Every day it’s going to be touch and go with regards to my favorite Finnish Oiler, Jesse Puljujarvi, isn’t it? Yesterday morning on Oilers Now, after opening the show up with “Rock You Like a Hurricane” (can you lay it on any thicker Bob?), Bob Stauffer really sort of laid out what the possible return for Pulju might be in a trade and went as far as to explain why in detail. I’ll put the transcriptions below so you don’t have to chase down the audio.
Well, here’s where we’re kind of at right now. Logic dictates, the teams that are interested in JP, they’ve probably let the Oilers know at this stage because they probably want to have things in place by July 1st.
Let’s say you have a RFA forward that’s played roughly the same amount of games as Puljujarvi, Puljujarvi by the way is an RFA as well, and you’re thinking, “You know what? We think Puljujarvi has a higher upside than our guy and our guy is probably going to be required to be paid $1.75M-$2.25M. Maybe we bring Puljujarvi in and we just qualify him and he gets, you know, 10% bump on 925k base, which would take him just over a million bucks.”
You’re going to need to know that before you dip into free agency. Mmmkay? If you’re the Oilers, you’re going to want to know what you’re getting back for Puljujarvi and I would suggest to you that there’s multiple teams that are in on him, Ok? And if you’re Edmonton, you’re going, “Are we getting back a guy that is $2M-$2.5M, cause if we do get that guy back; that might take us out of the mix of some potential mid-range free agents that we’re looking at up front.
Clearly the Oilers have experienced defensemen. They’ve got a plethora now, especially with the addition of Broberg, of some young “D” that are coming. It’s probably the deepest part of the organization, Evan Bouchard, Broberg, Dmitri Samorukov. Caleb Jones, Ethan Bear, William Lagesson… Not out of the realm of possibilities in three years from now, three or four of those guys could be in the Oilers defense moving forward.
So why not use one as a sweetener in a trade to open up some cap space?
But up front there’s movement that’s potentially available. I put a tweet out last week believing the Oilers could spend $2.5M-$3M, maybe $3.5M at the high-end on one forward and then sign a couple other forwards one 1-way deals at like 800k. So, we mentioned Brett Connolly yesterday on Twitter. Could he get $4M somewhere? He might. I’d have to talk to Gerry Johannson about that. In a perfect world in Edmonton, if he could get him at $3Mx3, he might make sense. I’m just not convinced they can get him at that price point.
Some names out there, assuming that maybe a guy like Brett Ritchie doesn’t get qualified out of Dallas, he was making $1.75M last year… Daniel Carr was a free agent, he is a UFA by the way, Ritchie an RFA. Maybe those are guys you can get in the 800k to $1M range. In fact, I’m sure you could if you offered them a 1-way deal.
You know… If you deal Kris Russell out, that will open up a significant amount of cap space and then you wouldn’t really have to worry about this sort of thing… The Oilers might even be able to sign TWO mid-range free agents. Imagine that! Picking up Joonas Donskoi AND Brett Connolly… Crazy, right?
So time will tell on that front, but you need to know what you’re going to get back. An argument could be made what makes the most sense for Edmonton is a guy who has spent the last couple of seasons in the minors and is ready to take the next step. So, for the sake of argument, we’ve mentioned Julien Gauthier out of Carolina. Sebastian Aho is with the Carolina Hurricanes, Gerry Johannson is gonna be busy cause he’s got Aho and Brayden Point and those guys are huge players for the organizations they’re with. My guess is with Sebastian Aho believes he can make Jesse Puljujarvi a player and if I was Carolina, Tom Dundon, and trust me, it’s Tom Dundon, I would be willing to make that bet.
The analytics folks are probably just salivating at the idea of buying low on Puljujarvi here and given how involved they are in Carolina, it makes perfect sense why they are getting the push here from the media.
So the Hurricanes look at moving a prospect to Edmonton for Puljujarvi, I’d think they would contemplate that. Would Tampa Bay do it? They have tons of 2nd round and 3rd round players over the last few years contributing on their farm team, they need a younger cheaper guy. Maybe they look at Puljujarvi. People mention Pittsburgh, possibly. And again, what’s the return going to be?
If I’m looking at the Hurricanes farm roster, I would think Janne Kuokkanen or Morgan Geekie would be players worth considering. They’re 5×5 pts/60 are 0.49 and 0.44 respectively, whereas Julien Gauthier’s sits at 0.37. I mean none of them scream “NHL PLAYER!!!” but we are where we are and I can see why Gauthier would stand out. He scored 27 goals and has seen a substantial increase in his production since the season prior, going from 25 points in 2017/18 to 41 in 2018/19. He’s also 6’4″ and 225lbs too.
I don’t really know what Bob’s talking about regarding Tampa’s “tons of 2nd/3rd rounders that have been contributing. Junior scoring sensations Boris Katchouk and Taylor Raddysh have just finished up their rookie seasons in the AHL and combined for 69pts between the two and really their 5×5 pts/60 wasn’t much better than the Canes’ prospects above (0.20 for Katchouk and 0.43 for Raddysh). Alexandre Volkov is another player who might garner interest but you have to wonder after two 40+ point seasons in the AHL, can he take the next step? The oldest “prospect” of the group, Carter Verhaeghe, is the only one producing for Syracuse but he IS an RFA… Over the last four seasons in the AHL, this young man has produced seasons of 15, 29, 48, and 82 points. This past year he had a 5×5 pts/60 of 0.63 but he’s also 23 years old.
Bringing us to Pittsburgh. Do they have any RFA prospects? They do, but they spent good chunks of the year with the Pens. Teddy Blueger is a 24-year-old Latvian forward who posted 39pts in 45 games for the Baby Pens last season and had a 5×5 pts/60 of 0.6. He might be tempting. Another player is Zach Ashton-Reese, he was a highly sought after NCAA free agent but has been a bit riddled with injuries in his two seasons with Pittsburgh so far. He did have a cup of coffee in Wilkes-Barre last year, 11 games where he put up 9pts. I watched him a little bit and he’s a thick guy who goes to the dirty areas. He was a really good scorer at the collegiate level but that hasn’t quite translated to the NHL yet.
I just can’t recommend any of these guys I listed in an exchange for Jesse Puljujarvi though. But what about these RFAs?
Again, not my first choices, I’m just trying to do what I can here. Both players haven’t been able to get going at all with their NHL clubs and have spent times in and out of the AHL for the past two or three seasons.
I do think a US market would probably work better for Puljujarvi, I think he needs to be gradually brought along. But to me, the best place, if I was Markus Lehto, the best place I’d be happiest with for Jesse would be Carolina. So we’ll wait and see on that front but it’s my belief that it has to get done in the next 3-4 days IF it’s going to happen. He’s going to be one of the story lines.
I don’t quite get why Stauffer is saying that Pulju needs to be gradually brought along? Isn’t that part of the reason Jesse doesn’t want to play for the Oilers? Because they’re not giving him the ice-time he thinks he can perform best in?
For Markus Lehto, would he be happiest for himself that Jesse would be playing in Carolina because he has a client there already in Teuvo Teravainen? Jim Rutherford was the GM in Carolina when Lehto was dealing with Teravainen and his issues getting NHL TOI in Chicago, right? What happened there? Chicago needed to unload a contract and Teuvo was included as the sweetener. Rutherford was also the GM in Pittsburgh when another one of Lehto’s clients, Kasperi Kapanen was having trouble getting traction in that organization and what happened with that? He was the main piece of the trade that brought Phil Kessel to Pittsburgh. So there’s a working relationship between Pittsburgh’s GM and Lehto.
One texter wrote in and in so many words told him how stupid it would be for the Oilers to trade Puljujarvi to the Hurricanes for Julien Gauthier and his reply was, “Well. We’ll have to see.” The writing is pretty much on the wall, eh?
I think for myself, I’m having a hard time trying to nail down the want for Edmonton here. I don’t buy this “cap space” narrative at all from the Oilers end. Move Russell, Lucic, or Sekera with the 1st rounder and Voila! Cap space! Or is it that they want Puljujarvi out? Has it been the organization all along that has been pushing this and Lehto and Jesse simply playing along?
Ken Holland was sounding pretty tough before the draft and now it sounds like the stance has softened which is a bit disconcerting. Now we’re hearing that the returns for JP could be a 2nd round pick or middle-6 winger or an RFA who’s played a similar amount of games to Jesse but yet to break through… It’s all over the place and that screams confusion or misinformation…
The best thing, I think, is for the Oilers to give this the Drouin treatment and maybe wait this out until the week before opening night, see who’s in a tight spot and then try to work out a deal there. Too add to that, Kasperi Kapanen and Teuvo Teravainan have turned out pretty well for their new clubs. That should simply be the expectation for Puljujarvi as well here, and with that, the Oilers had better not be accepting an AHL prospect in return.
Some of you might think that Jesse Puljujarvi stinks. He’s not a good player and he has no value at all and that’s fine. I happen to disagree. He does have value and if he didn’t, “lots and lots of GMs” wouldn’t be calling trying to fleece Holland.
So we wait… Will the Edmonton Oilers continue to trade young players and receive pennies on the dollar or will they flip that script and do something different this time?
