Holland or Houdini?
No escaping the cap: Jones
His name is Ken Holland not Ken Houdini.
It’s not easy to work on freeagent frenzy day wearing a set of handcuffs, ankle irons and wrapped in chains while trying to keep your head above water in a fishbowl with 18,000 out-ofthe-playoffs-for-12-of-the-last13-seasons Oilers fans tapping on the glass and screaming to hurry up.
To suggest Holland went bobbing for apples and ended up with applesauce Monday would be unfair.
But what did he get done? A little.
And what didn’t he get done? A lot.
Everybody in Edmonton knew what Holland had on his to-do list going into July 1.
Job 1 was to get Ryan Nugent-Hopkins a second-line talent to play with. Monday came and went with the Oilers’ longest-serving player still centring a helicopter line — no wings.
Also on the list was the acquisition of a third-line centre. The guy Holland ended up with was Marcus Granlund, a third-line left-winger who has played a little centre.
Also on the list was a goaltender to cover the Oilers’ butts on the unnecessary dollars and term given to Mikko Koskinen last year with a three-year extension at $4.5 million per year.
The way it worked out, last year’s Battle of Alberta backups Cam Talbot and Mike Smith switched cities and there’s debate in Edmonton and Calgary about who won or lost that “trade.”
You get the idea. There’s no Stanley Cup parade planned for Tuesday in Edmonton, though if you want to watch one, Craig Berube, miracle coach of the St. Louis Blues, will be featured in one down main street of the hamlet of Calahoo (pop. 54), 27 kilometres northwest of the city at noon.
Despite Holland being a study in work ethic, Monday proved he couldn’t escape the salary cap jail in which Peter Chiarelli left him.
By the time the legendary Detroit Red Wings GM reached the media interview room after waving the white flag, I found myself more interested in what level of disappointment he might have experienced than anything.
Holland ended up with Smith, a 37-year-old goaltender, and Granlund, a third-line forward, with both signed to one-year deals. He also retained thirdline forward Alex Chiasson and fourth-liner Jujhar Khaira to the fold with two-year contracts. He signed minor-leaguer Tomas Jurco to a one-year deal and signed Swiss forward Gaetan Haas as well.
To accomplish that, he had to reluctantly buy out injury plagued but highly respected 33-year-old defenceman Andrej Sekera, who ended up quickly in the employ of Holland’s longtime Detroit assistant Jim Nill in Dallas.
At the end of the day you had to ask two questions:
Are the Oilers a better team for the 2019-20 season than they were before they hired Holland two months ago?
Is Edmonton a better team in terms of the one being assembled for down the road?
The answers are not the same. It’s hard to say the Oilers are much better at all for next season. But Holland definitely has made every decision clearly aimed at the big picture.
You may have expected disappointment to show or be voiced to some extent by Holland by the lack of fireworks on the day.
“I try to make decisions with no emotion. I have to live in a cocoon as much as I can,” he said.
“We’ve been here every day. We showed up here Sunday at 7:30 a.m. and went home by 7:30 p.m. We worked the phones. We talked to people. We had our lineup on the board. We looked at our cap space. We looked at our commitments. We looked at the other side of the board with our prospects and when they’d hit this side of the board. And we did that Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
“To me, it’s about the process. And when you have to make a decision, it’s based on all of the information at hand. Unless you’re in that room or in the rooms with the 31 other organizations, you don’t have all of that information.
“I’ve been on the phone with the agents, every general manager in the NHL, looked at the board and eventually made the decision based on all that information.
“I don’t have any disappointment whatsoever.
“It’s all based on where we are today and where we want to get to. I’ve been a general manager for 22 years and I know when it’s time to pay and when it’s time not to pay.
“You’re hearing this over and over again from me. On the short term, we’re trying to make decisions on 2019-2020, but ultimately I’m trying to build this team to be a really good, elite team in the Western Conference.
“Certainly, we’d like to add another player that has the potential to score 20 goals. We’ll see if we can make that happen (before training camp).”
That would be good.