Edmonton Oilers Talk: Was the Edmonton Media Misreporting This the Whole Time?

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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Oilersnation (Laing)

Report: Edmonton Oilers prospect Dylan Holloway may not be ready for training camp

According to Postmedia’s Jim Matheson, a lingering thumb injury may keep him out from camp.

”After Dylan Holloway’s surgery (broken thumb) this spring, Oilers hoped it would be completely repaired for rookie camp next week but it’s iffy the winger takes part,”

News of Holloway potentially getting a late start to his season is less than ideal. He’s a player the Oilers we’re likely going to have at main camp battling with a plethora of other fringe NHL’ers for a roster spot.

BLH’s Thoughts: So, it’s starting to come out that Holloway has a broken scaphoid and apparently this sort of injury can take some time to heal up given the limited blood flow it receives. If the club is taking their time with this player, good on them for doing the right thing.

Now, what I don’t know is if Holloway also broke his thumb and this is a different injury or if it the Edmonton media has been misreporting the whole time… He was all ready to play in AHL post-season, was he not?

Does that mean the organization wasn’t willing to do the right thing back then but are now? But then that presents two more questions, how healed was the scaphoid back then and why isn’t it fully recovered after a full offseason?

The Athletic (Duhaschek)

Sweeping changes vs. standing pat, the offer sheet saga and more

The Flames and Flyers are two teams that demonstrated some recent promise but took completely different approaches to the offseason.
- The Flyers promised change and followed through in a big way.
  - They have a new backup goalie in Martin Jones to support Carter Hart. Fully one half of the defense corps has been remade, with Ryan Ellis, Rasmus Ristolainen and Keith Yandle all new and then they swapped out Jake Voracek for Cam Atkinson to freshen up the forward group as well.
- Meanwhile, in Calgary, despite a lot of external pressure to change the core – to trade Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan etc. – were largely ignored.
  - Sutter, for all of his old-school style and approach, understands one hockey lesson better than people give him credit for: Talent wins. And you can’t ship talent out the door without getting talent back or you go nowhere.
  - Internally, the Flames believe a better year out of Jakob Markstrom in goal and a full year of Sutter-style hockey will make them a far tougher out than they’ve been in the last two years when they actually were a tough out, with largely the same personnel in key places.
Carolina, Montreal and Arizona contributed to making the days before Labor Day interesting when restricted free agent Jesperi Kotkaniemi signed a one-year, $6.1 million offer sheet with the Hurricanes.
- More than anything else this offseason, Montreal needed to replace a key piece, Philip Danault, who left to join the Kings as a free agent this summer.
- …ultimately, Montreal did something to help them today. Carolina did something to help them tomorrow. And Arizona pushed its future back even further down the road.
I think about Los Angeles. The Kings were one of the main success stories of the last decade, but did they jump on the prospect bandwagon too soon?
- You wonder if they’d been a little more stubborn and tried to keep the band together if the group would have gotten a second wind?
- The Penguins were also pressed to do a reset in 2014 and 2015 after second and first-round playoff exits, but stuck to their guns and unexpectedly ended up roaring back into the winner’s circle.

BLH’s Thoughts: I’ve not much to say on the offer sheet saga or the current trajectory of the LA Kings, but I look at how the Flames are building out their roster and how Matthew Tkachuk’s current contract is going to expire after the upcoming season.

I think Sutter is bringing in all the extra muscle and because he sees the importance of keeping Tkachuk in Calgary.

Johnny Gaudreau could be dealt and Sean Monahan may get moved at some point, but they do not stir the drink in Calgary, that role belongs to Tkachuk and you can bet your bottom dollar that if things don’t go his way, and they didn’t last season (pretty sure his teammates got tired of his bullshit act), he’ll be angling for a trade to some place like New York, St. Louis, or Boston. I wonder if he’d consider joining his brother in Ottawa?

The Flames, for their own good, need to find a way to keep the league’s no.1 pest and if he’s given the leash to play his game, that might keep him around. Besides, how costly is the bet bringing in Zadorov, Gudbranson, Ritchie, Lucic, etc. if he decides to leave? Not very much…

Spector’s Hockey

TORONTO SUN: Terry Koshan reports Maple Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas scuttled rumors linking his club to New Jersey Devils defenseman P.K. Subban. “I can definitively say that we have not thought a single thing about any player that is going to be a free agent a year from now,” said Dubas.
Sources say Toronto Maple Leafs winger Ilya Mikheyev asked to be traded following last season but the club doesn’t want to accommodate his request. The departures of Zach Hyman and Joe Thornton mean the Leafs envision a bigger role for Mikheyev this season.