It was really great to see some more Oilers hit the ice this morning. I noticed Mikko Koskinen made it and Josh Archibald as well. So that only leaves Mike Green and Caleb Jones as the only Oilers to have yet to step on the ice. With that in mind, I was the happiest to see Oscar Klefbom finally start skating. Even though by my eye, he was the only Oiler wearing orange and he was skating by himself and nobody was standing near him on the bench and he looked completely gassed (and lonely)… I’m sure it’s nothing.

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Why is Oscar wearing the orange jersey? I don't recall other players using this one recently. https://t.co/m3QZbe3Fe9

— BLH (Edmonton Oilers Enthusiast} (@BeerLeagueHeroe) July 9, 2020

Offer Sheets

Brian Burke and Bob Stauffer were having a chat on the radio today and the topic of offer sheets came up. Burke mentioned that he could see some handed out during the next off-season and that there were a couple of teams right against the cap… He wouldn’t give out the team names but it’s not too hard to head over to Capfriendly.com and figure that out. So I did it.

My investigation revealed that the Tampa Bay Lighting are P-R-I-M-E for the picking unless they shed some salary (like a lot of salary) and surprisingly, the Columbus Blue Jackets are in a really precarious position. Chicago too to a lesser extent.

Tampa has future Selke Trophy-winner Anthony Cirelli, Mikhail Sergachev, and Erik Cernak all up for contract renewal as RFAs and they’re sitting only $5M short of the $81.5M salary cap. Then the Blue Jackets have about $6M in cap space with them having to re-up with Pierre-Luc Dubois and Josh Anderson…

Should be fun, but you know what? The Edmonton Oilers could also be targeted.

How much do you think Ethan Bear is on the open market right now? $3M? $4M? Well, what if a team like Detroit and their $35M in cap space comes along and offers him a deal that’ll end up netting him a shade over $4M for X amount of years. The cost would only be a 2nd round pick and I don’t know a GM who wouldn’t buy a right-shot puck-moving defenseman who can play up to 20 minutes a night and is still under team control with a 2nd round pick.

Now, the Oilers could match that no problem. They’ve got $10M in cap room but they’ve got to qualify Athanasiou, so that’s just over $3M. Then they’d only have, at most, another $3M to re-sign Matthew Benning, their other RFA.

Let’s say that is the route they go. That would result in the team walking away from any upcoming UFA. No more Tyler Ennis, Mike Green, Mike Smith, Riley Sheahan, or Patrick Russell. It also means that they won’t be signing anybody. So no bolstering the team depth and a lot of future problems and you could probably start your 2021 draft prospect reading early.

Of course, that’s a worst-case scenario. Ken Holland could simply trade away Kris Russell, Kassian, and/or Larsson for picks and that would be that (more or less), right?

I know that Ethan Bear is a wanted commodity and found it interesting that Burke brought up offer sheets. I don’t think it’ll happen but we’ll have to wait and see.

Nurse, Team Canada 2022

It’s not happening and here’s why.

Darnell was the 4th highest scoring left-shot defender in the NHL this past year behind Thomas Chabot, Shea Theodore, and Samuel Girard. Not too bad and those are three names that are definitely going to be in the running for a spot on that roster too, but here’s the thing, he’s got to beat out other players like Morgan Rielly, Josh Morrissey, and maybe Ryan Graves or possibly Jake Muzzin. Just for left-shooting defenders.

On the right side, there’s much more of a selection. Alex Pietrangelo, Cale Makar, Brent Burns (age?), Kris Letang, Aaron Ekblad, Dougie Hamilton, Ryan Ellis, Drew Doughty, and Colton Parayko.

We know that there’s a push to have lefty/righty d-pairings these days, but if Canada has a coach who doesn’t mind pairing up same shot defencemen, I don’t think Nurse has a chance. Even as a L/R pair, I’m hard-pressed to put him into the lineup over better puck movers like Girard, Rielly, or Morrissey.

I think Nurse is going to be a beast during the playoffs and his puck transitioning skill is great. He’s powerful and hard to knock off the puck and he’s one of the league’s better zone-to-zone skaters, but I find he still has trouble making the right play when he gets into the other team’s zone. Be that a wasted shot on net, a pass to the other team from behind the goal line, or him carrying it all the way into the zone, behind the net, and around to the other side before getting penned in and losing possession, he did show glimpses of evolution by using the button hook from time to time.

My feeling is Team Canada will want defenders who are better playmakers and smarter positionally and I don’t imagine they intend to spend a lot of time down a man as the PK is a place where Nurse would be a great help.

I’ll throw a caveat in as a conclusion to this segment though and that being in two years time, we don’t know where Nurse’s game will be (he could be a 50pt defender by then) nor do we know where the games of those other players will be either. We don’t know if the next coming of Ray Bourque will arrive on the scene either. We don’t know a lot. All I’m saying is that if the roster was picked today, I don’t think Nurse would be on it.

Seattle Expansion

Jason Gregor has been talking about this over the last couple of days and he reckons that the Oilers should avoid protecting 7F/3D/1G because it would leave Jones exposed and he’s on a really good two-year deal for this financial landscape. Pretty convenient contract if you ask me. Edmonton needs to expose a defenseman who has played 40 games and is on a contract past next season. Jones has played 60 games, he’s American, and he spent his junior days in Portland playing for the Winterhawks, a rival of the Seattle Thunderbirds…

So, if Jones is the sacrificial lamb, then that is okay by me. No disrespect to Caleb, but he doesn’t have top-4 upside for me at this point in time. He should be a damn fine 3rd pairing puck mover, in my opinion, though. And that’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Depending on how next season progressed, I would protect seven forwards, three defensemen, and a goalie.

• RNH, McDavid, Draisaitl, Yamamoto, Archibald, Kassian, and Puljujarvi on forward.
• Klefbom, Nurse, Bear on defense.
• Koskinen in net.

Yes, Klefbom misses a portion of every season but I’m confident in Nurse’s ability to cover that and I’ve got no issues having Bill Lagesson or a veteran free agent signing filling in there.

Sure as the stars above us, Ken Holland isn’t going to go into a season without depth down the roster.

Puck Racism

The sales are starting to trickle in with this design and I’m going to spam the hell out of it on my website and the BLH Hockey Instagram because I feel passionate about it and I feel like Hockey is Diversity deserves the proceeds that I’ll be donating to them.

So, please. If you’ve got an extra $20 lying around and you want to do a good thing for good people, click the pic down below and grab a t-shirt, a mask, a onesie, a tank top, or some stickers.

Hockey is Diversity is a German group whose aim is to draw attention to the ethnic diversity in society, which goes beyond the sporting borders in order to sensitize people interculturally. The diversity that has long been regarded as an enrichment in sport as a melting pot of people of different ethnicities, cultures, and religions should also be transferred to society.