Good Lord Not These Guys…

Well here we stand on July 27th of 2016 and the Edmonton Oilers are a much different-looking team. It’s a tougher team. A Stronger team. One with more “swagger” and “attitude” yet I’m still getting messages that the team is looking to add to that. 

I know. I get it. The hardest thing in the world is to take seriously a website called Beer League Heroes and your Oilers insider news from someone whose Twitter handle is @beerleagueheroe… But it is what it is and like I always say, you can believe it or not but anybody living back home in Canada knows it’s not that hard to be connected to someone within a professional hockey team.

In the end, these things rarely go down and it is also silly season, so we’re bound to hear all sorts of things, right? Let’s just enjoy them for what they are!

The Word on the Street

• Sounds like the Oilers WERE in on James Wisniewski but are not now. He was supposedly looking for around $27 million over 5 years and the Oilers were only offering around $13.5 million over 3 years.

A bit of madness on Wisniewski’s part no? Bloody guy just had his knee done up, missed all of last year and is looking for raise? On the other side of the coin, it’s been laughable reading the tweets of folks wanting to get him in on a PTO… Not gonna happen. He’ll be looking for a guaranteed roster spot or it’s off to Europe.

• The Oilers could be one of eight teams in on Kris Russell. Number being tossed out there is $4Mx3-4yrs

Yikes! Apart from changing things up in the dressing room culture-wise, I don’t see the point in the Oilers doing this? How many left-handed dmen do they need? Honestly! They’ve got some really nice pieces on the back-end coming up in Nurse, Davidson and Reinhart; and Mark Fayne is already taking up that obligatory overpaid bottom-pairing spot. Why even move on Russell?

• Oilers will be going all in on Tyson Barrie but they want Nugent-Hopkins in return and the Oilers have outright said no to that. It’ll be wingers and picks if Colorado wants to deal with Edmonton or the deal won’t go down.

So yeah, there it is. In my heart, I don’t believe that the Oilers will end up with Barrie unless they’re moving Eberle. I have a tough time believing the Avalanche would accept a deal made up of Benoit Pouliot, Brandon Davidson, and/or the 2017 1st round pick but I think that is what Chiarelli is trying to do.

Going into the 2016 season will be much easier than expected. The defense is really improved with the additions of Oscar Klefbom and Adam Larsson and with Brandon Davidson, Darnell Nurse, and Griffin Reinhart coming in one year older, one year stronger, and one year smarter. Andrej Sekera and Mark Fayne are a solid pairing to boot.

If the Oilers can’t find that puck-mover this season, Jordan Oesterle paired with a good stay-at-home dman might be an option as well. He performed very well at the end of last year with regards to moving the puck either by rush or pass. That being said, he might be the Matt Irwin of this group.

D1: Klefbom/Larsson
D2:Sekera/Davidson
D3:Nurse/Fayne
Reinhart, Oesterle

There are still a lot of “ifs” with the defense, I’ll admit that. But what I wouldn’t do is force a move to try to upgrade it either.

What do you think of all of this? Some pretty crazy stuff right? Let me know in the comments below!