Edmonton Oilers Talk: Puljujarvi’s Next Deal, Is this Kassian’s Last Year in Edmonton, and NHL Rumors!

This is your TL/DR (too long, didn’t read) summary post where excerpts are taken from the best of the best when it comes to Edmonton Oilers blogs. BLH gives you his two cents on the latest posts being published in the Oilogosphere! Including those from Lowetide.ca, The Athletic, Oilersnation, The Cult of Hockey, Copper N Blue, Oil on Whyte, and more!

The latest NHL news, rumors, and speculation comes from all of the internet’s top sites like Spector’s Hockey, The Fourth Period, NHL Trade Talk, The Hockey Writers, Sportsnet, and TSN just to name a few!

If you’re short on time but want to keep up with the day’s Oilers news, you’ve come to the right place!

Give us a follow on the socials!

Oilersnation

Off the Top of My Head

… it was good to see Kassian back on the blades in a 5-2 win over the Calgary Flames last night, seven days after a scary incident in which he hit his head on the ice and was knocked unconscious in a fight with Zack MacEwen in a game with the Vancouver Canucks.
Playing the right side with Warren Foegele and Ryan against the Flames, it looks like this can be a pretty good trio — one capable of banging some and scoring some, which is something coach Dave Tippett didn’t get enough of from his bottom six last season.
Kassian is capable of moving up the lineup and playing in short stints because he skates so well and knows what to do around the net.

BLH’s Thoughts: My feeling is that the Edmonton Oilers should get as much as they can out of Zack Kassian before next summer because no matter how you shape it, the club is going to need his money for Jesse Puljujarvi and Kailer Yamamoto as they reach the end of their current contracts.

I will definitely miss Kass if the Oilers decide to move on from him. He’s been one of my favorites since he joined the club and he’s got an excellent career story which gets added to every year. I’d love for the team to find a way to keep him and be able to re-sign Pulju and others, but at the same time, these sort of players tend to have a shelf life with teams. We’ll see how it goes though, maybe minor miracles can happen.

Lowetide.ca

PUSHING THE RIVER

Oilers general manager Ken Holland must have contemplated the next contract for Jesse Puljujarvi. The big Finn was brilliant, scoring a massive and masterful goal at the exact moment where Edmonton typically fades.
Holland gets all kinds of credit for not trading the young winger when it appeared the relationship had completely fractured. Now, perhaps a bigger test. Where on earth will he find the money?

BLH’s Thoughts: Pulju is going to cash-in this summer, but I’m wondering what kind of deal he’s going to get.

I think his style and career projection to date has mirrored that of San Jose Sharks forward Tomas Hertl and four years ago he was awarded a contract worth $5.625M/yr.

Now, Hertl was just coming off of a season where he scored 74pts in 74 games and since then he’s run into injury problems and his production has suffered greatly, plus the Sharks have been eating ass for a few seasons now.

In the event that Jesse scores at a point-per-game, will his agent not be looking for the Mikko Rantanen deal? After scoring 87pts in 74 games, Rantanen re-signed with Colorado for six years at an AAV of $9.250M/yr and he’s kept up his end of the bargain since by putting up campaigns of 41pts/42gp (2019-20) and 66pts/52gp (2020-21).

I’m no capologist and I have a hard enough time with traditional statistics, but ideally you don’t want to walk a player right into unrestricted free agency where he can walk for free, right? But at the same time, how much are you willing to pay to buy those UFA seasons?

Jesse is 23 this year and if Ken Holland can convince him to sign a max-term deal, that means he’ll be with the club until he’s 31. If my math is right, does that not mean the Oilers would be forced into buying four years of UFA status? If so, Edmonton isn’t getting any sort of hometown discount, that’s too many UFA years.

So Holland can bet on himself (not really unless he’s planning to be the GM in four/five years) and also save himself (read: the next GM) some money if he walks him to the UFA market and he might have to considering Draisaitl’s contract will expire in four years and McDavid’s in five.

There’s also the off-chance that JP considers a shorter bridge deal in anticipation of the NHL’s salary cap ballooning in a few seasons. I’m not sure which year Elliotte Friedman was saying will see a drastic increase in the salary cap but clubs are already planning for it and if the teams are getting ready, you can be sure the agents are too…

Spector’s Hockey

PITTSBURGH HOCKEY NOW: Owen Krepps recently reported Penguins president of hockey operations Brian Burke addressed offseason rumors that his club was shopping for another starting goalie. He said it would be false to say they never looked at another netminder but it wasn’t a priority and not something they went looking for.

https://twitter.com/PaulGb_/status/1449082161815031808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1449082161815031808%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectorshockey.net%2F2021%2F10%2Fnhl-rumor-mill-october-16-2021%2F