Tag Archives: Mark Fayne

Beer League Hero, Edmonton Oilers, NHL, Rumors

The Oilers Roster Speculation Begins

1 Comment

Which players will be in the Oilers starting lineup come opening night in the 2017/18 season?

This is a topic that hasn’t just started now. It started at the beginning of the playoffs but we sure have a more pronounced idea of that now that the Oilers are on the outside looking in. It didn’t even take 24 hours for the insiders to start getting questions regarding Edmonton’s summer moves.

In this post, I’d just like to concentrate on the trade possibilities and touch on the free agents on a future blog.

The following quotes come from Chris Nichols’ at the Fan Rag Sports Network

DARREN DREGER

“What’s going to happen though – Chiarelli is going to have to get very creative. I think that Jordan Eberle has probably played his last game with the Edmonton Oilers. And some wonder if they might have to make a real significant move, and maybe move both Eberle and Nugent-Hopkins. I doubt it. I think that they still very much value Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and I could see why in watching that team closely.

“But that money has got to come from somewhere. And when you’re paying out the big, big, big contracts that they’re going to have to pay out to Draisaitl and Connor McDavid, Jordan Eberle’s money isn’t going to cover both.”

ELLIOTTE FRIEDMAN

“It’s been tough for Eberle. It’s just not working for him,” said a sympathetic Elliotte Friedman during a Monday morning radio hit on Calgary’s Sportsnet 960. “I’m sure at the end of the season, depending on what happens, they’re going to renew efforts to see if they can move him.

You can find more quotes at Chris Nichols’ website here.

I think you can add a few more names to that list like Benoit Pouliot and Mark Fayne for example.

With the Oilers having to re-sign Leon Draisaitl, Zack Kassian, Griffin Reinhart, and whole slew of AHL prospects, the room under the cap is going to be limited. Players will need to move and here’s the rub with some of the Oilers’ more prominent tradeable players:

RNH – The brass really like this kid and unlike other players on the team who underachieved this season, we saw Nugent-Hopkins elevate his gameplay in the playoffs. Now, he didn’t get score any goals but if I recall correctly, he was one of the leaders in shots on goal and if that’s not enough for you, then let’s recall the excellent defensive job he did in the San Jose series.

One of the things that happens in hockey is injuries and if you think back to when the Penguins won their cup with Crosby, Malkin, and Staal down the middle; that was a great advantage for them. They could stack one line and still be safe down the middle or if one of Crosby or Malkin needed a rest or was injured, Staal could step in. I, for one, think they made a massive mistake trading him but I digress.

This is important for the Oilers going forward. They need depth down the middle if just for the very reasons I mentioned in the example above. Yes, he’s $6M a year and that is a price that may just have him dealt anyhow but if he’s going up against 3rd line talent AND he picks up his game offensively, that’s gold! At least for one more season.

Possible Destinations: Montreal, Colorado, Vancouver, New Jersey, Brooklyn

Eberle – After Todd McLellan demoted him to the 4th line in the playoffs, sporadically, we saw a throwback Ebs. The one that dazzled us with his stickhandling and button hooks in the corners from earlier in his career but he also tossed in a dusting of grit.

That’s the one thing I noticed about Eberle in the playoffs. He took his pound of flesh when he was first in on the forecheck and I liked that. As for the regular season, yes, his overall game did get better. He sacrificed his offense for team defense and it sort of backfired.

Now, we’re all going to be pissed that this player who was supposed to be scoring didn’t and that is quite fair but he’s not going to bring the team a major asset back. His contract is simply too high and other GMs are going to look at the season he just had and take that as an indictment of his future performance. And for those reasons, he may just start the 2017 season an Edmonton Oiler.

Possible Destinations: Carolina, Vegas, Brooklyn, Vancouver, St.Louis, New Jersey

BENOIT POULIOT – This is another player whose effort I enjoyed during the playoffs. And it got better as the games wore on. I reckon he’d have done much better on the 1st or 2nd line beside McDavid or Draisaitl because his puck retrieval and possession was really standing out.

A lot of folks think we’ll see Pouliot taken in the expansion draft and it doesn’t take a lot of convincing to get behind that idea. My wish is for the Oilers to move him without eating salary and then re-acquiring him for the playoff run. He wouldn’t cost Edmonton anything and the expectations would be low.

Possible Destinations: Anaheim, Florida, Arizona, Toronto

MARK FAYNE – Buyout candidate no.1 in the NHL right now. 

Remember when it was between him or Griffin Reinhart in game 6 of the 2nd round? It makes me laugh when I think about how giddy the analytics types must’ve been getting with that news. How heartbroken they must’ve been when Reinhart stepped on the ice…

No team in their right mind will trade for Mark Fayne. In fact, the Oilers would probably have to pay a team to take him off of their hands. His contract is around $3.5M, so yeah, maybe Vegas takes a shot at him or Colorado but, to me at least, he gets the ol’ buyout and spends next season’s preseason on PTOs.

Possible Destination: Parts unknown… I think there’s a KHL team in Siberia, right? If he’s smart he goes to the team in Beijing and rakes in the cash! 

Other notable trade assets for the Oilers include Pat Maroon, Griffin Reinhart, Darnell Nurse, and Laurent Brossoit.

Toss the Oilers’ 1st round pick in there too. We know that Chiarelli would like to get a 2nd rounder and if there’s a team that doesn’t have a 1st round pick this season or has one but is farther down the line than the Oilers (22nd overall), there could be a deal made to acquire a player AND a 2nd rounder or move down and grab a late 1st round and 2nd round.

If I were to set a list of player targets for the Oilers to shoot for that might be available, I’d start here:

  • Matt Duchene (C/W) – Faceoff and possession #s are great. Speed Demon.
  • Travis Hamonic (RHD) – Adam Larsson, the Canadian version?
  • Matt Dumba (RHD) – Has a Cannon of a shot and is a hard-hitting mini-Scott Stevens.
  • Tyler Bozak (C) – Veteran leadership. Great on the faceoff.
  • Justin Faulk (RHD) – Offensive dman who can contribute on the PP.

Here’s some advice going into the offseason, don’t get attached to a player. Peter Chiarelli gives zero f*cks about moving a player the fans like and age isn’t an issue either. Just ask Taylor Hall and Tyler Seguin. So if the Oilers move a player like Pat Maroon, Zack Kassian, or Darnell Nurse, you’ve been forewarned.

Who would you like to see traded this summer from the Oilers? Let us know in the comments below!

Click the image and head over to our Teepublic shop to grab some sweet BLH merch.
Grab the new Kassian tribute t-shirt now! Click the image above!
Armchair GM, Beer League Hero, Edmonton Oilers, NHL, Rumors, Trades

Oilers Trade Deadline Rumblings

3 Comments

Just listening to this morning’s Oilers Now! and Mark Spector and Bob Stauffer are talking about what the Oilers should do at the deadline. Stauffer did mention that Colorado is scouting the Oilers heavily and Mark Spector has said that he wouldn’t send Pouliot (and his contract), a 1st rounder, and a prospect for UFA Martin Hanzal. Both Stauffer and probably every Oilers fan (including myself) agree, that’s a massive overpayment.

How much would Hanzal cost the Oilers?

Elliotte Friedman said in his latest 3o thoughts:

1. We’ve been hearing about high prices for rentals. Word is Arizona’s initial ask from Montreal for Martin Hanzal was Michael McCarron and two draft picks — one a first-rounder, the other conditional. I look at it this way: You never know until you ask. But it also tells you why Hanzal is not a Canadien. We’ll see if both teams circle back.

What Stauffer did do was compare Hanzal to Antoine Vermette, this is an astute comparison I believe. Now, basic stats aside, if we just take a look at the two players and agree that they’re specialty is winning faceoffs and that that is a cog that the Oilers are currently missing, we’re good to go.

Vermette cost the Chicago Blackhawks a prospect and a 1st rounder back in 2015 and I’d be willing to bet there’s an NHL team out there that would pay a similar price for Hanzal’s services. I’d hope the Oilers aren’t one of them though because I don’t believe they are at that point in the team’s development to be mortgaging the future for short-term gains. I mean look at where the team has gone without a player like Hanzal.

I get that every team’s goal is to win but if the team is actually winning, why go out and mess with what’s already there? I mean, IF the Oilers really wanted to go out and pick Hanzal up, would the Coyotes be interested in Brandon Davidson and a package centred around him? We’ve heard Michael Stone’s name bandied about in connection with the Oilers in the past, would the Coyotes take Pouliot plus for Stone and Hanzal?

It makes no sense for Edmonton to move out a ton of assets for players who won’t (assumingly) be on the team next year unless they are impact players like Kevin Shattenkirk.

That being said, I have heard that the Oilers ARE in on Hanzal. So, take that for what you will.

Moving on to a quote from Stauffer:

“Danny Lapierre from COL, another team that’s really tight financially, they don’t spend a lot of money. I can’t recall in the last four years seeing COL scout the Oilers in back to back games in different cities. 

COL needs defense, that’s no question. They need a lot of things… I know they’ve got a little bit of an analytics push there as well” – Stauffer

First off, who’d want to be scouting the Oilers B2B in different cities in the past 4 years? Lol. But I do find it interesting that Stauffer tossed that little tidbit about analytics in there at the end.

Could the Avalanche have interest in Mark Fayne, Benoit Pouliot, or Brandon Davidson? Are there any players in COL that Edmonton would like to bring in? I mean apart from the obvious ones.

Slumping centre Joe Colborne’s name has been surfacing lately. Former Bruin Carl Soderberg as well. I’ve always liked John Mitchell. Could the Oilers use an energy winger like for Shark Matt Nieto?

The key players (assets) for the Oilers at the deadline are, in my opinion, Benoit Pouliot, Brandon Davidson, and Mark Fayne.

The Oilers are desperate to move Mark Fayne’s contract. He’s basically being paid big league dollars to rehab Griffin Reinhart’s fledgling career at the moment and doing a fine job might I add but that’s too much money to be playing in the AHL. The Oilers need that money off of the books so that they can give it to the handful of RFAs needing re-signing this summer. If Mark Fayne could skate like Kris Russell, I imagine he’d be in Edmonton instead of the Caroline Kid.

Brandon Davidson SHOULD be picked up by Las Vegas or at least that is the narrative we’re being fed by the online community and MSM. I don’t believe it. He’s injury prone and hasn’t been able to get back to the level he was at last season. I think Vegas will have plenty of chances to select a better player in the expansion draft.

Benoit Pouliot has really found his niche on the wing with Nugent-Hopkins and Eberle. He’s been playing like a man possessed recently and it’s made me forget about the first 40 games of the year where he was invisible apart from taking shitty penalties from time to time. We’ve been treated to his ferocious forecheck for a couple of weeks now and one really has to wonder if it’d be a good idea to move him out before the playoffs? Would you be comfortable with Pouliot’s risk/reward ratio in the playoffs? How would Nuge/Eberle play without that big winger going in and doing the dirty work for them? Not that they are adverse to getting in there themselves, but it looks like the line is better when Pouliot is doing it.

Could Anton Slepyshev replace Benoit Pouliot? He’s not one to take unnecessary penalties and I’d say he’s on par in the skills and size department. One major plus in Slepy’s column is that his contract is a million times better. Contracts going forward are important, right? Price points and balance is how this team will be set up for long-term success.

What will happen with Jesse Puljujarvi is one last point I’d like to make. How much progress will he have to make in Bakersfield in order for the Oilers to feel comfortable enough in moving an NHL player so that he can be brought up to play in said player’s stead? From what I’ve seen of his play in the AHL, he needs to spend the whole season there and possibly part of next before he’s brought up and given significant minutes.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.

Pick up a 16-bit Larsson today!!

Edmonton Oilers, Fancy Stats, G Money

It’s way too early for this dashboard

It’s not enough data!

Normally for a shot metrics dashboard like this, you’d prefer to have at least 10 and preferably 20 games of data.

But I’m showing it to you anyway!

The reason is because, well, it actually does have a few interesting things embedded in it, and I’m going to walk you through what I see. Would be interested to hear if you observe anything else!

So without further ado …

Here is the dashboard, annotated with numbered points of interest (click to embiggen, an explanation of the dashboard is at the end if you haven’t seen it before):


Analysis

So referring to the numbers above, and remembering the caveat about how early as it is, here’s what I see of interest:

  1. Oh what a surprise, the McDavid line tops the board!  The biggest thing to note here is that big discrepancy between McDavid’s blue Corsi line and his purple Danger line. Most players I expect will have those converge over the season. I expect with McDavid that divergence is going to stay.
  2. Mark Fayne only played the one game but hey, it was really good!
  3. I still think the best thing for his development (and the cap situation) is for Jesse P to spend a good chunk of time in the AHL.  But these are nice numbers for a raw rook.
  4. Oscar and Adam aka KlefLar aka AdamBom are giving up an unhealthy edge in shot attempts, but are doing very nicely on the danger aspect.  As I noted in point #1, this is a mild cause for concern, as these two tend to converge over time.  However!  Larsson has shown for the last couple of seasons that he is a better danger suppressor than he is a shot suppressor, so I expect that we may see this ‘poor shot, good danger’ being a persistent effect too. I can live with that!
  5. You can clearly see the recent uptick for Gryba and Nurse – they’ve played two really solid games in a row.
  6. Russell and Sekera started very strongly but have been falling off the pace the last while. This is what a lot of the “Russell warners” suggested was likely to happen.  I don’t think it’s overly indicative either way, and have very much liked both Russell and Sekera’s game so far.  But it’s something to keep an eye on.
  7. Like Nurse and Gryba, Nugey had a rough start to the season, but the last couple of games have been really solid, and against Vancouver I thought Nugey was the best of the Oiler forwards.

The other notable issue is that performance of the team outside of the McDavid line is a significant concern.

Those are the main things I see on this dashboard this early in the season.  There are other things of note (like Pitlick’s shot metrics vs his 20% sh%!, but those are exactly the kinds of things that it really is too early to comment on. I’m more interested in some of the early trends around the key players and prospects).

How about you?  See anything else interesting?

PS. Dashboard Explanation

If you haven’t seen this dashboard (I tweet it out regularly through the season, and will do more of these walkthroughs here at BLH every 20 or so games), here is how to read it:

  1. Every player with even a single game will show up.  Blue background is a forward, yellow is for defensemen.
  2. The list is sorted by raw Corsi differential
  3. The blue/brown trace shows you raw Corsi differential over the course of the season so far. Blue means above breakeven, brown is below.
  4. The purple line shows my Dangerous Fenwick metric, which takes unblocked shots and adjusts them for danger (based on shot type and distance)
  5. Obviously, the farther above the line, the better!
  6. But really what you’re looking for is things like trends, hot and cold streaks, big divergences between raw and danger metrics, and so on
  7. I call it a dashboard because in a single image it gives you a really clear look on how every player on the team is doing over the course of the season, and that’s not easy to do!
  8. Feel free to tweet questions at me @OilersNerdAlert. You can also post questions in the comment section below, but for some reason my comments get eaten on a regular basis, so I might not be able to respond!
Beer League Hero, Breaking News, Edmonton Oilers, NHL, Rumors

Aftershocks… Hold On To Your Hats Oilers Fans

1 Comment

So now that Nail Yakupov has been moved, we’ve gor Kris Russell coming in on a deal rumoured to be in the 1 year $3M range. I was also told that Eric Gryba could very well be let go from his PTO and Mark Fayne might start the year in Bakersfield…

The first two moves don’t surprise me much but that last one with Fayne is a bit of a shocker… The Oilers need RHD don’t they? Has Matt Benning played that well?

Is this how the Oilers defence is set to line up?

Klefbom/Larsson
Russell/Sekera
Nurse/Davidson
Benning

Let me know if I’m missing someone and what your feelings are in the comments below!

Pick up a 16-bit Larsson today!!
Edmonton Oilers, Michael Sifeldeen, NHL

The Oilers’ 2016-17 Bottom Pairing: The Last Line of Defence

2 Comments

I know what you’re thinking: the Oilers blogosphere definitely needs another article about our defensive situation. But mostly, those articles have been focused on the addition of our new Swedish stud (yes, I’m calling him a stud already) Adam Larsson, and how the “upper echelons” of the d-core will look going forward. I don’t think there’s too much debate left about what our top-2 looks like next season. Oscar Klefbom and Adam Larsson should have no problem anchoring our back-end for many years to come. (Provided they both stay healthy, of course. #PrayForKlefbomsFoot.)

Perhaps even the top-4 isn’t too hard to predict, either. Andrej Sekera’s numbers proved last season that he’s a perfectly serviceable top-4 d-man who, through necessity, was pushed into a top-2 role. He also had a penchant for scoring cool O-ver-TIIIIIIME winners. His individual production wasn’t anything to write home about in general, really, but his shot generation and productive possession was fantastic (RelCF/60: 3.95, and RelCD/60: 3.36 respectively). So that’s the left side shored up. As far as the right side muddle pair goes, there are about 3.625 million reasons why one would reasonably expect Mark Fayne to live there. According to the numbers, though, I firmly expect Brandon Davidson to be the guy.

Can you see any category in which Mark Fayne is more clearly a top-4 defenceman than Brandon Davidson? I’m squinting real hard and I just can’t do it. In fact, the harder I look, the more I see Davidson hitting top-pairing status sooner rather than later if his trajectory even kind of holds course.

So who does that leave us with for the bottom pair? Fayne, obviously, unfortunately. I don’t really like the guy, and I think he’s unforgivingly overpaid, but he’s not useless, and I’m sure I’ll end up eating my words once he starts only taking up bottom-pairing minutes. He’ll probably pull a Jultz and end up playing half-decently. (This just in: defencemen look better with limited minutes and when playing within their skill role, not being force-fed minutes because of injuries and wishful thinking. More at 12.) Fayne won’t be putting up big numbers; he’s a shutdown guy through and through. But his shot suppression is workable at a RelCA/60 of -0.73, and he has the years of experience to know basically where he should be most of the time.

And for the left side? I’m throwing my lot in with Jordan Oesterle. There’s a common school of thought in creating defensive pairings that the limitations of particular defenders should compliment each other. In this case, Oesterle’s offence shows incredible promise (with admittedly a smallish sample size) in individual production (his PP/60 is 0.68) and productive possession (RelCD/60 of 4.61). He sits a full 2 points higher in CF% (47), and has a relative WOWY spread of only -2% rather than -5%, when compared with Darnell Nurse and Griffin Reinhart. We saw at the end of last season how composed Oesterle looked in his first passes and zone exits, and at least to my eyes, he never really looked out of his element in whatever situation in which TMac placed him.

Where does this leave Darnell Nurse and Griffin Reinhart? Nursey I’d like to see have a full season or two unencumbered by NHL duties in the A, bulking up his tall frame, playing tough minutes, and refining the specifics of his game. He needs to decide just what kind of a defenceman he’s going to be. We saw him last season toy around with a quick, attacking defensive style, taking it upon himself to carry pucks deep and try to create offence. We saw him go the goon route and pretty convincingly beat the shit out of a few unfortunate opposition tough guys. Can he be all of it? Man, I hope so! He’s got all the tools and seemingly all the drive and desire in the world to do it. But he’s never going to be able to get there if he’s being used up with ridiculous minutes and being put in situations no reasonable first-or-second-year d-man really should be.

As for Griffin, I don’t even know, guys. He’s just… not very good… at the hockeys. Maybe he has big potential, maybe he doesn’t. But I’d rather see the Oilers organization focus their growth and development efforts into their young guns like Davidson, Oesterle, Nurse, and Bear who have at least shown flashes of brilliance in some category or another, rather than a guy who we only ever hear about having potential.

Pick up a 16-bit Larsson today!!