In response to an interview Markus Lehto gave Sportsnet 690 in Vancouver where he said that he never said that if Jesse Puljujarvi wasn’t traded, he’d play in Europe, long-time Oilers reporter Mark Spector was a guest on the July 11th edition of Oilers Now and he and host Bob Stauffer had quite a bit to say about Lehto’s comments,
MS: Well, the lead quote in my story (on July 19th) and I reported it exactly as he (Lehto) said it was, “If he doesn’t get traded, he will play in Europe next year. He will not play in Edmonton.”
We’ve been through this before Bob, we’ve all been in the business a long time. That was a direct quote from Markus Lehto in reference to Jesse Puljujarvi and that he said that directly to me over the phone. We’ve all been in the situation where we misunderstand someone or maybe someone says something that kind of means two things and what it appears in print it looks worse than he meant it. I’ve been through those. We correct them and we talk about them and we tend to get a phone call right away, Bob, when we mess up. And three weeks later, four almost, and all of a sudden Markus Lehto is claiming he was misquoted.
So, I would say to you, if he was misquoted my phone would’ve ran the next day. I would also say to you that I texted him this morning and I have not recieved anything back from him. I asked for a chance to have a chat and he’s not responding. This is an agent who is just a guy who said something that he’s maybe having a hard time backing up. I don’t know why he’s backing off it Bob.
This is the part of the interview where Bob Stauffer interjects and lets us know why Lehto is backing off,
BS: Oh! I think we know why he’s backing off it! C’Mon! You know how this works here, he tried to squeeze Ken Holland! That’s what he tried to do. He sat there, looked at the timing of it (the trade demand)… When do a lot of trades get made Mark in the National Hockey League?
MS: After the draft.
BS: Right. Right after the draft. Like, on the Saturday of the draft there were a bunch of deals that went down. So, Ken Holland, that quote that came out that you had out on the Wednesday, I actually interviewed Ken Holland about two hours after that came out. I had a separate one on one interview and we discussed it.
Ken Holland to @Bob_Stauffer on Puljujarvi: "I'm not trading anybody because they want to be traded. But if we can find something that works for everybody, I'll look at it. If not, I'm not doing anything." #Oilers
— Reid Wilkins (@ReidWilkins) June 20, 2019
Stauffer continues here with a bit of insider knowledge with regards to why Lehto is back peddling on his trade demand now,
BS: I had another agent say to me today, “Well, you know why he’s now saying that? Because they don’t have anything for him at the price point that he’d be qualified at in the NHL for him over in Europe.
MS: It’s one of those situations where an agent, he took a risk, and that’s fine, that’s what agents are supposed to do and the risk has not worked out his way and that’s fine too, Bob. As a reporter, we’ve got two things here, we’ve got our objectivity and our accuracy/honest, right? I’ve been doing this 30 years. Have I ever had a player say to me, “I think you took that quote the wrong way.” Yeah! I mean 30 years of writing, I messed up a quote once in a while. Have I ever misreported a lead quote like that, that was never spoken? Not in 30 years, I have not, Bob. And I don’t intend to.
MS: I’m okay with whatever Markus Lehto does, but when he starts saying he was misquoted, now he’s on my reputation. Now he’s saying, “Spec quoted me dishonestly.” and that’s where I come in. I wouldn’t be on your show, I wouldn’t complain about this, he can do what he wants, go get rich, I hope Jesse Puljujarvi has a 1000-game career somewhere, but start to tread on our reputation as reporters and we’ve got to step in here. He’s said exactly what he said. He said it to me and I reported it three weeks ago and at that time Markus Lehto did not stand up and say, “Hey! I didn’t say that!”, he didn’t say that for three weeks.
More from Stauffer,
BS: So what happened here is Lehto tried a power play. That’s what happened and this was rumbling since the Oilers were in Carolina, and I think we were in Carolina the first week of March.
BS: I don’t like this course of action from the agent. I gotta tell ya. Now he’s blaming the media, he’s saying he’s being misquoted. I get it, I work for the OEG, I’m admitting the Oilers are culpable for the lack of development, but at what point is there culpability from the agent and for that matter, with the player?
MS: These are the games that are played, Bob, right? The games that are played are the agents taking care of his player and frankly, I think what happens is sometimes the agents tell the players… I’m not saying the agents are dishonest with players but they tell players what they want to hear maybe, ya know? They fill a player’s head full of all the positives and how great he is and how if anything going wrong it’s everybody else’s fauly. I don’t know if that’s what Lehto is doing with Puljujarvi, but I would suggest that… I certainly know if Jesse Puljujarvi was my son, I would say to my son to take a long look in the mirror and to separate the things that the Oilers have done wrong, and there have been some mis-steps on the Oilers part, there’s no question, but control the ones that you can control. Jesse Puljujarvi can be more successful and a better NHL player than he’s been and he can control a lot of those things regardless of what’s going on with the Oilers. He needs to focus on those things and make it appear, that it’s everyone else’s fault and that he has been hard done by.
Stauffer and Spector go on to talk about a scenario where Puljujarvi’s camp is getting squeezed because if they were going to go to KHL to play they’d probably have to be there by early August should the seasons over there start at the beginning of September. And so if they couldn’t find a way to do that, then perhaps Karpat (SM-Liiga) would be the next option down, but for sure they wouldn’t be able to cover the million or so dollars that Jesse would be getting paid in the NHL at minimum. Now that option’s out, so perhaps it’s time to revisit the Oilers and blame the media for putting words in the agent’s mouth…
You can listen to the entire interview right here.
This is a mess. Some of the local media and the fanbase are blaming Puljujarvi, some of them are blaming the Oilers, some of them are blaming the agent, and some of them are blaming everyone. The more days that transpire, the more I fall into that last category.
I feel bad for Jesse but I do agree with Spector in that he needs to grow up a bit here. It’s life hitting him square in the mouth for the first time and I’m not sure if he’s got the right people around him telling him the right things. He has to consider his actions here, right? I mean, if he gets traded and things don’t improve, all the guys that he’s traded for have to do is show up every night and work their bag off and Jesse will be forgotten and maybe that’s a good thing, maybe it’s not. Edmonton is a blue-collar town and while the fans are sick of losing, I think at the very least they’d be happy with a team that competed every night. So, if Pulju came back and performed as he did in the AHL, the fans would forgive him instantly. They forgave Zack Kassian and one could say Milan Lucic gets forgiven every time he wallpapers some guy but then he uses that up the next time he handles the puck, so it’s a bit of a rocky marriage there.
Other Notes
- Edmonton has yet to fill their final coaching spot on Dave Tippet’s staff and we’d heard names like Mark Lamb in the past and even Stu Barnes, but I’m wondering if it’s someone who has ties to BOTH Ken Holland and Dave Tippett. A fella like Lindy Ruff comes to mind for me.
- Tyler Wright and Archie Henderson were brought in after Detroit decided not to retain them in an effort to upgrade the Oilers amateur and pro scouting departments. I think this is great! Some new blood and a different voice in those meetings should go a long way. Are the anti-Old Boys Club fans out there with their torches and pitchforks?
- Former amateur (and pro) scout Mike Chiarelli is on his way to Minnesota according to Jim Matheson.
- I’m hearing now that the chances that Milan Lucic is an Oiler at the start of training camp is down from 90% to 70%.
- There are rumblings that a Calgary/Vancouver/Edmonton trade might go down. Is this the Lucic/Neal/Eriksson trade that was supposed to happen a month ago?
- I’m not sure if the Oilers want to move another veteran defenseman, but Kris Russell’s name is coming up and could Calgary be interested in him should the find a way to deal TJ Brodie?
- Keeping with the Oilers/Flames theme, some folks on the Twitter machine are proposing a Lucic/Puljujarvi for Neal/Bennett trade and I think that’d be really good for the Oilers but it does raise some questions. If JP wants top-6 TOI, how’s he going to get that in Cow Town? Their top-6 wings are sorted. How would Calgary ownership feel about cutting bait on their premier free agent signing after only one season? How would James Neal’s personality fit into the Oilers dressing room? Can Sam Bennett become the top-6 forward he was drafted to be?
- If you’re a draft geek like me, there’s going to be an intense battle for the 1st overall pick between a very famous French prospect out of Rimouski by the name of Alexis Lafreniere and an emerging power forward called Quinton Byfield. I think Byfield is going to overtake Lafreniere because he’s 6’5″ and skates like the wing. He’s got edges like a little guy and he loves to punish the opposition physically. The other thing that is in his favor is that his birthday is in August, so that means he’s about as young as you can get for a draft prospect and he’s already near a point-per-game in the world’s best junior hockey league.
