Last night as I was reading articles on what the Edmonton Oilers need to do with regards to the hiring of their new GM and listening to the countless podcasts on the same subject, I came to a realization that nobody (in the main stream media) has brought up Bill Scott’s name.
Bill Scott’s title within the organization is, Director of Salary Cap Management and Assistant to the President of Hockey Operations.
We’ll get to why this means nothing later on but I think the following point has to be made anyhow. This is the man that was put in charge of the Oilers salary cap. He is the teams “Capologist” if you will. His job entails knowing the ins and outs of the CBA and he’s supposedly an “expert” in this aspect. He graduated from Michigan State University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management.
So, if the Oilers are in salary cap “Hell”, then why hasn’t this gentleman’s name not been thrown onto the hot seat at ANY point in the last three odd years?
The history on Scott on the Oilers goes back a few years. He was the GM of the Oilers’ farm team for four seasons from 2010-2014 before being brought on as assistant general manager to, at the time, Craig MacTavish. Then in 2016, Peter Chiarelli brought in Keith Gretzky to replace Bill Scott. Scott was then “demoted” to director of salary cap management and assistant to the POHO (Chiarelli).
Why This Doesn’t Matter
I asked a number of my sources what the deal was here is the best response I was handed,
Bill Scott is being audited by Bob Nicholson. Scott also never had a ton of input. At the end of the day, it was Peter Chiarelli making the calls.
MacT, Howson, and Bob Green BRAINSTORMED on the pro scouting and Green himself on the amateur side.
A lot of talk about “What’s in the water” in Edmonton since Bob Nicholson gave us that iconic quote. Is it all of the extra voices around the club? More from a source of mine that is close to the club,
Lowe listens because he is an Oilers fan but at the end of the day, he has ABSOLUTELY no input regarding decisions.
The “old boys club” DOES exist but not as the fans think it does. Kevin Lowe has not been involved with the hockey decisions ever since Nicholson has taken over.
But I can tell you RIGHT NOW. The ONLY men involved on the hockey side is Nicholson (CEO of OEG and leader on business AND hockey until he hires a POHO) MacT for hockey, Howson for hockey and Bob Green for pro and amateur hockey. Lowe is NOT involved on the hockey side.
As Elliotte Friedman said in the latest episode of the 31 Thoughts podcast, These old Oilers know exactly how they’re perceived in Edmonton and for me, I think they’re considering their positions within the club and whether to stay or not.
My feeling is that we will see a purging of those ex-Oilers when the new GM comes in. I’m not even sure if Keith Gretzky is safe despite his fine job with the scouting but maybe a new boss comes in and simply puts him in a more suitable role, like Director of Amateur Scouting.
A lot of fans are getting on the case of the pro scouting department and I’m not sure that’s the right direction for their fury. They’ve only got two pro scouts listed on the Oilers website, Paul Messier and Chris Cichocki. How much can two guys really do? I say, add more pro scouts, get more manpower out there attempting to discover the underappreciated players that could be had.
Pierre LeBrun and Elliotte Friedman both spoke about hockey teams putting more focus on sports science and analytics. I would hope Edmonton would dig in a bit more here too.
That might sound hypocritical of me to say if you follow me on Twitter, but I dig into the computer boys on that platform because, for the most part, they’re dicks. NOT ALL OF THEM. I’m not saying that. I’m saying that because I feel there’s a use for the advanced metrics, I use them in my posts all the time. I guess for me, I could do without the online personalities and egos.
Then again, maybe I should just “man up” and “deal with it”…
Trade Deadline Plans
Recent names coming to the forefront are players like Andreas Athanasiou, Ryan Dzingel, Daniel Carr, Charles Hudon, etc. I think it’s fair to say the team is looking to get back to what made it successful in the past, speed and hard work.
I have a feeling they’re going to find a beneficial way out of Lucic’s contract in an attempt to put themselves in a position to be in the running for Michael Ferland. Not sure how they’ll accomplish that mind you.
#PayDecker Debacle
This incarnation of the NHL All-Star game format has one plus, the 3-on-3 portion. The rest is garbage. I mean how can you only have FOUR contestants for the hardest shot contest? And how boring was the passing contest? I’m happy Leon won it but fack…
Speaking of the passing contest, it came out after the All-Star competition that Brianna Decker had performed three seconds better than Leon Draisaitl and a massive campaign to get her recognized for the accomplishment flooded hockey Twitter.
Classy move @CCMHockey 👏🏼#PayDecker
(NHL skills comp, a female player won the passing comp by 3secs, but the guy given the title & $25k despite being beaten by this amazing player, Brianna Decker, and despite earning 327x more than her, so $25k is a drop in his ocean…) https://t.co/E5ZzajwpZS
— Caroline Crossland (@cazwalker13) January 27, 2019
Bitter much? Here’s what Leon Draisaitl had to say,
Brianna Decker:
“Karlsson went after me, so I was like, ‘OK, I think I might have beaten him,’ but I didn’t know how long it took me. I was just casually going through the demo."
Leon Draisaitl:
“She beat me? Wow. That’s really impressive. Good for her.”#PayDecker
— Matt Larkin (@MLarkinHockey) January 26, 2019
But hold on folks… There’s more from Elliotte Friedman…
https://twitter.com/FriedgeHNIC/status/1089324763606962177
Oh shit… So she didn’t beat Leon after all. That sucks for the #PayDecker movement… I guess.
And while we are on the subject, Brianna Decker was incredible in the passing drill. She deserves as much recognition as she can get. But she wasn't competing, the rules were different for her on the breakout pass, and the targeted lights (manually operated) were not the same.
— Jeremy Thompson (@Imahockeyguy) January 26, 2019
Maybe the NHL knew this all along but that’s not important here. CCM paid her and the NHL is also going to donate 25k to both the American and Canadian women’s national team players who participated. Everyone’s a winner! Right?
#NHL is donating $25,000 each to the charities of the choice of the American and Canadian women’s national team players who participated in Friday night’s #NHLAllStar Skills.
— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) January 27, 2019
For what it’s worth, I thought Kendall Coyne Schofield was the most impressive. Fack can she fly! I wish I’d have seen the other ladies participate but I did not, sadly.
So here’s my suggestion, why not include the ladies in the actual 3-on-3 event? They’ve proven they’re nearly on par with the men, so why not promote inclusion by having a lady on every team? What about having a team of ladies comprised of the best female hockey players across the globe?
In Taiwan, I play hockey on a team with three members of the women’s national team and they are just as good as the men, if not better. Last year, I was on a men’s team and we had a series of games against the women’s national team that was VERY competitive.
The game is growing despite gender and I say the NHL does even more in the future to include everyone.
What are your thoughts?
