Two-year deal lets Oilers find where Bear fits best
If it's true that you never really know what you've got in a defenceman until they've reached 300 NHL games, then Ethan Bear is barely out of the starting blocks with 89.
Still, his name was in Dave Tippett's nightly lineup card in pen, not pencil, last year.
He played all 71 games before the NHL stopped on March 12 — one of only three Edmonton Oilers players, alongside Darnell Nurse and Leon Draisaitl — to do so. He played a lot more against Elias Pettersson than Jay Beagle, and more against Mark Scheifele than Adam Lowry.
Among rookie defenceman, Bear and Vancouver's Quinn Hughes averaged an identical playing time of 21:53 a night, more than Cale Makar (21) in Colorado. Former Oilers draft pick John Marino in Pittsburgh (20:14) was the only other freshman over 20.
Makar and Hughes were 1-2 in Calder voting. Bear and Marino, the Oilers' sixth-round pick in 2015 after Bear went in Round 5, were surprising breakout regulars in top-four roles on their teams.
So, getting the Oilers defenceman signed to a good number was a priority and general manager Ken Holland and his cap guy, Bill Scott, did some nice financial puck gymnastics, getting the 23-year-old at US$4 million for two years.
They looked at young comparables — Tony Deangelo in New York making $925,000 last season, and Philippe Myers with his new $2.55-million-a-year salary in Philadelphia — and basically split the difference on a kid who had no leverage because of no arbitration rights.
That led to $1.5 million for this shortened season and $2.5 million in 2021-22.
“Nice to get the business side out of the way and I can get to camp,” said Bear, who was on a nine-hour drive Tuesday from training in Kelowna with an army of Nhlers and will go into quarantine, hopefully making it to the NAIT ice for the first session on Sunday. “The quarantine could be seven days, could be five.”
With the addition of Tyson Barrie and hopefully a healthier Adam Larsson, who broke his foot early and had back issues later last season, the Oilers are set on the right side. And maybe Bear doesn't get those 22 minutes a game, but he earned the trust of Tippett last year and if he keeps playing with Nurse, he's on his way.
Originally, Larsson was going to play with Nurse, but he took a shot off the foot from Hughes in the first game, and Bear stepped in and never lost his spot. Over the last 30 games, he never played fewer than 20 minutes.
“He's certainly an important player for us, played in our top four and he and Darnell on many nights were a matchup pair,” said Holland. “That's a big responsibility for a young player. He made a major commitment last summer to take his fitness to another level and it paid dividends.”
Bear was tickled with his first full NHL season.
“I really surprised myself and I'm proud of what I did. I saw the results with how hard I worked (off ice),” said Bear, who wasn't protected by the coaching staff with weaker matchups.
Now, where does Bear go from here? Is he a shutdown guy? Is there some offence there?
“I think you've hit the nail on the head. We don't know,” said Holland. “He had points at lower levels (70 and 65 point seasons in junior in Seattle). It's not like he came in and played 12 or 14 minutes. He wasn't matched against bottom-six players.
“How much offence is there? He had 21 points in 71 games, maybe that factors into 25 over a full season.
“It's a nice rookie season.”
“I've always seen myself as a two-way defenceman but I take a lot of pride in my D zone because that's my job but at the same time a lot of the joy in the game comes from offence,” said Bear, who barely saw the power play with Oscar Klefbom.
If they keep Bear and Nurse together, the other pairs might be Larsson with Caleb Jones and Tyson Barrie with either Kris Russell or Slater Koekkoek.
“Where does his career go? We don't know, but two years allows us to see where Ethan best fits,” Holland said.