Edmonton Oilers Talk: Barrie Might Not See Year Two of His Contract in Edmonton According to One Oilers Scribe

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

One thing that’s going right for the Edmonton Oilers? Tyson Barrie

In his first 14 games this year, he made 32 major mistakes on Grade A shots against in 212 even strength minutes, 2.26 such mistakes per 15 minutes of even strength playing time.
In his last 15 games, he’s made just 19 such mistakes in 256 even strength minutes, just 1.11 per 15, which is the rate you’d expect to see from a solid defensive NHL d-man.
For the past month, that decent defensive d-man has been Barrie, who can also still move the puck with great style and impact.

BLH’s Thoughts: No. We can’t just take a single metric and a cherry-picked time frame and say a player has turned the corner. Go to naturalstattrick.com and look at the rest of Barrie’s numbers. He’s eating absolute shit in every stat aside from HDGF%. I even looked at the relative numbers to see if he was getting smack from teammates and nope, he’s still well under water in almost every stat. I used the same time frame that The Cult used and… Nope. Still drowning.

I get that we want to point out when we see a stat that’s turning itself around after being so bad to start a year, but Barrie’s not really making any sort of massive transformation from Phil Housley to Doug Harvey.

I like Barrie a lot and I’ve got no issues with him to be honest. I understand why he’s on the team and I also understand his faults. He’s high event, baby! And if you can’t go along with that, you’re going to have tough time watching him. But he’s also very competitive and that’s an attribute I really care for.

Mark Spector said on Oilers Now yesterday that he’s not sure that Barrie will see year two of his contract in Edmonton and Seattle’s name got brought up… So we’ll see where that goes.

Oil on Whyte

What potential addition matters most for the Oilers: Goaltending, Depth, Or Star Talent?

… the top need has to be the third-line center position.
Adding a good third-line center would help boost the rest of the lineup. It would make Warren Foegele and Zack Kassian better and would instantly improve the scoring of this team and take some of the workloads off of stars like McDavid and Draisaitl.

BLH’s Thoughts: Nah. Too expensive and they’ve got a 3C in RNH as it stands. A goalie should be the team’s no.1 priority because, as we all know, the teams with the hottest netminders in the playoffs go the furthest.

The Hockey Writers Rumors

Greg Wyshynski points out that the All-Star Game is still a go, despite the NHL season being put on pause. He writes, “Have been hearing that there has been no talk about canceling the Vegas NHL All-Star weekend at this time. Obviously, there have been other priorities that the NHL has been dealing with.”
With the emergence of Evan Rodrigues, Dan Kingerski of Pittsburgh Hockey Now wonders if bumping Kasperi Kapanen and Jason Zucker down in the lineup has made either player someone who could potentially be traded.
Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek talked about the teams that might be interested in Chychrun and said the Edmonton Oilers are likely not among the more serious suitors. Friedman noted that a couple of his sources said he doesn’t think it’s going to be the Oilers. “They’re not in it as much as some other teams are,” he said.
Joe Haggerty of Boston Hockey Now noted the Bruins will likely be looking to add a No. 2 center and a left-shot defenseman before the NHL trade deadline. He believes the Bruins might try to bring David Krejci back to solve the center depth issue, but wonders if Boston would try to acquire Chychrun from the Arizona Coyotes.

BLH’s Thoughts: With the way Bob Stauffer was talking on his radio show about Edmonton’s depth on left defense, it sounds like the club might be prioritizing a top-six winger and a goaltender. So that should get the Phil Kessell/Marc-Andre Fleury rumors flying!