Edmonton Oilers Talk: McLeod, the Training Camp Roster, and the Hunt for a Top-Pairing D-man

Not a whole lot of Edmonton Oilers action took place over the weekend and thus, there’s not much to chat about, but I’ve had a few things sitting on the back burner for a few days; so what better day than today to talk about them.

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Firstly, Edmonton’s training camp roster (courtesy of Lowetide’s wonderful site).

OILERS TRAINING CAMP ROSTER (40)

Goalies (5): Mikko Koskinen, Mike Smith, Anton Forsberg, Stuart Skinner, Dylan Wells

Defense (12): Darnell Nurse-Ethan Bear; Caleb Jones-Adam Larsson; Kris Russsell-Tyson Barrie; Slater Koekkoek-Evan Bouchard; Theodor Lennstrom-William Lagesson; Markus Niemelainen-Ryan Stanton.

Forwards (23): Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Dominik Kahun, Kailer Yamamoto, Zack Kassian, Tyler Ennis, Kyle Turris, Jesse Puljujarvi, Josh Archibald, Alex Chiasson, James Neal, Jujhar Khaira, Joakim Nygard, Ryan McLeod, Gaetan Haas, Tyler Benson, Devin Shore, Adam Cracknell, Cooper Marody, Patrick Russell, Alan Quine, Seth Griffith.

I colored these names because I wanted to separate who I think will be locks for the roster this year (green), taxi squad options (blue), and those who’d be sent to the AHL for the year (red).

I don’t know if Devin Shore will make it but there’s a growing sense that Ryan McLeod is going to make a very strong push to land a spot on the opening night roster. Bob Stauffer has him as his “wildcard” to win the 4C spot and The Cult of Hockey’s Kurt Leavins had this to say in his latest weekly post,

“There are 5 Oilers players competing for the 4C job: Jujhar Khaira, Gaetan Haas, Devin Shore, Alan Quine and Ryan McLeod. If Khaira doesn’t win it, he would become the 3rd key member gone from the Oilers league-leading PK units: Oscar Klefbom, Riley Sheahan and Khaira. The most complete and best player of the 5 is Ryan McLeod. You should keep an eye on him this week as he’s prime for a fast start…the only 1 of the 5 so far this Fall that has been taking a regular shift in pro hockey (4-7-11 in 15 GP for Zug in the Swiss League). And McLeod’s cap hit of $834k is the 2^nd lowest of the 4 already signed. Quine is at $750k. Haas is at $915k. Khaira $1.2m. Devin Shore is in on a PTO. If Shore makes the club, does he sign for less than McLeod’s $834K? That’s quite a haircut for Shore from $2.3m last year. Watch McLeod.”

Are Stauffer and Leavins working together on this stuff? I feel like I’ll hear Bob say something during the week and then I’ll read something very similar to it in one of Kurt’s posts later on in that same week…

Anyway, with McLeod, physically he’s ready to go. He’s an elite skater but if you listen to Stauffer’s opinion of him, you’ll come away thinking that he needs to work on getting in the “guts” of the game. Meaning he’s got to get comfortable making a living in the muck.

I don’t think he’s that kind of player, same with Evan Bouchard, these players weren’t drafted because the team thought if they worked on getting a bit more gritty or adding some urgency to their games, they’d be superstars. No, they were selected because they’re fantastically skilled and talented hockey players. If teams are drafting young men in the hopes of adding certain attributes to their repertoire, they’ll be getting busts for a long time or trading away really good future NHLers…

Put the kids in positions to succeed and watch them flourish is what I say…

Moving on.

The Athletic is doing a series with every NHL club where they pontificate upon how they would run that franchise and today they wrote about the Oilers. Here is the paragraph that jumped out to me from one of their analytics writers,

“If a No. 1 defenceman is in play, the Oilers should be in on him. It’s time to be aggressive and move top picks. If the goal is contention, those picks will be late anyway. Next year, they should be all-in on Dougie Hamilton, and if not, they should seriously consider an offer sheet on one of the elite young defenders who will be eligible. I know I throw around offer sheets a lot, but the alternative is seemingly to just wait for an elite defenceman to fall out of the sky or overpay for an over-the-hill No. 3 in free agency. For Edmonton, it’s time to go big or go home. — Dom Luszczyszyn”

Before we get into Dougie Hamilton, here’s a list of some of the more notable free-agent defencemen with expiring contracts:

RFA: Travis Sanheim (PHI, Nikita Zadorov (CHI), Brandon Carlo (BOS), Vince Dunn (STL), Rasmus Dahlin (BUF), Conor Timmins (COL), Quinn Hughes (VAN), Miro Heiskanen (DAL), Cale Makar (COL), Jake Bean (CAR), Victor Mete (MTL)
UFA: Dougie Hamilton (CAR), Adam Larsson (EDM), Tyson Barrie (EDM), David Savard (CBJ), Jamie Oleksiak (DAL), Erik Gustafsson (PHI), Ryan Murray (NJ)

Source: Capfriendly

I really like Dougie Hamilton. He would, however, most likely cost the Oilers the ability to bring back Adam Larsson and Tyson Barrie.

Would that be a bad thing? It’s up for debate I reckon. I mean, you’d have Hamilton, Bear, and Bouchard (presumably) on the right side for the next 5-7 years one would think, no? I like that! But you know Dougie, at 28yrs old, will be looking for that max-term deal for $8M+ and that’s not something you want on your blueline in four years with better, younger options coming along…

The other option is that Edmonton could trade someone like Oscar Klefbom (not sure I see any team paying top price for him anymore) or Darnell Nurse (He’s got the most value amongst Edmonton’s tradeable assets but he’s 97’s BFF) for an upgrade on the blue line.

That option might be the most feasible. How will they be able to house Klefbom, Nurse, Jones, and Samorukov going forward? Someone will have to go…

What say you? Keep the powder dry or go for it? Let us know in the comments below!