THN Pundit Suggests Oilers Kick Tires on Former Boston Bruins Netminder

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!

The latest NHL news, rumors, and speculation comes from all of the internet’s top sites like Spector’s Hockey, The Fourth Period, NHL Trade Talk, The Hockey Writers, Sportsnet, and TSN just to name a few!

If you’re short on time but want to keep up with the day’s Oilers news, you’ve come to the right place!

Give us a follow on the socials!

The Cult of Hockey

The Magnificent Seven are driving Edmonton Oilers’ early season excellence

Seven magnificent players are driving the Edmonton Oilers’ hot start to the 2021-22 season… Leon Draisaitl, Connor McDavid, Darnell Nurse, Zach Hyman, Mikko Koskinen, Cody Ceci and Jesse Puljujarvi, with honourable mentions going to Kailer Yamamoto, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Evan Bouchard.
During the McDavid Era, I’ve never seen results as good as we’re getting right now — in admittedly a small sample size — from Draisaitl at centre, Hyman at wing and Nurse on defence.
Puljujarvi and Ceci’s Grade A shots plus-minus numbers at even strength are also outstanding, bettered by only a few players in the last seven years, while Koskinen is playing as well as he did in his peak 2019-20 season with a .915 save percentage.
Draisaitl’s at +2.0 Grade A shots per game, which is better than McDavid in his MVP season of 2020-21, when he was at +1.9 Grade A per game…
On the wing, no winger has come close to the +2.4 Grade A shots plus-minus that Hyman is putting up right now. He’s crushing it both on the attack and on defence. He’a two-way steamroller.
And Nurse? He’s got the best number we’ve ever seen for a d-man in a Top 4 heavy minutes role against tough comp. He’s at -0.2 Grade A shots per game ES…

BLH’s Thoughts: This is really cool and all, but we’re 14 games in… Let’s see where we stand at game 44. If the Oilers “Significant Seven” are still rockin’ it, then we can come back and give credit to the CoH for getting in early on why Edmonton are one of the best teams in the league.

Oilersnation

Don’t Lose the Plot

We’ve seen 11 after 14 games this season, the latest being a 5-4 decision over the St. Louis Blues in the Show Me State Sunday. Was it a perfect game? No. Have any of the 11 wins fallen into that category? No.
Just off the top of my head,
- the Oilers allow too many goals against 5-on-5…
- they’ve been guilty of too many slow starts and falling behind early…
- …there’s a fixation by some about Marc-Andre Fleury because, well, Mike Smith is out and Mikko Koskinen, who is 9-1-0, and Stuart Skinner might not be good enough to get the job done. Sure.
The old saying is the devil is in the details, and there is truth to that. But when a team is winning, those details, while worthy of attention so they don’t turn into something that impacts the bottom line, are sidebars.
…the Oilers, to repeat, are 11-3-0. I’ll take that record over hanging my hat on 5-on-5 scoring or Corski and Fenski with the team at, say, 3-11-0.
The old saying is the devil is in the details, and there is truth to that. But when a team is winning, those details, while worthy of attention so they don’t turn into something that impacts the bottom line, are sidebars.

BLH’s Thoughts: As Lowetide was saying this morning, amongst Oilers fans arguing for the sake of arguing is a real thing. The analytics ultras and the eye-test mob will be at it until the end of days…

Personally, I agree with Brownlee here, in that I’d much prefer my team to have shit analytics but be 11-3-0 than outstanding fancies and be 3-11-0 because at the end of the day, NHL hockey is for ENTERTAINMENT… Mind you, if you’re a professional gambler, you might be watching the games for different reasons and then all of these statistics are quite important to you.

Spector’s Hockey

THE HOCKEY NEWS: (Ryan) Kennedy kicked things off by suggesting Arizona Coyotes winger Phil Kessel as the most obvious choice.
He also wondered what the market would be for defenseman Kris Letang if the Pittsburgh Penguins decide the postseason isn’t in the cards for them this season.
(Matt) Larkin suggests center Tomas Hertl as a trade candidate if the San Jose Sharks slide out of playoff contention.
Another one could be Seattle Kraken defenseman Mark Giordano, prompting Larkin to wonder if the Calgary Flames might attempt to reacquire their former captain.
Larkin noted Evgeni Malkin is also in the final year of his contract… Malkin could be a player they could get a lot for in the trade market if they decide it’s time to move on.
Larkin also mentioned Chicago Blackhawks goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury as a trade candidate. He suggested the Edmonton Oilers as a club that might want to kick tires on Fleury or current free agent Tuukka Rask.

BLH’s Thoughts: Rask has said it’s Boston or bust and he wants to try and make the Finnish Olympic squad for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing. I would think the Bruins would do their best to help him out considering he’s played such a big role in the team’s success during his tenure. Then again, would it shock you if there were still some bitter old souls lingering from when he opted out of the playoff bubble mid-series a couple years back?

As long as Koskinen and the Oilers are winning, I expect Ken Holland to stand pat. Now, come March with the NHL trade deadline looming, everything could change.