999 as Director of Player Personnel. He spent three years in that position before joining the St. Louis Blues as assistant G.M and Director of Amateur Scouting. Here's a list of players the Senators pulled from Europe during his time there who went on to play in the NHL:

Marian Hossa - 12th overall, 1997
Jakub Klepis - 16th overall, 2002
Anton Volchenkov - 21st overall, 2000
Martin Havlat - 26th overall, 1999
Alexei Kaigorodov - 47th overall, 2002
Jani Hurme - 58th overall, 1997
Antti-Jussi Niemi - 81st overall, 1996
Petr Schastlivy - 101st overall, 1998
Magnus Arvedson - 119th overall, 1997
Christoph Schubert - 127th overall, 2001
Andreas Dackell - 136th overall, 1996
Martin Prusek - 164th overall, 1999
Ivan Ciernik - 216th overall, 1996
Karel Rachunek - 229th overall, 1997
Sami Salo - 239th overall, 1996
Toni Dahlman - 286th overall, 2001

Kekalainen's worst bust in Ottawa was probably Klepis, who was selected one pick after Jussi Niinimaki. No player drafted higher than 60th overall out of Europe during Kekalainen's tenure ever failed to make the NHL, and even in the late rounds more players made it than missed as seen on the list above. As much as I liked the Steve Tambellini hiring (outside the organization, nice looking resume), I would have been ecstatic to see Kekalainen as the Oilers' GM. Hopefully he'll get a chance, somewhere.

Going back to Dahlen, he played four seasons for the Minnesota North Stars and was on the team that relocated to Dallas for the 1993-94 season. It's good to see a team in Minnesota again, although it's less good to see that they aren't that far behind the Oilers. Counting today's game, the Oilers will play Minnesota twice before the season ends, and you have to think that the Wild have targetted the Oilers as their best chance at a playoff spot - especially given the Oilers' difficulty with them in recent years.

Every So Often, You Read Something Crazy

2009-03-21T18:23:00.001-07:00

Most everybody who has been following Oilers' hockey the last little while knows the name Peter Adler. Most recently, Adler's name surfaced because he was the one who told David Staples that the Oilers were taking a serious look at bring Jaromir Jagr to Edmonton. Staples has regularly cited him in his reports, and he's clearly got a good idea of what's going on around the hockey world. He's both experienced and connected.

On the other hand, today he wrote a piece at the Cult of Hockey that left me rather astonished, from beginning to end. For starters, there's his first sentence:

Hockey, originally a Canadian national game, has become way too Americanized. And that's what's wrong with it.

Well, there's nothing like a cheap appeal to nationalism to get your point across, is there? I've spent some time in the States, and I have no desire to live in that culture - the difference between here and there is palpable. On the other hand, the implication that Canada=good and America=bad as a rule is asinine. The notion that the primary ill of the game is that it has become too American is something you wouldn't even expect to see Don Cherry advance.

I'm going to skip the bit where Adler implies that the institution of video coach is a waste, since that hardly needs rebuffing, and move on to the next point:

You see, hockey, [coach Ivan] Hlinka liked to say, is a perfectly simple game. It begins at zero-zero, lasts three times 20 minutes, and the puck is round. That's all one has to know. Adjusting my team's game to the opposition's game? Don't be silly. Either my team's playing well enough and we win, or it isn't, then we lose.

I realize that Adler is paraphrasing Hlinka (fired four games into his second NHL season), but I'm not sure which is worse: the arrogance or the imbecility of this position. It's like when you play chess - the opposition's pieces don't matter, either your strategy is brilliant enough or it isn't, right?

Cocky? Absolutely. Considering everybody and their dog keeps talking about confidence as a major contributing factor to winning (and lack thereof to losing), this kind of cockiness should be a must rather than an exception.

You know who was confident? George Armstrong Custer was confident. Custer was so confident that when he entered the Little Big Horn, he didn't want to kill the Indians - he wanted to capture them. He was so confident that he opted not to take Gatling guns with him; he felt the extra weaponry wasn't worth the loss of mobility. In short, the idea that confidence directly translates into victory (an idea held by others besides Adler) is just a touch ridiculous.

The worst thing happening through the last decade is the increasing stress on statistics.

This is amusing, given that both the statistics and video that Adler so hates were primarily instigated by the work of Roger Neilson, back in the late 70's.

After listing the pile of statistics that NHL teams provide to the media after each game, Adler makes the following statement:

Real life differs slightly. If a coach can't make those decisions without consulting the statistics, that coach has no business coaching, especially not coaching professionals.

Best let Ron Wilson and Roger Neilson know that their statistics are without merit.

Baseball aficionados will try to teach the uninitiated that there are some deep, dark secrets involved in their game that make it look and feel almost like chess on artificial turf. Look, he moved his left eyebrow ever so slightly to the right and then up, and that means . fill in the blanks. And all that nonsense is based on - guess what? - right! Statistics!

Actually, putting meaning into a player's facial expression would be a hallmark of the "saw him good" crowd - and not even the good ones of course, just the ones that most competent observers deride (look at Cole's face - MacTavish has lost the room).

I'm going to stop here because honestly this column is so far out to lunch that it almost doesn't need rebuffing. I'll skip the bit about how this rocket scientist/brain surgeon approach to hockey hasn't sold the game in non-traditional markets, and the rather tedious demand to "bring the game back where it belongs", because these are bizarre arguments.

Dallas Loses Game and Star

2009-03-21T17:52:00.000-07:00

Future Greats and Heartbreaks remains my favorite hockey book. I've talked about it before and if this site is running in ten years chances are that I'll still be mentioning it.

One of the stories that Gare Joyce tells involves Don Murdoch, a former player (with many stories) who in 1998 was the head scout for the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Lightning were a disaster at the time; ownership was a mess and about to change hands, and G.M. Phil Esposito was running the club into the ground. Because of the pending sale to Art Williams, the owners at the time slashed the team's operating budget, leaving the scouting staff (all four of them) with barely any money to pay for travel.

As fate would have it, the Lightning held the first overall pick in the '98 entry draft. Since their scouts had narrowed down their candidate to two players, Vincent Lecavalier or David Legwand, Murdoch concentrated his efforts on watching those two players. Of course the Lightning selected Lecavalier, a decision that turned out to be completely correct. I'll let Joyce tell the rest of the story:

Few took note of it then, but the Lightning's next pick came in the third round, and Murdoch again took a player from Rimouski. That had other scouts smirking at their tables. They didn't have this Rimouski player anywhere close to 60th overall, the slot where Tampa Bay selected him (note: 64th overall, actually). They put it down to Tampa's tight budget limiting Murdoch in the field. And maybe there was something to that. As it turned out, Brad Richards not only led Rimouski to the Memorial Cup in 2000, but also won a major NHL trophy before Lecavalier did. Yet, by the time Richards hoisted the Stanley Cup and was handed the Conn Smythe Trophy, Murdoch was long, long gone from Tampa Bay - he was coaching in the low minors and would soon be out of hockey.

Brad Richards turned out to be a tremendous (albeit overpayed) player. He was eventually traded to Dallas for goaltender Mike Smith and change, and is an incredibly important piece of their current team. He broke his wrist on February 16th (Dallas went 5-9-1 in his absence) and returned to the lineup today against the San Jose Sharks.

Richards went -2 in the 5-2 loss to the Sharks, but broke his other hand in the game. The Stars are three points out of 8th in the West and five points back of Edmonton, and Richards' latest injury may spell the end of their playoff hopes.

Kraftsmen

2009-03-21T12:57:00.000-07:00

Milan Kraft is a player who has had a very interesting career. The bulk of his time in the NHL was spent with a very bad Pittsburgh Penguins squad; the Penguins were awful for a few years, although of course they're benefiting from it now. Kraft was one of the young players that they needed to make a decision on at the time. From the back of the pictured hockey card:

While the NHL (in general) and the Penguins (specifically) benefited greatly from last year's return of Mario Lemieux, Milan saw his roster spot vanish after 42 games.

There's more of course, surprisingly good writing for a hockey card actually, but we'll stop there. Kraft joined the team as they approached the precipice. This card is from his rookie season, 2000-01, a season where the Penguins played their eleventh consecutive playoff season and went to the Eastern Conference finals, losing to the New Jersey Devils. For the next four seasons, the Penguins would finish last in their division.

In 2003-04, Kraft's final season in North America he finally broke out, playing 66 games and recording 40 points. He had an ugly -22 rating to go along with those points, which was surprisingly not that bad a mark for that team - Dick Tarnstrom led them in scoring with 52 points and finished -37, while Rico Fata played his only full NHL season and went -46. Kraft went back to the Czech Republic during the NHL lockout, and with the exception of one year in Omsk he's played there ever since.

Kraft's name came up in a post today over at The Church of Kurri, a new blog written by frequent commenter Coach pb. In his rookie season, Kraft set the worst faceoff mark that the league has seen since 2000, going 37.9% in the circle.

Coach points out that Kraft's mark is not likely to outlast this season, because Andrew Cogliano has gone 37.4% in the faceoff circle through 71 games this year. This is something the Oilers need to deal with - either by moving Cogliano to the wing, or putting a centre on one of his wings to take his faceoffs for him (Marc Pouliot could fit the bill - particularly with Liam Reddox questionable after a late hit from Ben Eager).

Jason Gregor's been quite emphatic that Cogliano isn't comfortable on the wing, and I don't think that now is the time to try him out there, although training camp next year may be. The obvious, easy short-term solution would seem to be slotting Pouliot at Cogliano's LW and having him take the faceoffs. Coach suggested it in his post, and it would seem to be the sensible choice.

Quick, Somebody Tell Robert The Bad News

2009-03-20T16:58:00.001-07:00

That fellow who covers the Edmonton Oilers from home, David Staples, was right when he said that the Edmonton Oilers were interested in Jaromir Jagr. Turns out that the Oilers and Avangard Omsk negotiated a deal that would see Jagr come back to the NHL if Omsk failed to make the playoffs or were swept in the first round.

Somebody probably ought to let Rob Tychowski know - it seems he was under some illusions about the deal:

[David Staples] is the same blogger who just had Jaromir Jagr joining the Oilers for the stretch drive, even though it contravened the rules of the NHL, CBA and Russia's Kontinental Hockey League.

Report: Oilers To Move AHL Franchise For 2010-11

2009-03-20T08:19:00.000-07:00

Jeff Deslauriers is perhaps the player most affected by the ugly mess that was the Oilers farm situation from 2005-07. Dan Cleary, pictured getting the push from Deslauriers, was another graduate a few years further back - from the days when the Oilers called the shots in Hamilton.

There's a report today in the CanWest papers that the Oilers are likely to cut ties with the Springfield Falcons for 2010-11, and activate their dormant Road Runners franchise in Oklahoma City.

For those of us paying attention though, that isn't much of a surprise. Why, I think even the Edmonton Sun had one sentence on the subject back in November.

Oilers Corsi Over the Last Ten

2009-03-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

This is a quick look at the Oilers' Corsi ratings over the last ten games, courtesy of Vic Ferrari's indispensable Time On Ice program:

Gagner: +15
Pouliot: +15
Nilsson: +9
O'Sullivan: +4
Penner: +1
Cogliano: -2
Moreau: -3
Kotalik: -12
Hemsky: -13
Stortini: -23
Pisani: -27
Reddox: -30
Horcoff: -33
Brodziak: -55
--
Gilbert: +4
Smid: -13
Grebeshkov: -18
Strudwick: -19
Souray: -25
Staios: -40

Fun numbers - it's probably worth noting that the Oilers' latest run at evens (which has been incredible, despite their record - only special teams have been sinking them of late) isn't really indicative of their play as a whole though, given they have an even-strength save percentage of .942 and shooting percentage of 9.7%. Roloson has looked incredible for a long while now, but .942 would seem to be outside of his actual level of sustainable ability. Still, if history has taught us anything, it's not to bet against Roloson.

As for where everybody ranks on this Corsi chart, I've highlighted the things that stood out to me. Sam Gagner's going to be a terrific hockey player when everything finally fits together consistently, and Marc Pouliot is the most consistently underrated player on the team. Beyond that, there are some real questions about Shawn Horcoff's play of late, and Liam Reddox has earned his time in the pressbox. Outside of that, I think Tom Gilbert's contributions extend well beyond his counting numbers - another season like this and I think we can safely say that he's a difference maker 5-on-5.

UPDATE: Do check out the comments section; Quain has taken the above numbers and adjusted for faceoff data, and it makes some non-trivial differences.

The Devil in the Details

2009-03-18T21:37:00.000-07:00

Dave Hodge of TSN had the following blurb in his latest blog:

Thumbs up to the New Jersey Devils. We're noticing them now because Brodeur is re-writing the goalie record books, but with Brodeur, Kevin Weekes and Scott Clemmensen in goal, the Devils have been nothing less than the NHL's best team in the second half of the season.

Yes indeed, they have. It's a funny thing to run the numbers that the Devils goaltenders have put up this year, because they're so... uniform:

Scott Clemmensen: 25-13-1, 2.39 GAA, .917 SV%
Martin Brodeur: 14-3-2, 2.06 GAA, .923 SV%
Kevin Weekes: 7-4-0, 2.27 GAA, .924 SV%

In a week where Martin Brodeur passed Patrick Roy as the league's all-time wins leader, it is perhaps slightly unsettling to note what's happened to Clemmensen in the meantime.

You see, with Martin Brodeur injured, the Devils called up Clemmensen on an emergency basis - which meant that when Brodeur returned, Clemmensen could be demoted to the AHL without needing to clear waivers. That's what Lou Lamoriello did, rather than risk losing Kevin Weekes for nothing on the waiver wire. Clemmensen's record in the AHL stands in contrast to his fine NHL numbers:

Clemmensen (AHL): 5-4-1, 3.57 GAA, .892 SV%.

That could be explained by any number of things: for example, it's entirely possible that Clemmensen's in a bit of a funk because after winning 25 games for his NHL team, he was discarded in that casually cut-throat way that Lou Lamoriello does so well (see: Mogilny, Alexander for another example).

On the other hand, a quick glance at the history of Clemmensen and Weekes shows both to be nothing special as NHL goaltenders; Clemmensen is a minor-league journeyman, while Weekes has moved from NHL team to NHL team until somewhere along the line he ceased to be a "future starter" and turned into yet another one of those generic 1A/1B-type goaltenders. I am of course not arguing that either is on par with Brodeur, despite the similarity in their numbers this season.

What I am arguing is that Brodeur's numbers are certainly at least in part a product of playing for one of the most successful, defensively sound NHL franchises over the course of his career. How much of his reputation does he owe to his team? That's a question that probably won't ever be answered.

Mathieu Garon Update

2009-03-17T07:34:00.001-07:00

Whatever it is about Mathieu Garon this season that keeps his coaches from playing him, it seems to be catching.

Garon had a great run last season, stealing the starter's job away from Dwayne Roloson and gaining renown as one of the best shoot-out goaltenders in the NHL. Based on that, the consensus opinion was that he would be the Oilers' starter this season, and that Dwayne Roloson was a very expensive backup who should be moved to whoever was willing to take him.

Thankfully, the Oilers were unable or unwilling to move Dwayne Roloson (most likely the former - as late as last season Kevin Lowe stated that he expected a significant return in exchange for Roloson) and he was handed the starting job early into 2008-09. Many people held this up as an example of Craig MacTavish playing favorites, and while Garon certainly didn't get as much latitude as Roloson had a season earlier, it now seems likely to me that he probably looked much worse in games and in practice than Roloson had at the same juncture.

He certainly hasn't been given much of an opportunity to turn things around in Pittsburgh - he's played a total of three games, only two of them starts with the other coming in relief of Marc-Andre Fleury. In that time he has gone 1-1-0, with a 3.70 GAA and an .862 SV% - totals which bring his numbers on the season to 7-9-0, with a 3.25 GAA and .890 SV%.

Garon's numbers on the season, combined with the reluctance of first Michel Therrien and now Dan Bylsma to give him starts rather strongly suggests that Craig MacTavish had it right when he decided to give the starting role back to Dwayne Roloson. For a guy who has been widely criticized for his performance this season, and has generally been criticized for his handling of his goaltenders, this is a call that could end up saving his job - because where would the Oilers be now without the strong play of Roloson?

Prize Prospects and Minor League Journeymen

2009-03-16T12:19:00.000-07:00

The picture here is of Devan Dubnyk, the Edmonton Oilers #1 ranked goaltending prospect and their first selection of the 2004 NHL Entry Draft. He's had a decent season on a struggling AHL franchise, and is often mentioned as one of the few bright spots of the Falcon's dismal season.

Here are his numbers on the season:

- 55 games played
- 16-36-2 record
- 2.96 GAA
- .906 SV%

For a guy who has lost more than twice as many games as he's won, those are incredible numbers, but there's just one problem - they aren't quite as good as career AHL journeyman/NHL backup Dany Sabourin. Here are Sabourin's numbers since being re-assigned:

- 8 games played
- 3-3-2 record
- 2.92 GAA
- .911 SV%

That's fairly close, at first blush. What's really alarming is that Dubnyk has crashed and burned since Sabourin has been assigned to Springfield. His numbers over that span:

- 10 games played
- 0-9-1 record
- 3.50 GAA
- .890 SV%

In point of fact, Dubnyk's collapse has masked an otherwise decent turnaround from the rest of the roster since Rob Daum replaced Jeff Truitt in mid-February. It could be something as simple as a cold streak for Dubnyk and a hot streak for Sabourin, so now isn't the time to write Dubnyk off, but it is worth noting. It's a real cause for concern that Dubnyk's been so soundly outplayed by a player like Sabourin, who has been decent in NHL stints but has never really excelled at that level. It rather strongly implies that Dubnyk may be further away from NHL duty than is commonly expected.

Dan Barnes: My Favorite Columnist

2009-03-15T20:06:00.000-07:00

I'm a young guy; I only turned 23 a little earlier this month. The Oilers teams that I get all nostalgiac about never featured Wayne Gretzky. I've watched plenty of video, and because of my Finnish heritage I've got a soft spot for Jari Kurri, Esa Tikkanen and Reijo Ruotsaleinen, but I never saw them play live.

My teams had a very young Ryan Smyth, Doug Weight, Bill Guerin (and later Anson Carter), Boris Mironov, Curtis Joseph, Janne Niinimaa, and the rest.

My memories of Glen Sather are as an overpaid executive who parlayed his glory days with the Oilers into a big money job in New York City, and has done a lousy job of running the franchise ever since. Come to think of it, that's my current assessment of the man; the Wade Redden signing was easily the worst of this summer's UFA season, and it's rare that one is so clearly above the pack. But I digress.

Despite my youth, I have a real appreciation for history - hockey and otherwise, and some of my favorite blogs (Lowetide, Oil Droppings and BDHS to name three) are my favourites because the guys who write them have a feel for not only what the game is but also what it was. In any case, I'm always eager to find out what happened, why it happened, and all the rest - the back story just interests me.

Dan Barnes, probably the best of the print media these days (although of course Matheson's a guy I read a lot too) has a nice piece today about Sather and Pocklington. Here's an excerpt:

In 1998, when Pocklington wound up in major financial difficulty and had his team sold out of receivership by the Alberta Treasury Branch, he nonetheless found a way to take care of Sather, who received a massive fee as a condition of the sale to the Edmonton Investors Group. It has been a mutually beneficial relationship, obviously.

I'm sure that was common knowledge for a lot of people who were paying attention at the time, but I didn't know that. And while everything I've ever heard or read tells me that Pocklington's a straight-out-of-Dilbert weasel, that article made it clear why Glen Sather would be willing to stake one million dollars of his own money as bail. If, like me, you're a little sketchy on some of the details behind these guys, it's an article you'll want to read in its entirety.

Scoring By Forwards: Last Ten Games

2009-03-15T10:16:00.000-07:00

What follows is a list of Oilers’ forwards and their offensive production over their last ten games.

Some caveats first: everybody gets cold, so this isn't intended to make any grand statements about the players listed, just show slumps/hot streaks.

There's lots of interesting stuff here, though - the top name and bottom three names on the list, and where the fourth line slot in all jumped out at me.

Sam Gagner: 4G – 4A – 8PTS, +5
Ales Hemsky: 3G – 3A – 6PTS, EV
Shawn Horcoff: 1G – 5A – 6PTS, -3
Andrew Cogliano: 3G – 2A – 5PTS, +3
Zack Stortini: 2G – 2A – 4PTS, +2
Kyle Brodziak: 2G – 2A – 4PTS, +2
Liam Reddox: 1G – 3A – 4PTS, +2
Fernando Pisani*: 1G – 3A – 4PTS, +1
Marc Pouliot: 1G – 2A – 3PTS, +2
Patrick O’Sullivan: 1G – 2A – 3PTS, -2
Robert Nilsson: 2G – 0A – 2PTS, +2
Ethan Moreau: 0G – 2A – 2PTS, +1
Ales Kotalik: 1G – 1A – 2PTS, -4
Dustin Penner: 0G – 0A – 0PTS, +3

To make it fair (so that everybody had ten games) I used each player’s last ten games rather than the last ten games the Oilers have played. The asterix on Fernando Pisani’s name indicates that 2 of his 10 games came before his recent injury.

Oh, and over at OilersNation I discuss the penalty kill and take shots at the print media.

Kotalik Vs. Reddox

2009-03-14T17:11:00.001-07:00

This is Ales Kotalik, the player currently slotted on the left wing of Ales Hemsky and Shawn Horcoff.

Let's compare him with Liam Reddox, fringe NHL'er, at even-strength. To make this fair, we'll pretend that both players have played a full 82 games this season, and have played the same amount of ice-time (12:00 minutes a night, say) and have only played at even-strength. How would their scoring numbers compare?

Kotalik

2007-08: 82GP - 12G - 8A - 20PTS
2008-09: 82GP - 7G - 11A - 18PTS

Reddox

2008-09: 82GP - 10G - 11A - 21PTS

The point I'm making should be obvious. It is beyond me how the Hockey Operations department of the Edmonton Oilers does not understand that Ales Kotalik is not a scorer at even-strength. It doesn't surprise me in the slightest that there was nary a word critical of the Kotalik trade in the Edmonton media, though.

After all, he's friends with Hemsky, right?

My OilersNation Work

2009-03-13T10:18:00.000-07:00

I know there are a lot of folks out there who don't like OilersNation. Personally, I'm having more fun than ever over there; mostly because there has been a lot of great stuff to talk about this past week.

Here's the best of what I've done lately:

March 13 - Pragmatism: I think that scoring more goals than the other team is the greatest goal of hockey. I can't believe that anyone would disagree with that statement.

March 13 - Be Less Naive: Jaromir Jagr's KHL contract is valueless. Players signed to KHL deals are fair game for NHL clubs.

March 9 - A Quick Dustin Penner Question: Examining the first line with and without Dustin Penner, I find that Penner's the best option on the team. People question his effort, but his results have been just fine.

March 9 - Department of Obvious Statements - Ales Kotalik Edition: Taking a good, thorough look on where Ales Kotalik should fit on this hockey team. Powerplay point-man, bottom six forward. Pretty much the opposite of how he's been used so far.

March 6 - The Visnovsky Effect: A look at the Oilers with and without Lubomir Visnovsky. They're a far better team with him.

Columbus: Hockey Market?

2009-03-12T11:58:00.000-07:00

(H/T to Puck Daddy)

Fighting Vs. Hitting

2009-03-11T12:13:00.000-07:00

The picture here is Ethan Moreau hitting Dustin Brown, taken from a February game against L.A. Brown had taken a run at Ladislav Smid, and Moreau decided to avenge him with one of the best open-ice hits I've seen in some time. Moreau subsequently fought Matt Greene, in what has become a common (even expected) response to big hits. If you missed it, the entire sequence is worth watching and can be found here.

Of course, Ethan Moreau himself hasn't always responded to hits in kind; likely we all recall Daniil Markov's big hit on Jarret Stoll that Moreau decided to address with his fists. Moreau wound up sidelined with a dislocated shoulder.

In any case, the tradition of responding to big hits with a fight brings me to today's Ken Campbell column. Campbell's a veteran writer for The Hockey News and one of the more interesting reads out there. I frequently disagree with him, but he's a bit of a contrarian and I've often come away from his work with an expanded mind - and that's not faint praise.

Campbell discusses the recent recommendation made by NHL GM's - to add a 10-minute misconduct to staged fights, and further use of the instigator penalty. Here's the relevant quote:

If the NHL accepts the recommendation from the GMs that the rulebook actually be called from now on when it comes to instigators, it may actually cut down on the number of fights in the future.

But instead of making the NHL less physical, there’s a good chance there will actually be more clean bodychecking in the future than there has been in the recent past. To their credit, the GMs recommended referees be more vigilant in calling the instigator penalty, particularly as it relates to fights that are started after a player has been hit with a clean check.

Imagine that. Players who play an honest, physical game will now be able to go out and do their thing without having to worry about being attacked for doing something that is totally acceptable in the NHL rulebook. If this new enforcement gives players that kind of freedom, you’re bound to see more hits.

I completely agree with Campbell as to the likely consequences of this rule change, and I agree in some respects. Personally, I think this sort of rule change goes hand in hand with the headshot rule proposed by NHLPA head Paul Kelly, and that they should be implemented together. Otherwise, "clean" hits can continue to injure star players (and young players seem to be especially susceptible to this) with no immediate consequences.

Puck Prospectus

2009-03-10T14:40:00.001-07:00

I'm not a baseball guy by any stretch. I've been reading Lowetide long enough that I'm not totally clueless, but I'm pretty close.

In any case, baseball has been the leading sport in changing the way statistical analysis is viewed, and one of the groups contributing to this work is Baseball Prospectus. It's probably worth noting that they now have an affiliated hockey site - Puck Prospectus. I've been doing some reading over there, and I find myself disagreeing with a lot of the statements made. Still, the conversation is good, and there's quite a bit of stuff over there that is worth reading, so I'm going to add them to the sidebar.

Bill Guerin And The Journeyman

2009-03-10T12:50:00.001-07:00

Brian Coe, who writes for the official AHL website, had a nice piece today on Bill Guerin. He talked to Todd Reirden, the new head coach of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, about the Penguins acquisition of Bill Guerin.

Reirden has quite a few connections to the Oilers - in fact, he and Guerin were teammates in Edmonton. Reirden also hired Chris Cichocki, the former coach of the Stockton Thunder, as his assistant when he took over from Dan Bylsma in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.

In any case, the story he shared with Coe was about his first game as an Oiler, a debut he made at 27 years of age after being long since written off as a minor-league journeyman. Bill Guerin grabbed the puck for him at the end of the game:

“[Guerin] grabbed the puck,” he recalled. “Most times when someone plays his first game it’s ‘Congratulations on your first game,’ and he throws you the puck. But I’ll never forget the comments that he made.

“He took his time, said ‘Everyone stop getting undressed. I want to point something out that occurred today. There’s this guy that battled for the last four or five years to prove people wrong to get his chance to play in the National Hockey League. I just want to make sure that everyone understands that this guy has earned every bit of the chance he got tonight. I want to present him with this NHL game puck.’”

I don't usually highlight this sort of story, but I feel much the same way that Guerin did about the guys who play a long time in the minors. I always pull for the Toby Peterson's, Bryan Helmer's, and Allan Rourke's of the world. It's a long road, and it's nice to see the journey bear results, however briefly.

Resurgence

2009-03-06T09:19:00.001-08:00

Remember Jarret Stoll? Anointed as a future captain by many fans after a great performance in 2005-06, for a while it looked like injuries might have derailed his career.

He was traded to Los Angeles after a disastrous 2007-08 season, along with Matt Greene in exchange for Lubomir Visnovsky. It was a great trade by Kevin Lowe, and a nice way to end his time as a general manager.

In any case, Stoll's having a nice season in Los Angeles. Let's compare his numbers this year to his numbers last year:

07-08: 81GP - 14G - 22A - 36PTS, -23
08-09: 64GP - 16G - 22A - 38PTS, +1

It would certainly appear that Stoll's having a much better season than last year, but I don't think the difference is as dramatic as it looks at first glance.

Behind the Net ranks the quality of opposition a player sees and the quality of teammate he plays with using a weighted plus/minus statistic. Here are the numbers for Stoll, year over year:

07-08: QC Rank - 1st, QT Rank - 8th
08-09: QC Rank - 9th, QT Rank - 4th

Roughly, this means that Stoll went from playing against the opposition's best line with third-line teammates to playing the opposition's third-best line with second-line teammates. That's a big deal, and at this point I think it's safe to say that Stoll is far more likely to meet expectations playing as a soft-minutes scorer than a tough-minutes checker.

A Goaltending Conundrum

2009-03-06T07:29:00.000-08:00

The goaltender pictured is Bryan Pitton. He's had a bad season in Stockton as a rookie pro, getting handily outplayed by his backup, the undrafted Andrew Perugini. Here are their numbers:

Pitton: 30GP, 3.34 GAA, .890 SV%
Perugini: 28GP, 2.78 GAA, .911 SV%

Imagine my surprise when, this morning, I came across the fact that Bryan Pitton has been recalled by the Springfield Falcons. Bizarre, yes?

So I looked around for some sort of reason for the recall, and found nothing. I knew that on Tuesday, Devan Dubnyk had a collision with the Manchester Monarch's Marc-Andre Cliche, but I've seen nothing to indicate Dubnyk was hurt on the play, and he did finish the game. Then a possibility occured to me.

Earlier in the year, Perugini and Pitton were sent to the ECHL while journeyman minor-leaguer Glenn Fisher was the backup in Springfield. It was a strange move, given that Fisher's ECHL save percentage the year before had been only .903, but it soon made sense. Dubnyk played every game until he was too weak to strap on equipment, and then Fisher would get a start. I suspect that something similar is happening here.

Why, though, would this organization need a backup, with Dubnyk and Dany Sabourin providing effective AHL goaltending? Well, with the passing of the trade deadline, roster limits are relaxed, allowing the Oilers to have more than 23 players on their NHL roster.

I believe the Oilers are going to call up Dany Sabourin. Does anyone have an alternative theory?

Update

Pitton was apparently recalled as a precaution; Dany Sabourin suffered an injury that turned out to be minor. So much for reading the tea leaves.

Bias - Patrick O'Sullivan

2009-03-05T10:58:00.001-08:00

In my post below, I mentioned the theory (again, not my own although I subscribe to it) that general managers probably place too much weight on their own viewings of the players in question.

I decided to explore the Oilers' additions under this light. Naturally, Ales Kotalik hasn't played much in Edmonton over the past two seasons (he scored 2 assists in Buffalo's 10-goal drubbing earlier this year), but Patrick O'Sullivan has. He are O'Sullivan's numbers against the Oilers from the past two seasons (I thought about using his numbers vs. the Canucks for 2007-08, but Tambellini's staff as a whole probably have a greater influence than him individually, given that Kevin Lowe is still his boss):

2008-09: 3GP - 1G - 1A - 2PTS - +2
2007-08: 4GP - 4G - 1A - 5PTS - +3

Total Vs. Oilers: 7GP - 5G -2A - 7PTS, +5
Total Vs. Everyone Else: 137GP - 31G - 52A - 83PTS, -12

That's significant. I still think it's a good trade, but that's very significant.

Bias

2009-03-05T08:18:00.001-08:00

I’ve long suspected that NHL coaches and GM’s place far too much emphasis on the games a player plays against their own team. Either Tyler at Mc79hockey.com or Vic at IOF suggested that Daniel Tjarnqvist was acquired largely because he played the tough matchups against Edmonton.

I wonder if much the same thing happened today with Brendan Morrison. Morrison’s largely had an indifferent season, but I wondered if he’d played well in his games against Dallas, so I looked them up:

Feb. 28: 0G-0A-0PTS, EV
Dec. 27: 2G-0A-2PTS, +1
Nov. 7: 1G–0A-1PTS, -1

Against Dallas: 3GP – 3G – 0A – 3PTS, EV
Against Everyone Else: 59GP – 7G – 12A – 19PTS, EV

I’d be very surprised if Les Jackson, Brett Hull, and Dave Tippett didn’t draw on Morrison’s performance against the Stars this season when deciding to claim him on waivers.

For Those Of You Who Feel Sam Gagner Could Be Traded

2009-03-04T06:51:00.000-08:00

For the record, I like Sam Gagner. I think his season this year has been better overall than last, even if the points totals aren't as impressive.

In any case, I thought it would be a fun exercise to compare Gagner's first two seasons with those of another player who we're all familiar with.

Sam Gagner, 18: 79GP - 13G - 36A - 49PTS, -21
Ales Hemsky, 19: 59GP - 6G - 24A - 30PTS, +5

Sam Gagner, 19: 57GP - 7G - 16A - 23PTS, -3
Ales Hemsky, 20: 71GP - 12G - 22A - 34PTS, -7

It's worth noting that Hemsky's teams were superior; thus the gap in +/- is not nearly as close as it appears season over season. In fact, his -7 as a 20-year old was the worst number on the team.

Sam Gagner, Totals: 136GP - 20G - 52A - 72PTS, -24
Ales Hemsky, Totals: 130GP - 18G - 46A - 64PTS, -2

I really don't see much to chose from there. When you consider too that Sam Gagner did it a full year younger than Hemsky (which matters, believe me), it's even more impressive.

Sam Gagner's not going anywhere. That's how it should be.

Backstrom Re-Signed

2009-03-03T09:22:00.000-08:00

As per TSN, the Minnesota Wild have re-signed Niklas Backstrom to a four-year, 24 million dollar contract extension.

There was no doubt that they needed to do something with Backstrom, but I think they may have made a mistake. Backstrom is of course a superb goaltender, but he probably isn't one of the elite tenders in the league. His numbers have almost certianly been artificially inflated by playing in Minnesota. Consider the SV% numbers for Minnesota's goaltenders over the past six seasons:

2008-09: Backstrom - .925, Harding - .931
2007-08: Backstrom - .920, Harding - .908
2006-07: Backstrom - .929, Harding - .960, Fernandez - .911
2005-06: Fernandez - .919, Roloson - .910, Harding - .904
2003-04: Roloson - .933, Fernandez - .915
2002-03: Roloson - .927, Fernandez - .924

Yes, all these guys are good goaltenders, but nobody who has played more than one game has a save percentage lower than 21-year old Josh Harding's .904, recorded over three games.

Minnesota plays the most stringent defensive system of any team in hockey, and today Niklas Backstrom benefitted to the tune of 24 million dollars.

Not that it's bad news for Oilers fans, but there may be even more good news - it seems pretty likely that Josh Harding, another good not great young goaltender, should be available via trade. Why the Wild didn't trade Backstrom for a premium and play Harding and a capable 1A type (Roloson, Fernandez, Labarbera, etc.) next season is beyond me.

Options

2009-03-03T08:04:00.000-08:00

Jim Matheson tosses out some names that the Oilers may be looking at in his column today. Matheson's obviously extremely well-connected, so when he suggests names, I listen closely.

Starting with Recchi, a quick look at his advanced stats tells us that he's been playing surprisingly tough competition (4th among regular forwards). His PTS/60 at even-strength (1.90) would put him third on the Oilers. More impressive, his powerplay PTS/60 (4.43) leads the Lightning.

He's definitely a useful player, particularly on the powerplay, but he's getting outscored at a nasty rate (3.44 GAON/60), he's older than morse code, and he isn't going to be a long-term solution. Plus, he plays RW. It obviously all depends on cost, but I don't think the Oilers are a Mark Recchi away from competing this year, and he obviously won't be long-term help.

Matheson also mentions Martin St. Louis, a fantastic player who I would love to see on the Oilers except for one minor problem: he plays RW. Is second-line RW really an immediate concern? He could slot in nicely on the second line over the long haul, but given his cap hit and what it would cost to acquire him, he seems like a luxury the Oilers can't afford.

Finally, Matheson mentions Alex Frolov, who would be pure gold. He's playing tough minutes (ranked 2nd among Kings forwards in quality of competition) but apparently Lombardi isn't eager to trade him. Would it be worth parting with a core player (i.e. Cogliano, Gilbert) to acquire him? I think it very well could be - Frolov fits the Oilers needs perfectly, and he's still young.

Alexander Frolov would be the ideal addition to this hockey club. Which likely means that tomorrow Steve Tambellini will send Robert Nilsson and a 2nd round pick to Tampa Bay for Mark Recchi.

And Since I'm Here...

Ryan Kennedy of THN is tossing out Bouwmeester for Briere as a serious proposal. I'm not sure which is worse - the Kennedy honestly believes it's a "win-win" deal, or that I could see Jacques Martin doing this.

Let me put it this way: Daniel Briere's contract is a millstone. Once you get past his one great season (which, surprise surprise, occured as he approached unrestricted free agency) there isn't much to like. He had 72 points last season and a brutal +/- (-22, easily the worst on the team). He's a flawed player and is just signed for too long and too much to be worth a player of Bouwmeester's calibre.

What Would Marty Reasoner Cost?

2009-03-02T09:57:00.000-08:00

The Atlanta Thrashers sit 14th in the Eastern Conference with a 23-34-6 record and 188 goals for and 221 goals against (-33).

Marty Reasoner, a pending unrestricted free agent and former Oiler, currently sits at +6. According to Behind the Net, he's playing tough but not elite competition, and getting solid results. Here are his main numbers:

2.44 GFON/60
1.93 GAON/60
1.68 PTS/60

Those are solid results, especially given the situation. No other Thrasher is even close to Reasoner's 1.93 GAON/60.

On top of that, Reasoner's an elite penalty-killer, a good faceoff option, and by all accounts a character guy. Those three things could all be of use to the Oilers at this juncture.

Today, Don Waddell said that he was looking for young players rather than draft picks in exchange for his veterans. How about Bryan Lerg (apparently on the outs with the organization) straight across? Rob Schremp?

Hey - Terry And I Agree On Some Stuff!

2009-03-02T08:55:00.000-08:00

Has anybody read Terry Jones' latest column? I know this is a strange thing for me to say but beyond a few bizarre assertions, he's right in the assessment he does of the team.

He opens with the pessimism, saying (albeit in far more grandiose words) that the Oilers aren't likely to make a major move. He's right. Then he goes through every player on the roster, and lists guys who are either untouchable, not worth trading/difficult to trade/not worth much, or may be traded. Let's review each category.

Untouchable

Roloson, Cogliano, Grebeshkov, Souray, Gilbert, Hemsky and Gagner. I agree with that list for the most part (with the usual "nobody is untouchable" caveat) , although I'd be willing to listen to offers on Souray (supposing he'd be willing to waive his NMC), and I don't see Gagner/Cogliano both being on the roster long-term. Still, I don't think Cogliano/Gagner should be dealt now anyway. Jones also suggests that there's no reason to move Strudwick because of his versatility (although personally, I'd list him as a low-value acquisition anyway).

Unlikely

Smid - be patient
Deslauriers - little value
Horcoff - big contract
Nilsson - little value
Jacques - little value
Penner - big contract
MacIntyre - little value
Stortini - fan favoorite, improving, little value
Brodziak - be patient, little value
Reddox - little vlaue

I have no real arguments here, although I think the real reason Horcoff won't be traded is because moving him would leave a massive hole at centre - already a position of weakness.

Possibilities

Staios
Cole
Pisani
Pouliot

Jones figures Staios probably won't be dealt because of his value, but that he's a possibility. Personally, I think he won't go anywhere because of his massive long-term contract (and the fact that he's a third-pairing guy). Jones also figures that Cole doesn't have much value, although I'd disagree with him there (we should see shortly).

Lastly, Jones says that Pisani's excellent play since his return makes him very tradeable, to which I have two questions:

1) What excellent play?
2) If he's dealt, and Cole's dealt, who exactly plays RW? Hemsky-Stortini as the top two?

I strongly disagree with him on Pisani, but other than that he's painted a relatively accurate portrait of the Oilers at the deadline.

OilersNation Roundup III

2009-02-26T08:48:00.000-08:00

Slow week for me; I was out at the ski hill with some buddies this weekend so I took a bit of a break from Oilers hockey. In any case, here are the articles:

February 26 - Trade Deadline Review - A look at all the moves leading up to last season's trade deadline.

February 24 - The Gambit - I outline what I want to see the Oilers do at the trade deadline this season; send out Cole, Staios and Moreau and bring in a third-line forward with all-round skills.

February 20 - Cody Wild Prospect Review - The strangest of Oilers prospects; no other player has such a gap between his numbers and his treatment by the coach.

OilersNation Roundup II

2009-02-19T09:10:00.000-08:00

February 19 - AHL Prospect Rankings: #8 - Rob Schremp - I'm not by nature a boastful person, but I am very proud of this breakdown. It's extremely thorough and well worth the read.

February 17 - AHL Prospect Rankings: #9 - Tyler Spurgeon - I think Spurgeon has a very good chance at an NHL career (albeit an unspectacular one) if he can stay healthy.

February 15 - AHL Prospect Rankings: #10 - Slava Trukhno - Trukhno's in some trouble right now; he's got another year to right the ship.

February 14 - GDB 55: Old Friends - Game day blog for the game against the Kings.

February 13 - Should Souray be Suspended? - A followup on the Souray/Weller fight, based on a new highlight submitted to the NHL by the Wild.

February 12 - AHL Prospect Rankings: #11 - Bryan Lerg - I'm pulling for Lerg, but his offense needs to improve for him to get a legitimate shot at the NHL.

February 10 - Jaromir Jagr: Edmonton Oiler? -
Following the craziness sparked by the Jagr rumour reported by David Staples at Cult of Hockey (see blogroll on right).

February 10 - Jeff Truitt Out, Rob Daum In - Jeff Truitt fired and replaced by Rob Daum as the coach in Springfield.

February 9 - AHL Prospect Rankings: #12 - Tim Sestito - Tim Sestito's all about the intangibles; that's good because his tangibles don't track all that nicely.

OilersNation Roundup

2009-02-09T20:36:00.000-08:00

Hi Folks!

I don’t know who all is still dropping in here from time to time, but this isn’t anything as exciting as a really new post. Rather, I find that it’s a little difficult to find what I’ve written quickly on the OilersNation website, so I’ve decided to log it all over here. I’ll likely start doing a once-a-week summary, so if you haven’t followed me over there (and are somewhat improbably still reading here), this will be a bit of a Coles Notes edition. Most importantly, it will help me flip through the work that I’ve done. Bolded articles are ones I want to remember.

February 9 – Moving In Different Directions: Minor League Teams. This post examines the struggles of the Springfield Falcons and Stockton Thunder, Stockton’s resurgence, and the case for firing Jeff Truitt.

February 8 - GDB 53: Not Taking Steps Back. The game-day thread for Edmonton’s 3-2 SO loss in Minnesota; mostly I vent about how stupid the comments by Craig MacTavish and Ethan Moreau were after the previous day’s loss to Detroit.

February 7 - GDB 52: Moving In Different Directions. I predict doom for the Oilers as they play Detroit. The Oilers lose 8-3.

February 5 - AHL Prospect #13 - Josef Hrabal. Hrabal’s numbers look really bad. Looking further, they are in fact really good. He’s a better defenseman than he’s shown in Springfield.

February 4 - AHL Prospect #14 – Sebastien Bisaillon. Bisaillon’s always been an incredible scorer, likely against butter-soft opponents. NHL Future? Maybe, but probably not.

February 3 - Examples In Bad Sportswriting: Dan Barnes. Terry Jones writes 300 lousy articles a year. Dan Barnes writes one. Clearly, an opportunity not to be missed.

February 2 - Fire Craig MacTavish. It took a long time, but I finally turned on the coach. It hurt.

January 31 - AHL Prospect #15 – Colin McDonald. Bet you didn’t know McDonald has a degree in management. Good thing to, because this whole “NHL career” idea may not work out as hoped for.

January 29 - AHL Prospect #16 – Guillaume Lefebvre. Lefebvre’s only chance at an NHL job involves using his fists. He’s smallish and crazy, so who knows.

January 28 - The Oilers Top-12 Prospects, by TSN. TSN rates the Oilers twelve best prospects. I rate the job TSN did. Not only is my rating more negative, it’s more accurate.

January 27 - Team Review: Doug Risebrough Style. Doug Risebrough’s a smart man. Therefore, I steal his ideas.

January 24 - Why? My defense of statistics. Statistics, consider yourselves defended. I knew you’d feel reassured.

January 24 - Tambellini Should Follow Gillis’ Lead. Mike Gillis is a crybaby who complains about his schedule. Why can’t Steve Tambellini be like that?

January 23 - Josef Hrabal: Maverick? Josef Hrabal refuses to report to the ECHL. I comfort myself by playing the Top Gun anthem. Also, that Danger Zone song.

January 22 - Blessing In Disguise. Thank God I’m not an Islanders fan. Also, Dany Sabourin should help prevent Devan Dubnyk from suffering post-traumatic stress disorder by providing him with the hopeful thought that maybe, just maybe, somebody else will be shelled behind that miserable Springfield team.

January 21 - Compare and Contrast (Because I Can’t Leave Well Enough Alone). There are only two kinds of people in the world: Me, and people who mock me for not believing that Vincent Lecavalier is a top-10 N HL player.

January 20 - News and Notes. Everything you need to know about Potulny’s demotion, the waiver wire transfer of some guy named Murphy, and Matt Thomas resurrecting the Stockton Thunder. Also Penner and Souray punch things.

January 19 - Paradigm Shift. An article so subversive that nobody realized it was subversive. All according to plan.

January 18 - Vincent Lecavalier.Consider two very different players. Vincent Lecavalier, and Vincent Lecavalier.

January 18 - AHL Prospects #17 – Bryan Young. Yawn.

January 17 - Oilers Trade Garon to Pittsburgh. I’m okay with it, as it turns out.

January 17 - KHL Goaltenders. Don’t sign Ray Emery. And don’t develop your own goaltenders.

January 16 - Something’s Wrong in Springfield. Bruce Landon openly complains about the Oilers organization. Nothing wrong there of course, except that he’s the President/GM of their farm team.

January 15 - AHL Prospects #18 – Mathieu Roy. Have you ever stepped into an elevator shaft? If so, please phone Mathieu Roy and help him through this season.

January 14 - Thrashers Trade Jason Williams. Scott Howson out-GM’d Don Waddell. That’s a “welcome to the NHL” moment, Scott.

January 14 - News and Notes. Prostitutes, goalies, all-star games, Sebastien Bisaillon and an NHLPA agent all cameo here.

January 14 - The Ovechkin Minutes. Recap from the Oilers game in Washington.

January 11 - The Ottawa Options. Don’t bother trading with the Senators.

January 7 - The New 4th Line. Stortini, Brodziak and Strudwick. Sometimes crappy defenseman make great 4th line left wingers.

January 6 - AHL Prospects #19 – Geoff Paukovich. Geoff Paukovich: dirty player, man of “character”.

January 4 - AHL Prospects #20 – Ryan O’Marra. The most insanely hyped 4th line AHL’er ever. Well, other than Jason Bonsignore.

January 1 - Penalty Differential. Hey – Ethan Moreau takes lots of penalties! Who knew?

December 31 - Mathieu Garon. Jason Labarbera = almost no trade value. Mathieu Garon = Jason Labarbera. Therefore, Mathieu Garon = almost no trade value.

December 31 - Fresno Falcons Fold. Like a shirt. Also, Stockton gets their coach.

December 29 - Jason Strudwick. Save yourself some time and look up the definition of “boat anchor”.

December 29 - Comparables for Tom Gilbert. Tom Gilbert and defenseman with a similar career curve.

December 26 - Evaluating the Defense Pairings. Blah. Witty comment.

December 23 - Line Matchups: Edmonton/Phoenix. A review of the game against Phoenix.

December 22 - Depth. It’s a problem.

December 21 - Phoenix Roster Breakdown. Turns out that Zybnek Michalek can really play hockey.

December 19 - Damian Cox. Apparently, Cox believes that Ales Hemsky is overpaid. Do you know what’s equally apparent? Damian Cox is some kind of genius because he somehow managed to con the Toronto Star into paying for that opinion.

December 18 - To Russia With Love. Dan Lacouture bolts to the KHL. His mom and I notice.

December 18 - Ales Hemsky and Shawn Horcoff. This is a good tandem. Stop whining.

December 17 - Positives and Negatives. The Oilers lose 9-2 to Chicago. But on the bright side, Marc Pouliot has a good game.

December 16 - Linus Omark Will Be Signed. He’ll make his “omark” on a contract, and get a chance to make his “omark” on the NHL. Don’t get mad at me; I’m just bracing you for the inevitable Edmonton Sun headline.

December 14 - Stars acquire Sutherby. The Oilers might be able to use him.

December 13 - Curtis Sanford and Edmonton. Turns out he usually plays the Oilers tight.

December 10 - Joffrey Lupul. Crybaby.

December 9 - Ales Hemsky shoots the puck. This should be required reading for broadcast tandems. Other RTSS stuff too.

December 8 - Chris Gratton. A useful NHL’er on waivers.

December 4 - Oilers Amateur Prospects. Lots of fun updates on the young guys.

December 2 - Up and Down. The story of Dubnyk and Schremp.

November 28 - Finding Problems on This Team. A Corsi evaluation of the Oilers.

November 28 - Craig MacTavish Death Watch. Blogosphere update.

November 28 - First Line LW. A comparison of the various candidates.

November 25 - Oklahoma City. The Oilers are seriously considering moving their AHL team to Oklahoma.

November 24 - Leafs Acquire Stempniak. Trade analysis.

November 23 - A More Rational Lineup. Team news and notes.

November 21 - The Penalty Kill. Killing Everything But Penalties.

November 21 - Peace For Our Time. A blogosphere roundup. Unfortunately, nobody commented on the Neville Chamberlain joke, which I thought was actually quite funny.

November 19 - Context Matters. The Oilers’ schedule and its effect on the standings.

November 18 - NHL Hirings: Occasionally Imprudent. With quotes from Neil Smith!

November 18 - Pisani Injury and Minor League Update. A fairly self-explanatory title.

Springfield Falcons’ Quality of Competition Through 40 Games

2009-01-23T08:37:00.000-08:00

This is a continuation of a concept that I test-ran at the end of December – using the AHL website to test quality of competition. I didn’t get a ton of suggestions for improvement, so mostly I’ve gone with the previous format, except with one minor tweak: instead of three categories of player, I’ve expanded it to four. Previously, a “strong” opponent was classified as a player with .75 points per game or better. I’ve dropped this requirement to .66 points per game, based on the fact that the threshold for an AHL first-liner is generally about that point (based on the AHL scoring statistics for 2007-08). A second-tier opponent was classified as anyone with between .5 and .75 points per game; that’s now between .5 and .66 points per game, as based on the 2007-08 AHL scoring numbers. A third-tier player is one with between .33 and .5 points per game; this should help give some credit to scorers who face their opposition’s checking line. A player with below .33 points per game is considered a “weak” opponent.

A player receives the following number of points for an “event” against each class of player (for more on the methodology used, please refer to either of the posts linked above):

First Line: 3
Second Line: 2
Third Line: 1
Fourth Line: 0

As previously, no value is given to events against the bottom-tier player. The points total is then divided by the number of events to give a value that should rank each player’s level of opponent. Without further ado, here are the Springfield rankings. Players with less than 21 events were excluded.

Forwards

Tim Sestito: 1.867
Liam Reddox: 1.853
Tyler Spurgeon: 1.819
Colin McDonald: 1.710
Carl Corazzini: 1.674
Bryan Lerg: 1.638
Guillaume Lefebvre: 1.610
Geoff Paukovich: 1.590
Vyacheslav Trukhno: 1.575
Gilbert Brule: 1.536
Derek Bekar: 1.536
Ryan Potulny: 1.524
Rob Schremp: 1.480
Ryan O’Marra: 1.255
Stephane Goulet: 1.190

This list compares well to the one I did at the end of December; the only forward who moves more than four spots in the rankings is Gilbert Brule. This should be a more accurate list; it hasn’t made the leap from summing to differentiation (because that’s way too much work), but there are more points in the equation so the line should be more accurate. Jeff Truitt likes his checking line; the only AHL scorers here facing tough competition are Liam Reddox and Bryan Lerg.

Defensemen

Theo Peckham: 1.834
Cody Wild: 1.812
Taylor Chorney: 1.693
Josef Hrabal: 1.658
Robbie Bina: 1.651
Mathieu Roy: 1.608
Ryan Constant: 1.571
Jake Taylor: 1.481
Bryan Young: 1.476
Sebastien Bisaillon: 1.309
Mike Gabinet: 1.130

Again, this list compares well with my previous one; the only defenseman making a significant move is Taylor Chorney. It makes sense, too – Chorney has a decent resume as far as prospects go, and if he’s going to post a -21 with marginal offense, he ought to have some help from nasty opponents.

As with last time, it may be worth getting a little bit excited about Theo Peckham, and Cody Wild (who is finally getting some playing time from the coach) is probably underrated as a prospect at this point.

Conclusion

I’m reasonably confident with this process for measuring Quality of Competition; Vic Ferrari was nice enough to run a comparison between it and the Behind the Net method and they had a very close correlation so we can probably view it as a safe guideline.

The Most Interesting Thing I've Written in Some Time

2008-12-30T15:14:00.000-08:00

The official AHL website isn’t as easy to use as the NHL’s, but it does have some really interesting data. For example, looking back through the game scores, it allows us to see who was on the ice for every goal for and against. Now, this is a crude measure, but it should tell us what kind of opposition different players in Springfield are facing.

What I’ve done below is split the forwards that each Falcon played against into three categories: Strong, Medium and Weak. A “strong” player is anyone managing .75 points per game or more (Falcons who would qualify: Potulny, Schremp and Brule). A “medium” opponent is any forward averaging between .5 PPG and .75 PPG (Falcons: Trukhno, Lerg), while a “weak” opponent is anyone averaging less than .5 points per game. I’m welcome to suggestions; the idea here is just to see how good each player’s opposition is offensively.

To measure how often each Falcon sees this kind of player, we simply count each player on the ice for an event (goal for or against at even-strength). For example, on Sunday, Springfield played L.A.’s farm team, the Manchester Monarchs. O’Marra, Paukovich, Lefebvre, Young and Bina were on the ice for the first goal against, while Boyle, Martinez, Dravecky, Westgarth and Bagnall were on for Manchester. Each Falcon would have an event scored like this (Strong/Medium/Weak): 1/0/2. This is because Boyle (11pts in 13 GP) is considered a strong offensive player, while Dravecky (13pts in 33GP) and Westgarth (4pts in 30 GP) are considered “weak”.

Here’s the raw data:

Bekar: 10/17/18
Benson: 4/3/5
Brule: 20/11/25
Corazzini: 20/22/32
Goulet: 4/3/11
Huddy: 0/1/2
Lefebvre: 16/15/30
Lerg: 19/18/32
McDonald: 16/12/16
O’Marra: 7/12/28
Paukovich: 7/9/17
Potulny: 27/26/44
Reddox: 11/12/10
Schremp: 17/16/39
Sestito: 18/15/14
Spurgeon: 22/27/22
Trukhno: 23/23/34
Urquhart: 1/3/11

Bina: 14/10/18
Bisaillon: 15/13/36
Chorney: 27/29/47
Constant: 3/6/13
Gabinet: 1/2/3
Hrabal: 12/11/14
Kinley: 2/0/0
Peckham: 48/33/51
Roy: 21/29/34
Taylor: 5/9/13
Wild: 20/15/27
Young: 6/8/13

The sample sizes on a lot of these players are very small; obviously, this exercise tells us nothing about players like Kinley, Huddy or Gabinet, but even a player like Goulet could have generated 18 marks in only 6 goals for or against. In other words, these aren’t definitive rankings, and common sense should be applied freely. Still, it gives us a starting point for discussion.

Now, it would be nice to break down this chart from three numbers per player to one number per player. For this exercise, I’m going to value an event against a “strong” opponent as being worth 2 points, and against a medium opponent as being worth 1 point. Players receive no credit for being on the ice against a bottom-six AHL forward. That number is then divided by the total number of events to give us a ratio of strong players to weak players. Also, for simplicity’s sake, I’m going to cut out all players with 12 events (4 goals) or less. Here’s the new list, starting with the forwards:

Sestito: 1.085
Reddox: 1.030
Spurgeon: 1.000
McDonald: .957
Brule: .911
Trukhno: .863
Corazzini: .838
Potulny: .825
Bekar: .822
Lerg: .811
Lefebvre: .770
Paukovich: .697
Schremp: .694
Goulet: .611
O’Marra: .553
Urquhart: .333

There are a few surprises here, but most of the list makes sense. Reddox and Sestito have both been called up to play a defensive role; it makes a ton of sense that they were deployed against the opposition’s best while in Springfield. Going down the list, there’s a nice group of veterans and players with solid two-way reputations, and at the tail end are players who have either a largely offensive game (Schremp) or are fringe AHL’ers (everybody else). The bad news here is that Schremp doesn’t appear to be generating his offense against tough AHL players; his results have been impressive but they’ve been coming against the soft parade, so it’s hard to imagine him playing against anything but the same in the NHL. The last thing worth commenting on is that Ryan O’Marra probably shouldn’t be on the radar anymore – he’s -6 with marginal offense, and it isn’t like he’s playing the toughs.

Peckham: .977
Hrabel: .946
Bina: .905
Wild: .887
Roy: .845
Chorney: .806
Young: .741
Taylor: .704
Bisaillon: .641
Constant: .545

Theo Peckham’s position here is very encouraging. He’s been even (on a team nine games below .500) against the best the AHL has to offer, and added some offensive punch to boot, and those are very encouraging signs that he’ll be able to keep his head above water in third pairing NHL minutes next season. Josef Hrabal (even through 17 games) also looks much better by this metric. Of course, the big negative is that Taylor Chorney’s team-worst -21 looks even more miserable in context. Roy’s -14 and Bisaillon’s +2 are also worse by this metric.

Final note: if anyone has any suggestions for improving this metric, please chime in below.

On Defection

2008-11-19T19:14:00.000-08:00

This is Franciszek Jarecki. In March of 1953, the twenty-two year old Air Force Lieutenant landed a stolen Polish MiG-15 on a Danish island. His knowledge of Soviet aircraft and tactics, as well as his providing of the opportunity to inspect the MiG-15 (it was returned a few days later) resulted in accolades from Poland's exiled government in London, an American citizenship, and a 50,000$ prize.

I am twenty-two (for some reason I told Staples a while back that I was twenty-three; silly mistake), but that's where the similarities end. I've been posting at OilersNation for awhile now, and trying to maintain this blog here, and it hasn't been much fun. Thus, I'm ending my work on this blog entirely, and will be writing exclusively on OilersNation from this point forward. Given that it's been 7 months and 310 posts, it wasn't a particularly long ride, but it was enjoyable.

Thanks to everybody who read this stuff, and especially to the folks who commented and linked here.

And I'll see you all in Denmark.

Worth Visiting

2008-11-13T17:53:00.000-08:00

In a long overdue move, the proprietor of this blog has decided to add After the Green Light to his blogroll. This is Dawgbone's blog, and it's got a ton of quality content - I've been meaning to link to it for weeks, but I kept forgetting. Please stop by and check it out.

Compare & Contrast: Steve Staios and Dustin Penner

2008-11-13T17:50:00.000-08:00

The Oilers have been a very interesting team to watch this year, without question. The goaltending carousel has taken an interesting twist, with incumbent Mathieu Garon falling behind Dwayne Roloson early, and than Jeff Deslauriers taking his chance and running with it. The defense has been surprisingly good, with the Souray-Visnovsky pairing looking very effective (and even worth their moey) and Gilbert-Grebeshkov rounding into form. A slow start for the Kid Line has had different results for each, with Cogliano and Nilsson seeing reductions in role and ice-time, and Sam Gagner playing with Ales Hemsky and Dustin Penner. Cole has looked like a quality player, and MacTavish has finally given up on Fernando Pisani as a centre.

Vic Ferrari over at Irreverent Oiler Fans has a brilliant post up about a new modification to his statistical tool, timeonice.com. It allows anybody to look at combinations of players and see how they’ve done while on the ice together. Ferrari focuses in on Horcoff and Visnovsky, who have outplayed the opposition by a wide margin this season, and t got me to looking at other players. The two players I keyed in on were Penner and Staios, who I have been watchiong closely this season anyway. The reason I keyed in on them is because they have the best on-ice team shooting percentage of Oilkers players.

Penner, to my eye, has been a reliable player all over the ice, despite his biggest limitation (footspeed), but hasn’t been terribly effective scoring. Penner’s official stats line would seem to bear that out (15GP-3G-1A-4PTS, +6), but his scoring decline isn’t really a decline at all. The difference is his distribution of ice-time. Last season, Penner scored at an even-strength rate of 1.34 PTS/60. This year, it’s 1.40 PTS/60. Last year, Penner scored 25 of his 47 points at even-strength, with the rest coming on the powerplay. This season, Penner has all four of his points at even-strength; he’s on pace for 22 points with reduced ice-time. Ferrari’s tool tells me much the same; although Penner has been lucky, with a .951 SV% behind him, and a 10.8% team shooting percentage when he’s on the ice, his Corsi number (+24) indicates that the team has been spending a bunch of time in the offensive zone when he’s on the ice. Given the matchups I’ve been posting so far this season (where Penner has seen some dfficult minutes), that’s a really good number. Ferrari’s other interesting stat (which he’s named ZoneShift) measures where a player starts and ends on the ice; a player who starts in the offensive zone 5 times more than in the defensive zone, and ends in the defensive zone 5 times more than in the offensive zone would be -10. It’s a good way of showing whether players are helping the team create scoring chances for themselves or for the opposition. By this Measure, Penner is -8, starting in the offensive zone 25 more times, and ending their 17 more times. Not a dominant performance, but really not bad either.

Steve Staios, on the other hand, has had the wheels fall off. He hasn’t looked bad, and his stats line (13GP-1G-1A-2PTS, +3) looks good too, but if we consider the context, we realize those numbers should be much worse. The shooting percentage with Staios on the ice is the best on the team (11.4%), and unless we want to credit Staios’ incredible play-making ability as the cause of that, we know it’s only going to go downhill. The save percentage behind Staios (.955) is also incredibly good and unsustainable. Staios has been playing against third-pairing opposition with Jason Strudwick, leaving the toughest assignments to the top two pairings. His Corsi number is an ugly -46; the team has been heavily outshot with Staios on the ice. On top of that, Staios has been starting most of the time in the offensive zone (11 more offensive zone than defensive zone draws) and finishing in his own zone (13 more defensive zone draws). The puck is moving in the wrong direction when Staios is on the ice, and the team has been getting outshot, all while Staios draws lower quality opposition. Given that he’s signed for another three years at a rather hefty price (2.7 million per season), this is a very worrying trend.

This post is also available at OilersNation.

The Thing I Hate Most About the Edmonton Oilers

2008-11-12T07:43:00.000-08:00

I’m not a guy who “hates” hockey players, as a rule. I’m not a big fan of Todd Bertuzzi, as an example, or Mike Comrie, or the Apostate, but I don’t hate them, for a ton of reasons. Matt Cooke bothers me, as does Sean Avery, but hate is too strong of a word.

One of my really strong hockey-watching memories as a teenager involved the one player who I did hate, at least at the time. What made it worse was that he spent three and a half seasons in an Oilers uniform. I don’t have much memory of this player as an Oiler, but he was on the team, managing 44 points in 200-and some games.

The memory I have is of a 6’2”, 213lb defenseman going for the knee-on-knee hit on Oilers captain Doug Weight, who was my favorite player at the time. Weight (5’11”, 196lbs), Oilers fans will remember, had a nasty edge in his own right, and he went after this defenseman. The defenseman dropped to the ice and covered his head as Weight’s gloves flew off and the Oilers captain grabbed him. Weight paused for a second, as if in confusion, and then started whaling on the prone figure, until the referees pulled him off and escorted him to the penalty box. Then, and only then, did Bryan Marchment lift himself off the ice. Read more...

Eklund vs. Willis vs. Koules

2008-11-11T17:56:00.000-08:00

I’ve long held the opinion that any reasonable fan with an idea of the cap situations around the league could make up rumours as believable, or more believable, than the ones that “Eklund” posts on his site every day.

Of course, doing it on a day to day basis gets boring pretty fast, so it would be awfully convenient to test the theory on something big, like say a Top-25 Most Likely to be Trade List like this one that Eklund posted yesterday: (Read more)

Peter Schaefer

2008-11-10T19:35:00.000-08:00

I don't want there to be any confusion here. This blog, and its author, are unabashedly pro-Peter Schaefer. I thought it was a little ludicrous that he got stuck in the minors this off-season. I liked him as a Bruin, a Senator, and a Canuck. I think he adds a lot to a team. I even like his brother Nolan Schaefer, who is currently playing for Minnesota's farm team.

I don't know why Schaefer has only one assist through 6 AHL games. Thus, this particular article seems a little mean. But pretty funny too. Hat tip to Wyshynski at Puck Daddy.

Who Says P.J. Stock Adds Nothing?

2008-11-08T17:22:00.000-08:00

Watch the whole video. It's worth it.

Weekend Oilers Stuff

2008-11-08T15:58:00.000-08:00

MacIntyre Injured

Apparently, Steve MacIntyre’s limited ice-time against Pittsburgh wasn’t solely caused by his limited on-ice ability. Scrolling through this charming story about a mothers/wives trip to New York, we find that he wasn’t in great shape after a big-time tilt with Eric Godard:

It wasn't a lack of will that kept Steve MacIntyre from returning to the lineup in Thursday's 5-4 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins, it was the swelling on the left side of his face.
The Oilers enforcer was to undergo a CT scan in New York to determine if any bones were broken in his first scrap with Eric Godard.

Kid Line to be Split/New Lineups

Joanne Ireland has a rather predictable “growing pains” piece, on the struggles of Sam Gagner, Robert Nilsson, and Andrew Cogliano. It includes the following line:

“...the very distinct probability the Kid Line will not be together on Sunday when the Oilers take on the New Jersey Devils.”

The possibility of the Kid Line getting split up is promising, although I think more for what it means to the rest of the lineup than anything else. If the three are being put on two/three separate lines, I think it means that there is a good chance that Fernando Pisani will be moved away from centre, where he’s been less than effective. It’s well and good to talk about the second line struggling, but when the third line is getting consistently outplayed (and not against tough opposition, either), than there is only one line on this team that can make headway against the toughs.

Dan Tencer has the likely line-up on his blog:

Pisani – Horcoff – Cole
Penner – Gagner – Hemsky
Moreau – Cogliano – Pouliot
Nilsson – Brodziak - Stortini

I do like that Pisani’s been moved away from centre, but otherwise, this lineup seems very odd. For starters, it makes very little sense to me to put Pisani on LW when Ethan Moreau already plays that position and can play against tough opposition. It makes even less sense considering that it means that a) Cogliano will play centre when his faceoff struggles have been comparable to Pisani’s, with the added wrinkle that he’s struggled for longer and b) Pouliot needs to play RW when he’s been effective this season on faceoffs, and on both LW and centre, but he struggled on RW last year. I personally would have done the following:

Moreau – Horcoff – Pisani
Cogliano – Pouliot – Cole

The one other thing to take out of this is that MacTavish continues to prioritize Gagner’s development over everything else. Gagner will need to play against relatively tough opposition here, given the make-shift nature of the third line, and he’ll do it with quality teammates.

Perugini Gets the Win

Oilers prospect Andrew Perugini won his second consecutive start on Friday night, making 29 saves in a 3-2 shootout win over the Victoria Salmon Kings. Perugini is now a perfect 2-0-0 on the season, with a 2.40 GAA and .926 SV%. More interestingly, Pete Peeters, the Oilers goaltending coach, was in attendance for the game. Ryan Huddy and Adam Huxley scored for Stockton, with Huddy adding a shootout goal as well. The two teams will play again tonight.

Flyers Acquire Matt Carle

2008-11-08T09:47:00.000-08:00

According to TSN.ca the Philadelphia Flyers have sent Steve Downie, Steve Eminger, and a 4th round pick to the Tampa bay Lightning in exchange for Matt Carle and a 3rd round pick. First off, let’s look at the cap hits:

Matt Carle – 3.4M for the next four seasons, UFA

Steve Eminger – 1.2M this season, RFA
Steve Downie – 822K for the next two seasons, RFA

Tampa Bay, which was rumoured to be trying to clear payroll, picks up a pair of cheaper players for Carle. Philadelphia, on the other hand, is in more of a bind than they were before this and are skirting right on the edge of the cap. When players start coming back from injury (Randy Jones, with a 2.75M cap hit, is expected sometime in December) they’ll be forced to make a move f not sooner.

It’s an interesting decision by the Lightning to trade Carle. Just this past summer, Dan Boyle was moved to San Jose for the young defenseman, and in a good will gesture, the Lightning used their final pick of the 2008 Draft on Carle’s younger brother David, who was forced to stop his career before it even started because of a heart condition. Read more...

Oilers vs. Blue Jackets: November 5, 2008

2008-11-07T14:29:00.001-08:00

Two nights ago, the Oilers put in an effort that had Craig MacTavish spewing venom in his post-game comments:

“It's not just disappointing to lose a game where you're leading by two goals, but to do it in the fashion that we did. It's a painful lesson, a painful, painful lesson.”

"There's a right way to play this game and a wrong way to play and we got on the wrong side of it early."

"The thing I said at the end of the second period is let's just go out and have a good third period and not be sitting on a bunch of regret, and we're sitting on a mountain of regret right now."

It was a five-four loss, and the fact that the Oilers blew an (undeserved) 4-2 lead made it much worse. Read more...

The Ubiquitous Charlie Huddy

2008-11-07T14:21:00.000-08:00

With Theo Peckham recalled by the Edmonton Oilers, and Josef Hrabal sent down to Stockton, the Springfield Falcons have called up Robbie Bina. The 5’8” defenseman wins this recall by virtue of a weak field of ECHL defensemen – Jordan Bendfeld is pointless, and the rest of the defenders range from mediocre on down. Bina has three points in seven games, and a -3 rating.

The real loser in all of this is Josef Hrabal, whose season is about as close to a trainwreck as it could possibly be at the beginning of November. He’s played one total game due to injury, and after two seasons in the RSL, he shouldn’t be in the ECHL at all, even to get playing time under his belt. The best possible outcome to all of this is that Hrabal puts on a Bryan Lerg-style performance and is recalled within a half dozen games. Injury or not, if he falters here I can’t see him in the Oilers long-term plans.

The real winner in this is Charlie Huddy. Every single Stockton Thunder press release since Ryan Huddy was assigned there has included this following random line:

Charlie Huddy, who coached in the ECHL in 1996-97, is an assistant coach with the Oilers.

Clearly, Chris Cichocki feels he could get bumped up to the AHL if somebody were to hire Huddy as a head coach.

In other minor-league news, Guy Flaming is reporting that J-F Jacques has begun rehabilitating his injury. He is, however, still about six weeks away from returning.

Alexandre Picard On Waivers

2008-11-06T14:07:00.000-08:00

According to Puck-rakers, the Columbus Blue Jackets have placed LW Alexandre Picard on waivers. Jean-Francois Jacques' long lost brother has scored one assist in 43 NHL games, after being selected 8th overall in 2004. He's never played more than 71 games in a season, and unlike Jacques, he hasn't been terribly productive at the AHL level either.

Given the talent that's sailed through the waiver wire already this season, I'd be very surprised if he's claimed. Despite his draft pedigree, Edmonton certainly shouldn't be interested, since they already have more effective players of the same type anyway.

It's been a bad week for once-highly-touted Coke machines - the Rangers traded ECHL all-star Hugh Jessiman, selected 12th overall in 2003, to Nashville last Thursday for future considerations. Jessiman remains the only player selected in the first round of the 2003 NHL Entry Draft who hasn't played an NHL game.

Garon or Roloson?

2008-11-06T14:02:00.000-08:00

It has now been fairly widely reported that New Jersey Devils professional scout Bob Hoffmeyer was in attendance at the Oilers-Blue Jackets game last night. It’s also been reported that he’s expected to attend tonight’s match against the Penguins.

Sportsnet’s Mark Spector has the definitive column on the subject, which isn’t something I’m used to saying about Sportsnet writers.

Discussing the tandem of Garon and Roloson, Spector said the following:

Sportsnet.ca has learned that internal discussions are focused on which goalie would go… do the Oilers send Garon, who is younger at age 30 and makes just US $1 million this season, to New Jersey? Or does this opportunity mark a peak in value for the 39-year-old Roloson, who will make US$3 million this season?

Now, if this information is accurate (and Dwayne Roloson starting the last four games lends credence to it), Lowe, Tambellini and the rest of the Oilers front office are seriously considering going with a Roloson/Deslauriers tandem for the remainder of the year. Read more...

League Goaltending Situation

2008-11-05T14:00:00.000-08:00

Given that the Edmonton Oilers are currently holding three goaltenders on their NHL roster, I thought it might be of interest to look around the league and see which teams could be buying or selling goaltenders.

Atlanta - The Thrashers starting netminder is injury-prone Kari Lehtonen. Lehtonen was the second overall pick in the 2002 draft, and has been a quietly excellent goaltender in Atlanta, posting .906, .912 and .916 save percentages over the last three seasons. When healthy, he can be a franchise goaltender. The back-up position is less clear, however. The organization has been publicly supportive of Johan Hedberg (who last posted a .900 SV% in 2003-04) and demoted first-rate prospect Ondrej Pavelec. Pavelec was upset, and publicly demanded a trade, with his agent throwing around words like “criminal mismanagement”. To date, Pavelec has gone 5-3-1, with a 1.54 GAA and a .947 SV% in nine AHL games. He’d be an expensive, and possibly high-maintenance player, but he may very well be the best option out there for a team looking for a goaltender. Likely Seller: Ondrej Pavelec.

Boston - With Tim Thomas’ outstanding play thus far this season (4-2-2, 1.83 GAA, .944 SV%), and Tuuka Rask doing good things in the minors (5-2-0, 2.32 GAA, .923 SV%), veteran back-up Manny Fernandez may be on the trading block. In six seasons with the Wild, Fernandez was a more than capable 1A goaltender, although he’s only played 8 games in the past two seasons. He’d be an excellent pickup for any team, although it isn’t certain that Boston wants to move him. Still, Boston’s within 1M of the salary cap, and clearing away the last year of Fernandez’s 4.33M contract would give them some breathing room. Possible Seller: Manny Fernandez.

Calgary - Seemingly every year, Miikka Kiprusoff starts the year with an ntested backup. GM Daryl Sutter than promises that the backup will get playing time, to keep Kiprusoff from wearing down. Then Kipper plays nearly every game (he hasn’t missed one yet this season) and Calgary acquires a veteran at the deadline. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Calgary look for a cheap, older backup. Unlikely, but Possible Buyer

Chicago - The Blackhawks attempts to move Nikolai Khabibulin (one year, 6.75M salary) this off-season didn’t work out. Thus far, he’s outplayed free-agent pickup Christobal Huet (who’s been fine, if not great), but it’s still all but certain that Chicago will move him to the first team willing to take on his contract, especially considering their cap situation. While 2003 draft pick Corey Crawford is often mentioned by pundits as the likely backup after Khabibulin is moved, Dave Tallon imported Antti Niemi from Finland to play in the NHL. Thus far in the minors, Niemi’s looked NHL-calibre (4-2-0, 1.80 GAA, .942 SV%), which raises the possibility of Crawford being available as well. Seller: Nikolai Khabibulin.

Colorado - Why Francois Giguere entered the season with the tandem of Peter Budaj and Andrew Raycroft is a nearly impossible to answer question. Both are middling at best, and thus far, both have been disastrous in net (Budaj with a .876 SV%, Raycroft with .839). This situation cannot be allowed to continue, as Colorado has a good roster and could even be considered a contender with a legitimate goalie. Buyer

Dallas - Marty Turco’s been very bad to start the year (3-5-2, 4.34 GAA, .837 SV%) but he’s going nowhere and is too good to put up those sorts of numbers. However, Dallas may be in the market for a veteran backup, given that Tobias Stephan hasn’t looked good in relief (3.54 GAA, .857 SV%) and was only average in the minors last season. Possible Buyer

Los Angeles - Neither a buyer nor a seller, Los Angeles is on this list because a lot of the less-astute punditry seem to believe they need a goaltender. Here’s the thing – Jason Labarbera is off to a slow start, but was brilliant for a miserable team last season (17-23-2, 3.00 GAA, .910 SV%) while Erik Ersberg has posted the same .927 SV% through three games that he did in 14 last season. The Kings don’t need a goalie – Labarbera’s at least average, probably better, and that’s more than good enough for a basement team with Matt Greene in its top defense pairing. Happy.

Montreal - The Canadiens are set in net for years with Carey Price, so there’s no room for Jaroslav Halak to advance within the organization. Halak’s been stellar in the minors and has put up good numbers in the NHL as well, and could be of interest to teams looking for a young 1A/1B goaltender. On top of that, Montreal has a veteran backup in the system, Marc Denis, who has been phenomenal in the minors to start the season (7-1-0, 1.84 GAA, .945 SV%). Likely Seller: Jaroslav Halak.

New Jersey - The injury to Martin Brodeur creates a possible need for a stop-gap goaltender for the rest of the season. Backup Kevin Weekes hasn’t posted a .900 SV% since the lockout, while third-stringer Scott Clemmensen is only an average AHL tender. Still, I’d expect the Devils to wait a while (possibly a few “weekes”) and see how Weekes responds to the job before investigating other options. The Devils are close to the cap, so expensive solutions like Khabibulin are problematic. Possible Buyer

New York Islanders - Rick DiPietro was coming off off-season surgery before it was revealed that he would need additional surgery this season. This leaves the AHL tandem of Joey MacDonald (4-4-1, 3.08 GAA, .903 SV% in the NHL this season, 16-19-2, 2.89 GAA, .909 SV% in the AHL last season) and Yann Danis (11-19-4, 3.28 GAA, .893 SV% in the AHL last season) between the pipes, and even for a basement team, that’s not nearly good enough. Buyer

Washington - Bruce Garrioch repeatedly suggests that management has little confidence in Jose Theodore (signed this summer to a two-year, 9-million dollar contract) and could be looking to augment the goaltending. Despite Theodore’s shaky numbers (4-3-0, 3.44 GAA, .877 SV%), I don’t see it, especially given Washington’s proximity to the cap and the necessary requirement of dumping Theodore (or another sizeable contract) to bring in a different starter. Probably Unhappy, but not doing anything about it.

So, outside of Edmonton, there are four possible sellers. Here’s how I’d rate the (possibly) available goaltenders in terms of attractiveness to buyers, based on age, salary and playing ability to date:

Jaroslav Halak
Ondrej Pavelec
Dwayne Roloson
Manny Fernandez
Jeff Deslauriers
Nikolai Khabibulin

There are four destinations that would seem sensible for these six, ranked in order of need:

New York Islanders
Colorado
New Jersey
~~Dallas~~

Dallas would only be looking for a backup, and while they have over 4-million in cap space, I can’t imagine they want to blow much of that on a luxury item, at least at this stage in the season. They also are unlikely to want a replacement for Turco, who is being paid nearly 6 million per season for the next two years. Thus, they may be interested in one of the Oilers’ goaltenders, but they’ll probably stand pat for now, since Roloson is expensive and Deslauriers is pretty comparable to what they already have.

UPDATE: Earl in the comments pointed out that Dallas is actually much closer to the cap; I was using a number that had Zubov on IR for the rest of the season. Dallas has no money for a goaltender at all.

The Avalanche seem unlikely to make a trade with a division rival, and probably want a long-term solution anyway, so I’d see them being more interested in Halak/Pavelec than in the Oilers goaltending duo.

Kevin Lowe has always had a good relationship with Garth Snow, and Steve Tambellini actually played for Lamoriello, so the Islanders and Devils seem like the logical partners. Both need stop-gap solutions, and neither likely wants to break the bank, for different reasons (cap space, going nowhere team with attendance woes). If I had to bet, I’d say that one of Jeff Deslauriers or Dwayne Roloson ends up in the New York area by the beginning of March.

Line Matchups: Five Games, One Article

2008-11-04T13:14:00.000-08:00

In Vancouver

The Oilers actually outscored Vancouver 3-2 at even strength, but their penalty kill allowed four powerplay goals against in a 6-3 loss. Here are the even-strength lineups:

Edmonton’s Lines:

Nilsson – Horcoff - Hemsky
Penner/Brodziak – Cogliano – Gagner
Moreau – Pouliot – Cole/Penner
MacIntyre – Brodziak – Stortini

With Pisani out of the lineup, MacTavish used Pouliot to centre a checking line with Ethan Moreau and Erik Cole. After Cole was ejected midway through the game (his sweater wasn’t tied down and came lose in a fight), MacTavish bumped Penner into his spot and elevated Brodziak to the second line. Read more...

Samwise Isn't Worried - And He's Right Not To Be

2008-11-03T16:10:00.000-08:00

There are some interesting quotes from Sam Gagner courtesy of the Canadian Press today. Gagner has two assists thus far this season, but has refused to panic in interviews. This one is par for the course. Read more...

Line Matching: October 22nd and 23rd

2008-11-02T20:19:00.000-08:00

Here’s some better-late-than-never analysis of the Oil’s line match-ups on road games against the Hawks and the Avs.

Chicago

The Edmonton Oilers played likely their worst game of this young season in a 3–0 loss to Chicago. Joel Quenneville’s Blackhawks dominated the entire game, and despite not running up the score, the game never really felt like it was in reach for the Oilers.

Most frustrating of all was Ales Hemsky, who has had a poor start in every area except the powerplay, and who was virtually invisible in this game. In any case, here’s how MacTavish and Quenneville managed their lines, using Vic Ferrari’s Time On Ice Tool and the same procedure as in previous installments:

Read more...

Stockton Thunder Update and Around the NHL

2008-10-27T15:15:00.000-07:00

The Thunder are 2-3-0 through five games, but it isn’t all bad news, as a number of Oilers prospects have played extremely well.

Take Bryan Pitton as an example. Pitton posted a 2-1 record, playing three games in three nights and four in five, and currently has a 2.53 GAA and 0.919 SV%, numbers that put him on the same pace as Devan Dubnyk had in his rookie year (2.56 GAA, .921SV%). The news hasn’t been so good for Pitton’s goaltending partner – Andrew Perugini has had visa issues and won’t be eligible to play until October 31st in Las Vegas.

Rookie pro Bryan Lerg, sent down last week to get some playing time, has been exceptional, with five points in four games. 5’9” right wing Justin Chwedoruk has also impressed, with four points in five games and a +4 rating. Read more...

Don't Look Now

2008-10-24T21:57:00.000-07:00

There were a lot of intriguing players in training camp at the start of this season. Bryan Lerg, a favourite of Lowetide's, impressed but ended up unable to get into action in the AHL, and is now with Stockton of the ECHL. NAHL bruiser Guillaume Lefebvre showed some muscle in his preseason games, and has a professional contract to show for it. Theo Peckham got a tremendous push on the defensive side of things, while Taylor Chorney hung in until nearly the end ot training camp as well.

The race that was probably the most interesting was the three-way battle between Gilbert Brule, Rob Schremp, and Steve MacIntyre. MacIntyre won it, but with the Oilers carrying three goaltenders, and players starting to get hurt (Gagner's day-to-day, Pisani has back spasms, and Shawn Horcoff took a big hit towards the end of the Colorado game last night), I think it's reasonable to question if another forward might be called up in the near future.

Here's the stats lines of Brule and Schremp:

Schremp - 4GP, 0G-5A-5PTS, +3
Brule - 3GP 2G-1A-3PTS, +2

Brule took a knee-on-knee hit last Friday and hasn't played since, although he was initially expected to return to action this weekend, so he's probably close to being back.

There is, however, one player who got surprisingly little preseason game time, a guy who's still young enough to be a prospect, and a guy who has had an NHL job in the recent past.

Don't look now, but Ryan Potulny has scored 5 goals in six games and posted a +2 rating for the Springfield Falcons.

Vancouver Canucks Update and Misc.

2008-10-24T19:55:00.000-07:00

Lots of stuff happened in Vancouver over the last week. For starters, they recalled first Matt Pettinger, and then Kyle Wellwood and Jaosn Krog. Pettinger was snagged by the Tampa Bay Lightning on re-entry waivers, which is almost always a good move, given that they now only need to pay half of his $1 million salary—they’re getting a replacement level player for league minimum.

On the other hand, last I checked Tampa Bay has a million forwards, so perhaps they weren’t the best team to make this particular move. Either way, Mike Gillis sees a small portion of his ample cap space disappear, and is left with two other fringe NHLers in Krog and Wellwood. One wonders how long it is until Michel Ouellet gets a recall. Read more...

Open Memo to Adam Proteau

2008-10-22T16:57:00.000-07:00

Better check out TSN - it turns out that there is another evil ownership group using their hockey team to promote their political leanings. You'd better write another column, I suppose.

Also, to everyone - what do you think of an owner using his hockey team to advance whatever political cause he supports? Personally, I think if someone has invested however many million dollars into their team, they've got the right. I personally wouldn't do it (in the alternate universe where I have millions to squander on a hockey team), but it seems defensible to me.

Farm Report

2008-10-21T11:26:00.000-07:00

Coming Down the Pipe! reported yesterday that the Springfield Falcons have sent Bryan Lerg down to the Stockton Thunder for four games, and recalled Josef Hrabal, who should return from injury in the very near future.

I agree with Guy Flaming’s assessment on his blog that this move wasn’t made because of poor play on Lerg’s part, but rather because of the need to get him playing at all – Springfield has a ton of top AHL players (Schremp, Brule, Trukhno, Corazzini, Potulny, etc.) and at this point there isn’t enough room to get a decent look at all of them. Corazzini, for example, led the Grand Rapids Griffins in scoring last season, and is currently playing on the third line with Tim Sestito and Guillaume Lefebvre. There just isn’t enough room to play everybody. Read more...

Why I Matter!

2008-10-20T21:21:00.000-07:00

Actually, this is just a maintenance note, but I'm sick of writing "maintenance note" in the title, and I'm enjoying a moment of self congratulation. See, towards the start of September, my home computer crashed with all kinds of ugly issues. After a month of sitting in a Future Shop, I got the computer back with a promise that it works and a shiny new World of Warcraft CD in the disk drive, something which made me just a touch suspicious of the crack crew at Future Shop.

Anyways, my computer started acting up last night and went down this morning. After about two hours of constant freeze-ups, I gave up on System Restore and decided to turn to the internets and my wits for guidance.

Thanks to the power of ~~my wits~~ ~~mad skilz~~ the HP help page, I managed to get everything working in a little under an hour.

Also, I'm never purchasing a warranty at Future Shop again.

Friday Night Battle of Alberta

2008-10-17T14:58:00.000-07:00

Sam Gagner scored six points in eight games against the Flames last season and should be a key player again tonight. Given that the Flames have a phenomenal first line, a nearly invisible second line, and an energetic checking unit, the second line matchup may be the most important from an Oilers perspective. Not quite as important as the Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers vs. The World matchup, but important all the same.

Excellent Flames blogger Kent W. has his predicted matchups, and I think his second suggestion (featuring traditional use of a checking line) is what we'll see tonight. I don't think Cammalleri and Co. have the ability to outplay the kids, and I think the checking line will be just fine against Iginla. However, I also think Iginla will see some time against the Kid Line, because that's the way MacTavish rolls these days, and I'm curious as to what the result will be. With Steve MacIntyre "playing" tonight, MacTavish should be able to sneak Hemsky or Kenta's kid out against the Primeau line, and that could be very significant. It will, however, be a shame not seeing Stortini draw guys like Sarich and Regehr into the penalty box with him. Such is life.

Random Thoughts

- Matt Greene's been signed to a five-year extension in Los Angeles, and good on him. I don't think he brings a ton of irreplaceable stuff to the ice, but he always seemed like a solid guy, and it's nice to see him and Stoll get some job security in L.A.

- Which coach is in the most danger right now? All of Barry Melrose, Randy Carlyle and John Stevens could be, but my money's on Stevens. Still, Tampa Bay's management seems a little on the trigger-happy side, so it's hard to be sure.

- Kudos to Rob Tychkowski for apologizing for some non-trivial errors in his column yesterday. They were completely understandable mistakes, and unlike most of us, when Tychkowski makes an error, everybody sees it. He's a good reporter, and deserves some slack here, in my opinion.

Oh, Right, The Error

2008-10-16T15:24:00.000-07:00

David Staples over at Cult of Hockey is known for a few things around the Oilersphere. He's known for coming up with alliterative nicknames for Oilers' players ("the Flying Fridge" and "Mean Matt Greene" come to mind). He likes to run old newspaper articles to give perspective to current events. He follows the politics of blogs and message boards far more than most MSM-employed folks.

Still, this isn't his primary claim to fame. Over the past year, David Staples has reviewed every single goal against the Oilers and assigned an error to players that he feels were responsible. He's also been mentioning them everywhere, all the time, and it's hard not to admire his enthusiasm, or at the very least, his doggedness. His views of players have been profoundly influenced by his work - Joni Pitkanen, pictured above, is one of his frequent targets.

I've been pretty neutral about the error; I decided I'd shadow Staples' work this year in an effort to come to an informed conclusion. Two games in, I've given it up, because I don't buy the statistic. The reason for this is what Staples' recently called the "disequilibrium theory" (borrowed from Ken Dryden's excellent book, The Game, which taught me French swearwords at a young age).

Where do you start? Does a poor forecheck start the play? What about losing the faceoff? I don't think that a line can be drawn saying that three of the five players on the ice were responsible, while the other two were not. Tracking errors the last two games, I've confirmed that opinion. Goals are scored against a five man unit; there are no innocents.

Best of luck to Staples with his project - it's a lot of work and very ambitious, but I don't think it provides a better picture than GAON/60.

Savard Can't Argue That He Didn't Get A Chance: They Gave Him Four Whole Games

2008-10-16T10:18:00.001-07:00

Pierre LeBrun broke the news this morning that the Chicago Blackhawks have fired head coach Denis Savard, fresh off a 4-1 win against Phoenix.

Chicago has a 1-2-1 record, which doesn’t seem like anything to get panicked over (as opposed to, say, the Ducks’ record). Regardless, when a coach is fired four games into a season, there aren’t a lot of possibilities as to why. Savard’s record this season certainly hasn’t been bad enough or prolonged enough to be fired over, so either Wirtz/Tallon/Co. are insanely trigger-happy, or something behind the scenes led to this.

Read more, including shocking! lies.

Maintenance Notes & Link

2008-10-15T16:37:00.001-07:00

Just to let everyone know - the handy blog tracker on the right will show the 25 most recent posting blogs off of my old blog list (which had about 30-35 on it). It should be a time-saver, given that I won't need to click on each link to know when a blog is updated. Also, if you haven't written anything in the last little bit, don't worry that you've been removed - you just aren't in the most recent 25 anymore.

Also, I've been giving Dennis a little bit of help with his massive undertaking; he's tracked all of the scoring chances from the first Oilers' game, and I supplied the list of players on the ice and tabulated each player's marks at the bottom. Couldn't help it, really, given that he'd taken the time to log them all in the first place, so check it out at Mc79hockey.com.

Marc-Andre Bergeron Update!

2008-10-15T12:45:00.000-07:00

Because I know so many of you are interested.

Bergeron was acquired from the Anaheim Ducks for a third round pick and thus far has been the Minnesota Wild's #5 defenseman. He's also playing a major role on their powerplay (averaging 4:21 a night so far), and that's probably going to continue given that Marek Zidlicky was placed on injured reserve today.

He's got 1 goal and a -1 rating through two games, which fits nicely with the player I remember. If there's any truth to the rumours that Pittsburgh and Minnesota are talking trade, it wouldn't surprise me if he was included. The guy can put up points, whatever his other flaws.

And right about now, the Penguins could use a blueliner with that particular skillset.

Duck Lines and Flying V's

2008-10-15T12:32:00.000-07:00

On November 28, 2001, Jussi Markkanen made his first career NHL start, in Anaheim. He made 27 saves en route to a 2-0 shutout victory. He has a dominant career record against the Ducks (5-1), and if he were the Oilers backup goalie I’d start him there tonight.

Mathieu Garon, tonight’s likely starter, has a 5-9 career against the Ducks (NHL.com will tell you it’s better than that, but then again, they believe that a shootout loss deserves its own column). Of course, I’d imagine that most of those games were played as a member of the Los Angeles Kings, and that isn’t conducive to a good W-L record. Speaking of those same Kings, they had their first win of the season last night, a 6-3 victory over Anaheim. How did Randy Carlyle deploy his players last night?

Read more.

A Cull of Quotes

2008-10-14T12:47:00.000-07:00

Given that it’s the regular season again, there’s a ton of reporting on the Edmonton Oilers in the press, and I thought it might be nice this morning to touch on some of the quotes out there and try to get a read on what’s happening between the lines. Given that I’m writing it, I’ll also hit upon all of my favourite cowbells – my crusade for advanced statistics, my strange fascination with unheralded goaltending prospects, and of course, Kyle Brodziak. Read more...

A Modest Question For Readers

2008-10-14T06:31:00.000-07:00

On September 22nd, Adam Proteau of The Hockey News spent the majority of his column (ie, all but one sentence) discussing Mike Richter's possible foray into politics and his political views.

My question: Does his October 11th column, criticizing Ed Snider and the Philadelphia Flyers for allowing hockey to be used as "a political backdrop" strike anyone else as hypocritical?

Because it seems to me that he can't really have it both ways.

Edmonton vs. Colorado: Before and After

2008-10-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

I did a couple of articles on the match-ups that MacTavish/Granato would be going with during game one last night, one before, and one after the game.

Other notes:

- Dustin Penner, by my eye, through one game, looks much better than he did a year ago. It wasn't just the two goals (although, those were good too); he was much faster (winning races to the puck, negating icing calls) and looked very good on the penalty kill. I think he moves up to the first line by the end of the month.

- Despite the number of saves, I was a little worried about Garon's play last night. He had a huge dose of luck, and looked frantic. Frantic is a bad thing.

- As worried as I am about Garon, if 77-37 haven't got things turned around by the ten game mark, I'll be very, very worried about the defense.

-And finally, one for myself: it's only one game. And, not trivially, they won.

Fun With Garrioch

2008-10-12T08:33:00.000-07:00

Most teams are a couple of games into their NHL seasons, so it is clearly time to panic, right? According to the Ottawa Sun’s ill-famed rumour-monger Bruce Garrioch, there are a bunch of things that could conceivably happen. Here’s his article, including an Oilers rumour (apparently, the team has a defenseman named Smead). Given that Garrioch’s reputation isn’t especially stellar (see here for one example), I decided to go look for some verification. Fortunately for me, Lyle Richardson (better known as Spector) had also seen the same article, and done some analysis for us already. Read more...

Ego, or Why We Use Statistics and Videos

2008-10-11T21:12:00.000-07:00

I’ve been reading Roger’s World by Wayne Scanlan, a biography of legendary coach Roger Neilson. It’s been a little disappointing to date; if I hear one more reference to “Roger’s legendary Abercrombie & Fitch baseball cap” or “his beloved dog, Mike” I think I might break my brain.

In any case, after 40-odd pages, Scanlan finally finished writing about Nielson as a baseball coach and paperboy (and no, I’m not kidding) and got into his hockey career. It’s a folksy book, and is rather scant on actual hockey details, or detailed information on any of the revolutionary tactics that Nielson introduced. Despite that, there is some useful information, information that applies to some current discussion about hockey analysis. Read more...

The Development Myth

2008-10-08T10:02:00.000-07:00

A common refrain among fans of all stripes, and probably in all sports for that matter, is the need to “play the kids”. In this same vein comes a theory that’s espoused by a whole bunch of people, a theory that works something like this:

If a team has an obvious hole and the only options to fill it are either under-qualified veterans or unproven prospects, it’s in the organization’s long-term interest to give the job to the prospect.

There’s nothing obviously wrong with that statement. Clearly, wasting a roster spot on a veteran who can’t keep up is a worse solution than investing it in a player on the upswing of his career; both players will make mistakes, but only one player is going to come out of it better.

The unmentioned third option is acquiring a veteran who can clearly carry the load. It’s probably unsurprising to people who read me with any amount of regularity that I strongly feel that the unmentioned third option is almost always the right one. Sometimes, it’s simply not possible (cap/budget constraints, too many holes, holes that are too big, etc.), but as a general rule, I think it’s the way to go.

Moving out of the abstract, let’s look at the Oilers’ situation in particular (i.e. the third line centre position). Read more...

Mike Gillis Wins One

2008-10-06T13:31:00.000-07:00

Two of the league’s more entertaining (in the front office, anyway) teams pulled off a trade with some interesting ramifications today. Here’s the deal (as per TSN.ca):

Vancouver trades:

Lukas Krajicek
Juraj Simek

Tampa Bay trades:

Shane O’Brien
Michel Ouellet

The Canucks have already assigned Ouellet to the Manitoba Moose, and I’d imagine Simek will be joining Tampa Bay’s AHL affiliate in Norfolk. Read more...

Apropos of Nothing

2008-10-06T13:15:00.000-07:00

It’s been a painful process watching the development of Oilers’ goaltenders. The most successful home-developed goaltender to this point of Kevin Lowe’s tenure has been Ty Conklin, and that’s far from a ringing endorsement. High draft picks like Jeff Deslauriers and Devan Dubnyk look eventually slated for an NHL career, but it remains uncertain if either will ever become starters at hockey’s highest level.

Still, it must be more frustrating to watch a goaltending prospect develop well, and then make fun demands. Read more...

The Edmonton Oilers and Their Draft Record: 2002

2008-10-01T19:00:00.000-07:00

As part of an ongoing series, I’m evaluating the Edmonton Oilers performance at the draft during Kevin Lowe’s tenure in comparison to the NHL as a whole. This is the second part of the series, focusing on the 2002 NHL Entry Draft (check out 2001 here). Let’s start with some basic statistics, showing the Oilers totals first and NHL average in brackets following: (Read more)

How Many Calgary Flames Will Shudder at the Name “Guillaume Lefebvre” After Tonight?

2008-09-30T14:33:00.001-07:00

As previously reported by OilersNation’s own Jason Gregor, the Edmonton Oilers have claimed Steve MacIntyre off waivers on his way from the Florida Panthers organization to the Rochester Americans. Here’s the catch: if the Oilers assign MacIntyre to Springfield, he would need to clear waivers again, and the Panthers would certainly prefer their summer free agent acquisition pummeling people in Rochester, so they would likely claim him.

All of this means that Guillaume Lefebvre, who has looked the most NHL-ready of the various enforcers the Oilers have tried out in camp, needs to do something more. Read more...

The Edmonton Oilers and Their Record at the Draft: 2001

2008-09-29T12:16:00.000-07:00

In the comment thread a couple of posts down, a few people took issue with Lowetide’s assertion that the Oilers procurement department has done a good job under Kevin Lowe. I’ve previously gone through every draft selection made under Lowe on an individual basis, but I didn’t compare the picks to those made by other teams. This is meant as the first installment in a series where I’ll look at how the Oilers have drafted in comparison to other NHL franchises.

We start with 2001, since Kevin Lowe was promoted to G.M. in the summer of 2000, too late to have much impact on the draft that season. Read More...

The Cap Isn't the Problem; A Lack of Restraint is the Problem

2008-09-27T14:16:00.000-07:00

This rather amusing image is of former Colorado defenseman Ken Klee. Klee must have been ecstatic the other day to learn that he (along with veteran forward Brad Larsen and prospect Chad Painchaud) are considered as having less value than nothing. They are the "bag of pucks" in the New NHL, given that they have all been traded to the Anaheim Ducks in exchange for a player who nobody wanted when they could take him at no cost. It's a somewhat ridiculous trade, and the kind that only makes sense when the monetary ramifications are taken into consideration.

On this ludicrous situation (via James Mirtle), is this beauty of an article by Damien Cox. Here are some of Cox's statements:

"For a while now, Brian Burke has been dancing with the devil, otherwise known as the NHL's salary cap system.

Two years ago, Burke worked it beautifully and captured a Stanley Cup. Last year, his machinations went slightly askew and it cost his Anaheim Ducks the services of a very good veteran player, centre Andy McDonald.

This fall, the cap has pushed another quality veteran off the Anaheim roster in defenceman Mathieu Schneider, peddled to Atlanta yesterday in a deal that, as a pure hockey trade, was about as one-sided as you can get."

and a little further down:

"So without the cap, the Ducks would still have McDonald and Schneider, with Ryan available to play high in their lineup.

In a cap world, however, McDonald and Schneider are gone, and it may be impossible for the club to use Ryan in the short-term."

Yes, that's right - the cap is the problem. Not the signing of Todd Bertuzzi to an overpaying contract (later bought out, at a further cap hit) that helped cause Burke's inability to keep, not only the players above, but also Dustin Penner, snagged by Kevin Lowe via an RFA offer sheet. Not the signing of Jonas Hiller to a 1.3M/yr contract that forced Burke to send out Ilya Bryzgalov for nothing over wiavers. Not Todd Marchant's ridiculous deal which Anaheim had to take off the Columbus Blue Jacket's hands to get the even-more ridiculous contract granted to Sergei Fedorov off their books.

Here's the thing: thirty NHL teams need to deal with the salary cap. It's a level playing field, and it is a necessity to keep people like Glen Sather from buying up every player on the free agent market every single season. The fact of the matter is that this system is what's in place, and managers need to deal with it. A manager blaming the salary cap for his team's woes is like a debtor blaming the credit card company for his bankruptcy. Yes, if the system wasn't in place, they wouldn't have to deal with the unpleasant consequences of their actions. On the other hand, if they hadn't made poor decisions in the first place, they wouldn't have to deal with the consequences of their actions either.

It isn't the fault of the salary cap that Andy McDonald, Dustin Penner, Ilya Bryzgalov, and Mathieu Schneider no longer play for the Anaheim Ducks. It is the fault of a general manager who failed to understand the system he was operating under, a man who continued spending money he didn't have to spend. NHL GM's can spend money they don't have, but only too a point. Once that point is reached, they do things like putting quality NHL'ers on waivers, or trading draft picks to sweeten the pot for teams that don't want those salaries either.