Edmonton Oilers Make List of Most Head-Scratching 2021 Offseason Moves

This is your TL/DR (too long, didn’t read) summary post where excerpts are taken from the best of the best when it comes to Edmonton Oilers blogs. BLH gives you his two cents on the latest posts being published in the Oilogosphere! Including those from Lowetide.ca, The Athletic, Oilersnation, The Cult of Hockey, Copper N Blue, Oil on Whyte, and more!

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Sportsnet

Breaking down the Oilers’ best fourth-line candidates at training camp

…the only forward jobs being contested at Edmonton Oilers training camp are on the fourth unit. That’s the bottom line.
Then there are six players — Devin Shore, Kyle Turris, Ryan McLeod, Tyler Benson, Brendan Perlini, Colton Sceviour — fighting for the last three spots, and likely five jobs overall.
On a team with Edmonton’s Top 6, skilled, swift, but not very physical, we’d prefer to see some size. Bigger players who will hit you during their scant, 12 minutes per game.

Tyler Benson

Benson simply isn’t a fourth-line player. And if he is, then your fourth line is too small and not physical enough.
Trying to make him your 4-LW isn’t only bad for the player, it’s not what this Oilers team needs out of its fourth line.

Devin Shore

He is (almost) exactly what you want on Line 4: he can play centre or wing, and take draws; he kills penalties; he is quick, and can forecheck. Plus, Shore has played 326 NHL games and is on a two-year deal making $850,000 a year.

Brendan Perlini

If you’re keeping Perlini on the team to be a goal scorer, then play him up the lineup. If you think a player who has never been strong in his own end is a fourth-line answer, we think you’ll be regretting that decision by about Dec. 1.

Kyle Turris

If you have Turris and Shore on your fourth line — a righty and a lefty for faceoffs — that’s good news. But, you’d like the other winger to have some size and aggression if possible.

Ryan McLeod

He’s a young player who will require some patience, but we see the potential reward at the end. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, though, this is another fourth-line candidate who doesn’t hit a soul.

BLH’s Thoughts: As each day passes by, the chances of Tyler Benson and Ryan McLeod getting into Edmonton’s opening night lineup become fewer and fewer. I’d even go as far as to say that the coaches have their minds made up and now the team is organizing what they want to do with the two young forwards.

Ken Holland’s always said that the young players have to come in and steal a job from one of the vets if they want to make the club and that couldn’t be more the case than this season.

The Score

5 biggest head-scratchers of the offseason

Oilers splurge for Keith

There’s no question the Oilers needed to add a blue-liner this summer. However, targeting Keith doesn’t solve any of their defensive problems, especially considering Adam Larsson joined Seattle and Cody Ceci and Tyson Barrie – the club’s only other signings on the back end – are prone to surrendering a ton of chances.

BLH’s Thoughts: Nice to see the writer offer their own suggestion as to who the Oilers should’ve targeted to help solve their defensive problems.

I’ll say this, it’s clear that the club wanted to keep Larsson but the Iron Swede had some very good reasons not to stay. The plan was obviously to pair him with Keith considering Larsson and Keith’s old d-partner Brent Seabrook are identical defensemen. The hockey gods had their own ideas though and the Oilers had to pivot their defense to a more puck-moving group and we’re going to see how that works out.

Other head-scratchers included,

Flyers add Ristolainen

Hurricanes trade Nedjelkovic to Detroit

Golden Knights dump Fleury

Eichel and Sabres in Limbo

The Athletic

NHL’s Top 30 over 30: Counting down the league’s best ‘old guys’

1. Sidney Crosby
2. Brad Marchand
3. Patrice Bergeron
4. Victor Hedman
5. Marc-Andre Fleury
6. Alex Pietrangelo
7. Patrick Kane
8. Roman Josi
9. Semyon Varlamov
10. Jared Spurgeon

BLH’s Thoughts: Obviously there were 30 names on the list but I’m feeling pretty lazy today and it’s probably not fair to The Athletic to copy and paste the entire post. Hopefully, you’ve got yourself a subscription to their service and you can go check out the entire list on your own 🙂

However, I will say this, the rankings are analytics driven, so for me, not having Ovechkin, Malkin, Tavares, Giroux, Kopitar, Lee, and Wheeler in the top-ten of a list of the league’s best players over 30 years old is mystifying.