Edmonton Oilers Talk: “…does the team try to trade a player like Ryan Nugent-Hopkins?”

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 Hockey Writers

Oilers May Have to Sacrifice One Of Three Key Forwards Next Season

With Kane on an incredible run, Yamamoto playing the best hockey of his NHL career, and Puljujarvi being a player the Oilers were extremely patient on and know they want on this team long term, only McLeod is someone the Oilers can likely extend at a bargain price tag.
Theoretically, moving close to $10 million from next season’s salary cap would give you close to enough space to make up the differences in what the three forwards are making now versus what they might make next season, but few teams are simply going to take on any of these three players for free.
While they should, there’s also no guarantee the sum of the raises dished out to Yamamoto, Puljujarvi, and Kane will stay under $8-$9 million.
…if the Oilers move Barrie, they’ll need another right-shot defenseman. It won’t cost a fortune to go out and acquire a No. 6 guy, but that’s also $1-$2 million removed from that available pool of money you have to spend.
If the Oilers want to buy years of Puljujarvi’s unrestricted free agency, they’ll need to pay up now. That likely means $4-$5 million per season over five or six seasons. Yamamoto might get another bridge deal, but he’ll be around $3 million and there’s no telling what the free-agent market for Kane might command.
…it could easily cost the Oilers $5 million per season to retain Kane.
…does the team try to trade a player like Ryan Nugent-Hopkins? He’s a serviceable player and he offers a lot to this team, but his $5.125 million salary off the books — along with some of the above-mentioned players being moved — solves a lot of money problems for the team.

BLH’s Thoughts: Move RNH? In theory, that would work, but I don’t think that’s the kind of player you want to move to open up cap room if you’re a team that plans on contending. A good GM would find another way to create cap space.

There’s no doubt in my mind that there are markets for Tyson Barrie (MTL/NYI/SEA) and Zack Kassian (ARI/PIT/OTT). Mike Smith, this one I might have to agree with Jim Parsons here and say Edmonton might need to pay to move him.

With all of that in mind though, replacing each one won’t be as daunting as Parson alludes to. I mean, Barrie could be replaced internally by Philip Broberg potentially and if I were Ken Holland, I’d look at possibly acquiring Zack MacEwan (PHI), Mason Geertsen (NJ), Kurtis MacDermid (COL), Nathan Bastian (NJ), or Kurtis Gabriel (CHI) and plan to play my top three lines more often going forward.

Basically, I can guarantee you that there will be teams looking for toughness after this year’s playoffs. Clubs who didn’t have enough and lost out in the post-season and organizations who have young players coming in that’ll need protection. Plus, Kassian can skate, handle the puck, and moonlight with high-end top-six forwards.

With Smith, as I said yesterday, it wouldn’t shock me at all if Holland went another year with him and rode out his deal instead of making an uncomfortable decision.

I would imagine a decision like that would mean they really believe in Stuart Skinner and their plan is to have him take over the starter’s job in ’23/’24 and pluck an older veteran off of the free agent market then seeing as the likes of Jonathan Quick, Semyon Varlamov, Freddy Andersen, Jake Allen, James Reimer, and Jonathan Bernier could be available.

It’ll really all come down to which of this year’s free agents Ken Holland wants to keep because he could go into 2022/23 with a combined $2.95M tied to his netminders instead of somewhere between $6M and $9M. The savings Holland takes advantage of going with Smith and Skinner for another year would make things a tad easier for him to re-sign his free agents this summer and then in 2023/24 Duncan Keith, Derek Ryan, Devin Shore, Mike Smith, and Oscar Klefbom all become UFAs. That’s around $13M to play with.

Final one here, if the Oilers want to open up a shit load of cap space, there’s one guy who’s getting a pretty substantial raise next season that I’m fairly certain isn’t going to live up to and that’s not a shot at him per se. All he did was accept the offer and you can’t blame him for it, but $9M+ is a lot of money to make every year while only putting up 35pts a year and John Gibson is going to be dangled about this summer…

I’m not saying, I’m just saying.

The Athletic

Smart, sensible or stupid: Should Oilers budget for Evander Kane beyond this season?

The Oilers have outscored opponents 18-11 at five-on-five in 385 minutes with Kane on the ice, per Natural Stat Trick. That 62 goals for percentage is elite.
Kane is benefiting from scoring on 16.9 percent of his shots on net in all strengths — the highest efficiency of his career — and a 1.043 PDO at five-on-five.
Puljujarvi and Yamamoto are clearly going to get raises on the matching $1.175 million AAV cap hits they have now. That amount should be more modest than it could be as short-term, bridge contracts are the most likely outcome for both players.
Oilers GM Ken Holland’s philosophy has been to not offer higher salaries and term to younger players still proving themselves.
PuckPedia lists the Oilers as having $8.9 million in cap space for next season with 15 players under contract. That equation is fluid, of course. One of those 15 players is Oscar Klefbom, who’s very unlikely to ever play again. Also, Evan Bouchard’s bonuses are expected to carry over to the 2022-23 budget.
If Puljujarvi and Yamamoto roughly double their cap hits, and fellow RFA Ryan McLeod comes in around that $1 million mark, that’s approximately $6 million added between the three players.
…he’ll (Holland) almost certainly have to move out other roster players if he wants to re-sign Kane. Potential options there are Zack Kassian and Warren Foegele, who both have two more years with cap hits just north and south of $3 million, respectively. Trading Tyson Barrie is another option, although finding an everyday right-handed defenceman for much cheaper than his $4.5 million AAV for a couple more seasons might not be so simple.
Let’s not forget, however, there’s a very good and much cheaper top-six option pushing in the minors. His name is Dylan Holloway.

BLH’s Thoughts: Holloway’s potential arrival makes sense. Hopefully his wrist will be fully healed by the start of next season.

Another option might be Jake DeBrusk instead of Evander Kane but that would probably involve Warren Foegele and another contract heading to Boston.

The Oilers might have to pay to move somebody too.

This summer is going to be wild and I fully expect the Oilers to be right in the middle of all of it.

Trade Rumors

The Hockey Writers – Aaron Portzline of The Athletic writes that Blue Jackets GM Jarmo Kekalainen said the team didn’t make many moves at the NHL Trade Deadling because their bigger moves are coming during the offseason.
- Friedman also reports, “No guarantee it happens, but I do believe Claude Giroux is doing his research on Ottawa.” Giroux is from Ottawa and he’s been linked to the team before. One has to wonder what situation would make him consider the Senators more: winning the Stanley Cup or coming close?
- The Calgary Flames took a long look at Hampus Lindholm and speculation is they were willing to send Sean Monahan to the Ducks as part of the deal. Ultimately, they couldn’t offer the same package the Boston Bruins did and the Ducks went with the Bruins offer.
- Elliotte Friedman mentioned that the Winnipeg Jets, Anaheim Ducks, and Philadelphia Flyers might be three teams to watch moving forward because there are some real questions about what they’ll do with some of their key players.
- Suggesting these teams could go through rebuilds or major retools, John Gibson could leave the Ducks, the Jets could move Mark Schiefele, Pierre Luc-Dubois, and even Connor Hellebuyck could go. The Flyers will have to decide on Travis Konecny, Ivan Provorov, and Travis Sanheim.
NHLRumors.com – The Ottawa Senators could buy out Colin White‘s contract this offseason. Nikita Zaitsev has bonus money in his contract so a buyout is doubtful. Matt Murray has a big contract and his buyout would be big money. A Michael Del Zotto would also make sense.
- Elliotte Friedman on the 32 Thoughts Podcast said that Arizona could come to the rescue of the Vegas Golden Knights and Evgenii Dadonov.
- Chicago Blackhawks forward Jonathan Toews on his future after the trade deadline move: “For the longest time, the thought never entered my mind to leave Chicago. In this case, you can’t help but picture yourself and what it’d be like to play for another team and what that experience would bring.”