Oilers’ fire sale has only just begun
Getting rid of Talbot the first step in clearing up salary cap mess left behind by ex-GM Chiarelli
The Edmonton Oilers this weekend became a better bet to win the draft lottery than to catch the final wild-card playoff spot in the Western Conference.
About an hour after losing 3-1 to the Carolina Hurricanes on Friday night, the fat lady was singing as the Oilers dropped seven points back of the final playoff spot with 10 losses in their last 11 games.
They immediately designated themselves as sellers heading to the trade deadline after the loss. And interim general manager Keith Gretzky was authorized to pull the trigger on the first sale.
It was Cam Talbot (3.36 goals-against average and .893 save percentage) and his US$4,166,000 cap hit to the Philadelphia Flyers for Anthony Stolarz (3.33 goals against average and .902 save percentage) and his $761,250 cap hit.
The move said it on its own. But if it didn’t, the interim GM voiced the words anyway:
“We need to get rid of money. That’s out biggest thing."
The move, from a salary cap point of view, resulted in freeing up $3,405,417 and allows Andrej Sekera to return from a conditioning trip to Bakersfield.
But the Oilers need to do about one of these a day on the way to the Feb. 25 trade deadline.
Gretzky has only one job now: Find some suckers to unload as many of fired GM Peter Chiarelli’s acquisitions as possible. It’s pointless for Oilers Entertainment Group CEO Bob Nicholson to be out there looking for a new GM right now. Nobody is going to want the job.
At this moment, this franchise doesn’t need a general manager, it needs a great used car salesman.
I’m not sure how you score the Ryan Spooner for Sam Gagner deal with Vancouver first thing Saturday morning, as there were no immediate salary cap benefits.
But another Chiarelli guy was gone and Chiarelli’s trade of Jordan Eberle is now Eberle for Gagner instead of Eberle for Spooner.
Gagner, of course, was once a positive player here who scored eight points in one game. Once an Oiler always an Oiler?
It’s not the same job that they gave to Chiarelli. All he had to do was find some support players to surround the collection of talent the Oilers had acquired.
Like Chiarelli, the new GM will have Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Oscar Klefbom and a few other keepers with some developing talent, most of whom are still a year or two away.
That’s enticing. But mostly the new GM, if he were to be hired today, would have no cap room to work with because of Chiarelli’s collection of duds.
If Nicholson was hoping a playoff run would make the Oilers look a lot more attractive to a qualified candidate, that hope died this weekend.
They were on a three-game do-or-die road trip and the last shred of hope died after the first two games.
They played well enough to win in Pittsburgh. But they could score only one goal. And Mikko Koskinen gave up a terrible goal beside the post that did them in.
Friday night in Carolina, they outplayed the Hurricanes. Once again, they could only score one goal. And Koskinen gave up two that, in this situation, he just had to stop.
Again, he didn’t.
Koskinen is the guy they gave a $13.5 million over three years extension. That made Talbot the first to go, because Philadelphia was willing to go for the NHL record for most goalies played in a single season: eight.
For the rest of the season, the Oilers will lead the league in size between the pipes playing the six-foot-seven Koskinen and the six-foot-six Stolarz, the latter of whom needs to play 10 games to avoid becoming an unrestricted free agent at the end of the year.
On the other hand, at a time that this organization has a major crisis with customer confidence, the combination of Koskinen and Stolarz is not likely to create any.
Neither has a great deal of NHL experience.
Koskinen, who spent the last half decade in the KHL, has played 36 NHL games. Stolarz, who played for the London Knights in 2014 when the Edmonton Oil Kings defeated them to win the Memorial Cup, has played 19.
For the next week, the Oilers should be taking offers on any player they can convince anybody that the poor guy just needs a change of scenery or environment.
Step right up and get your very own Tobias Rieder.
He’s played 43 games and hasn’t scored a goal, but there’s something in the water here and he could be your missing link.
Draisaitl has 34 goals.
McDavid has 31.
Going into last night’s game in Brooklyn against the Islanders, Milan Lucic (5), Kyle Brodziak (4), Ty Rattie (4) Jesse Puljujarvi (4), Jujhar Khaira (3), Oscar Klefbom (3), Adam Larsson (2), Matt Benning (2), Kris Russell (2), Brandon Manning (1), Rieder (0), Kevin Gravel (0) and Alexander Petrovic (0) had a combined total of 30.
Lucic ($6 million), Manning ($2.25 million), Rieder ($2 million) Petrovic ($1.95 million), Benning ($1.95 million) and Brodziak ($1.15 million) combine for $15.3 million of cap space.
You don’t need a room full of analytics guys to figure out the problem here.
A quarter of this hockey club is exceptional. The other three quarters is exceptionally inferior.