Edmonton Oilers Rumors: “He is virtually untradeable…”

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!

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The Cult of Hockey

Edmonton Oilers GM Ken Holland on Duncan Keith’s late vaccination: “It was a difficult decision for Duncan”

Duncan Keith is now fully vaccinated and comes out of quarantine next Friday.
On the late nature of Keith’s decision, Holland said he has no concerns. “I totally support him. Would I wish that he made the decision two months ago? And we weren’t going through this? No. But I respect it was a very, very difficult decision.”
With young goalies Stuart Skinner and Ilya Konovalov in the AHL, Holland said he’s not looking right now at bringing in another veteran goalie.
On his two young right wingers Kailer Yamamoto and Jesse Puljujarvi, Holland said it’s undecided where they will fit in the line-up, with plenty of options for both players.
The rules in his industry — set by both the league and the players themselves — make it almost impossible for an unvaccinated player to be a functional part of a Canadian team that must cross into the United States frequently.
The decision to get vaccinated is not as easy for some as it is for others, Holland said repeatedly. And he’s correct. If you’re older and not so healthy, you may well wonder how anyone could be so selfish as to not get vaccinated. You may even get irate about it.
But for young and healthy people, such as NHL athletes, the virus presents far less of a threat than it does to the more elderly and less healthy.
Some players are also militant about anything that goes into their body. Their dietary habits are strict and their level of fitness is extraordinary.
Given that combination, I think Holland had it exactly right being so patient with Keith and also patient with his current unvaccinated player.

BLH’s Thoughts: It’s my understanding that Keith had an appointment to get his vaccination earlier but was forced to miss that engagement thus requiring him to get it later than intended.

Could you imagine if Keith had decided not to get the jab? He would’ve been the second veteran dman to basically turn his back on the club after Mike Green did it. Now Green had a pretty good excuse (family is about as good as it gets), but that doesn’t change the fact that he chose retirement instead of re-joining the team that paid a pretty price to get him.

The bottom line with regards to Duncan Keith is that after careful consideration he chose to put everybody else ahead of himself and his personal beliefs. This is the most important thing because that’s what a leader and a person of high moral competency does. If you’re questioning his leadership abilities, you may be more hung up on who he was traded for and the actual trade that the human Duncan Keith is.

Sportsnet

For Oilers, Archibald’s selfish anti-vaccine stance is not worth the risk

One is a player who opted to honour his commitment to his new team in Edmonton. The other, just another selfish anti-vaxxer who is betting on himself, somewhat foolishly.
Josh Archibald, who will be replaced by Game 1 of the regular season if he doesn’t give his head a shake.
Archibald is a nice, fourth-line penalty killer in a normal season. He’ll get you 10 goals a year. But for this, the third COVID-affected NHL campaign, an unvaccinated Archibald just isn’t worth it.
He is virtually untradeable, as Archibald could not play games in Canada for a U.S.-based team, and poses a risk that no fourth-liner can justify.
By Holland’s math, an unvaccinated player who must serve a 14-day quarantine every time he comes over the U.S. border and into Canada, would miss “30-plus games” this season. He’d also miss a ton of practice time, and would lose one-200th of his pay for every day missed due to the federally mandated quarantine.
“I’m happy that he’s going to be part of our team this year, fully vaccinated,” Oilers general manager Ken Holland said of Keith, a player Holland had seriously dug in on to convince him to get vaccinated.
Mike Smith took some work, too, we are told, but now both are vaccinated and ready to do what they were brought in to accomplish.
Had Keith and Smith not relented, the Oilers’ season would have been derailed.
I expect Archibald to relent and get the jab. Let’s face it: It’s a business, and there is no moral high ground in sport.
There is one player left on a Canadian team who puts himself before everything else, and his name is Josh Archibald.

BLH’s Thoughts: Why doesn’t Spector tell us how he really feels about the unvaccinated? This is about as scathing an article I’ve seen in a very long time from someone in the Edmonton media pointed at a specific Edmonton Oiler.

The way I see it and from the verbiage I’m picking up is that the team is giving Archibald some time to “get sorted” and to work out what kind of options they have with him if he chooses to remain unvaccinated.

Could they not suspend him on road trips to the US and use Colton Sceviour instead? Then do the flip-flop when the Oilers return to Canada? Archie would still have to go through the protocols as the club travels across the nation, but if he’s willing to give up the cash to only play in Canada and the team values him, there may be a way to salvage his choice.

Now, that said, if he catches COVID and infects others on the team, that’s a problem too. A problem the team would have to take full responsibility for.

It wouldn’t shock me if he was vaccinated at some point during the year (if not before the season starts), I’ll just state that now. He’s going to face heavy heavy peer pressure and it’s not just him, his family, loved ones, and friends off the ice. I don’t know if he’ll be able to endure that kind of alienation.

When Jesse Puljujarvi left the team to go home to play for Karpat a couple of seasons ago, Leon Draisaitl had some pretty cutting words about that. I wonder if Leon will take the same sharp tone when asked about Josh Archibald this week?

— BLH (Edmonton Oilers Enthusiast} (@BeerLeagueHeroe) September 23, 2021

Oilersnation

Not Done Yet

What we found out from Holland is goaltender Alex Stalock will likely miss the season because of a heart condition – myocarditis — related to getting COVID before last season.
Holland told reporters the Oilers have one unvaccinated player. He said the player could miss 30 games because of quarantine requirements in place for crossing the Canadian/U.S. border. The 30-game estimate looks pretty conservative.

“There’s a team or two out there that have made a decision that unvaccinated players are not welcome at training camp. I have not made that decision as of this time because I think the player is going through a process to decide because it’s a difficult decision, so I want to give the person the appropriate time.”

…the challenge for Holland and coach Dave Tippett isn’t just the 30-or-more games the unvaccinated player would miss because of quarantine, it’s the constant juggling of the roster that would be required.
The important matter at this point regarding what Holland told us is the long-term health of Stalock.

BLH’s Thoughts: So there we go, We know now why Stalock hasn’t joined the team. Those games in Da Beauty League were perhaps just a test to see how his heart would hold up and the Oilers aren’t really screwed if one of Koski or Smitty go down as they’ve got Skinner and Konovalov at the ready. To add to that, Holland said yesterday that he’s not looking to add another netminder and he likes the tandem of Koskinen and Smith.