NHL analysis

Major Additions: Dustin Penner, Sheldon Souray, Geoff Sanderson, Joni Pitkanen,

Major Subtractions: Petr Sykora, Jason Smith, Joffrey Lupul

Analysis

Oh the poor Oiler fans. Expectations were so high a year ago. It’s almost a blessing that this year they almost can’t do any worse than will be expected.

Kevin Lowe went into the summer with a vengeance but came out looking like he could be on his last legs in Edmonton (probably unfairly). He managed to acquire a big name UFA defenceman in Souray, a young puck moving defenceman in Pitkanen, admitted to and dumped a costly mistake in Lupul, and succeeded in prying Penner from the Stanley Cup Champions.

Unfortunately, there are a few problems. Firstly, the acquisition of Penner involved a huge chunk of cap space and three draft picks. Even worse, if the Oilers don’t improve dramatically this year, those draft picks will be valuable indeed. Thirdly, teams that make sweeping changes tend to do somewhat poorly for at least a year or two, while the new additions attempt to gel with the old guard.

I believe that Lowe will be (mostly) vindicated but it won’t be for at least 3-4 years and he will likely never receive credit for it. He acted out of desperation with Penner and has been unable to attract the free agents he has been after, but that can’t be entirely blamed on the man in charge. What he has done is stockpile draft picks and prospects. No, he wasn’t able to pull off a trade at the draft this summer but you also shouldn’t ignore that he drafted three times in the first round.

Too many changes

to the roster to expect much, but the franchise is definitely not floundering. Lowe is making the best of a bad situation and the Oilers could still surprise a few people this year. That being said, a playoff spot seems unlikely unless players like Hemsky have major bounceback years.

Edmonton finally broke their team-record losing streak by beating the Colorado Avalanche in a shootout tonight.

This also hurt the Avalanche’s chance of making the playoffs, particularly considering Calgary’s strong play over the past week or so.

You’ve got to know that Ryan Smyth’s agent was just loving the loss after loss after Smyth departed Edmonton.

Yes, they got a point last night after losing in overtime.

Edmonton Sun:

So far, MacTavish says he’s not worried about that happening to him.

“I’m not close to slitting my throat,” he said. “I’m one to maintain some sense of perspective. There aren’t any teams around that could overcome losing 11 guys from the line-up.

What exactly is he going to say?  “Well, Kevin Lowe hasn’t given me much to work with, we’re injured like crazy, we’re basically the worst team in the league at the moment.”

Not like it really matters.  With the playoffs out of the picture almost before the losing streak began, the injuries piling up, and their heart and soul playing for the playoffs in another city.  Do a few more games lost at this point matter to anyone?

Terry Jones gives an interesting view of the difficult position the cap era has created for Kevin Lowe.

“Unfortunately for Kevin Lowe, he had to do something we’re all going to have to do. He just had to do it first,” said the Minnesota Wild general manager.

“Because of the salary cap and players hitting unrestricted free agency earlier, every last general manager in the NHL is going to have to do the exact same thing Kevin had to do with Ryan Smyth.

I have only one problem with his assessment: how is this anything new for Oiler fans?

Edmonton has been watching its stars depart for decades. Is Smyth’s trade any worse than watching Doug Weight leave? Do we really need to go down the list all the way back to Wayne Gretzky?

The point is that the cap is going to be talked about as the cause of free agents departing despite the fact that players have been moving since long before the salary cap was in place. Ask Curtis Joseph about leaving Toronto for a chance at a cup in Detroit.

Lowe had cap space and money enough to sign Smyth. I’m not saying it was Lowe’s fault, or that it isn’t. That question has been blogged to death already. Let’s see how much success Smyth has with the Islanders and where he signs in the summer before we rush to pass judgement.

But I will say this: whoever is to blame for Smyth leaving, it wasn’t the salary cap.

Earlier I blogged about the winners and losers of today’s trade deadline. After including the Edmonton Oilers in the losing column, I’ve done plenty of thinking about the Ryan Smyth trade. While I’ll let the reader draw final conclusions at his or her own discretion, I decided I at least owe it to offer the other side of the argument.

Let’s assume that it would have taken about $5.5 million annually to keep Smyth in Edmonton. That seems to be the number thrown about these days. Now, not to diminish the value of Smyth’s attitude, his heart and soul, his intangibles, and of course his hairdo, but is $5.5 million a good number to throw at a player with a career high 70 points back in 2000-01?

I took a look at other players making at least $5 million this year as a fair comparison. That list is 44 players long. 27 forwards, 10 defencemen, 7 goalies. (if we make the list $5.5 million or higher we cut the list down by 4 goalies, 9 forwards and 2 defencemen). Though there are certainly some stinkers on the list, by and large this is the cream of the crop of the NHL; the best of the best of the best.

I’ll leave it to the reader to decide where on this list Smyth aught to reside. His current pace (31 G, 22 A, 53 PTS in 53 GP) plus his grit, determination and leadership will certainly earn him a fat raise. Did Kevin Lowe ultimately make the right decision getting what he could for the face of his franchise? Who will he spend that cap space on next year if not Captain Canada?

You be the judge. Here is the list of 26 forwards, plus Smyth, making $5 million or more this season and their current production (NB: “making” in this article refers to cap hit, not actual salary):

Parts 1 through 4:
Atlantic - Crosby, Malkin, Staal
Northeast - Forward vs. Defence Salaries
Southeast - Stanley Cup Hangover
Central - Ten Years Too Late?

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Northwest: Best Value or Just the Cheapest?

First off, here’s a real shocker of a statement: Edmonton’s blueline suffered a huge blow with the departure of Chris Pronger.

Now let’s take a deeper look.

Edmonton goes into the 2006-2007 season with the lowest-paid blueline in the west, and second lowest in the league (only Washington is lower). Their highest paid defencemen is captain Jason Smith, making just under $2 million (contrast this with Toronto, who will pay Hal Gill, their number 4 defenceman, just over $2 million). The good news is that Edmonton will have solid Dwayne Roloson in goal for the entire season (barring injury), and perhaps the deepest forward corps in the league. The bad news is that both of those groups will have tremendous pressure placed upon them by the frighteningly thin blueline.

Hope remains for Edmonton in that a number of excellent young prospects will be given every opportunity to emerge as legitimate NHL defencemen this season: Ladislav Smid (one of the key pieces that came back in the Pronger trade), Marc, Andre Bergeron and Matt Greene in particular. And of course there are few mentors better to teach these youngsters than Smith. It will not be surprising in 2 or 3 years if the Edmonton blueline ranks among the deepest in the West. But what about this season?

Craig MacTavish will have his work cut out for him getting his team back into the playoffs in the very competitive west. A trade of one or more of his established forwards, or more likely some of the bubble players not quite old enough or good enough to crack the forward lines could add considerable depth on the blueline. With the abundance of young forwards, a few prospects shouldn’t hurt the Oilers much, and would bring badly needed help on the back end. The Oilers will undoubtedly look at adding help, and have both the depth and the cap space to do so.

The thinned blueline will likely lead to a slow start out of the gate for the Oilers, as the young defence scrambles to keep up with the very competitive Northwest division teams. If Roloson’s goaltending holds up, and there’s no reason to suspect it won’t, the Oilers will remain competitive and could even give the perennial favourite Calgary Flames a run for the division title late in the season. But without either a few sensational performances from young blueliners or a substantial trade to bring in a top two defenceman before the season is too old, I wouldn’t count on too much. More likely the Oilers will be a competitive team somewhere in the bottom of the playoff bound teams.

Additions: Joffrey Lupul, Ladislav Smid, Marty Reasoner, Daniel Tjarnqvist, Jan Hejda, Petr Sykora

Subtractions: Chris Pronger, Ty Conklin, Georges Laraque, Jaroslav Spacek, Sergei Samsonov, Mike Peca, Dan Smith

Analysis

Last year’s Cinderella Team, the Edmonton faithful got to watch the team that came within one game of the Stanley Cup get pretty solidly dismantled in the offseason. From the shocking news that Norris-caliber defenceman Pronger had requested a trade, to the departure of Spacek, Samsonov, Laraque and Peca, it seemed for a while like the team was coming apart at the seams.

Give credit to Kevin Lowe for salvaging what he could and preparing yet another young, fast, hungry team for next season. His first major task - an unexpected and unwanted surprise no doubt - was squeezing maximum benefit out of his stud defenceman. Unfortunately, since Pronger had requested a trade, and since there were so many high level blueliners soon to be available for free, his job was not as easy as one would hope.

The best possible result would have been replacing Pronger with a defenceman who could immediately step in, eat up the majority of Pronger’s minutes, but be younger with more room to develop, and also grab a prospect or pick to pick up the slack (there aren’t many Pronger caliber guys in the world). This proved to be either impossible or simply not in the interests of the Oilers, so Lowe did the next best thing. While he did ship Pronger to a conference rival (watch out for the Ducks next year), he got back one of the best defensive prospects (Smid) who is expected to slide into the team (albeit not close to Pronger’s 30 minutes per game) and projects as a top two defenceman, an almost as young forward who managed 28 goals in only his second season in the NHL and also managed 9 more in the playoffs - including one four goal night against Colorado. Finally, Lowe picked up a couple high end draft picks that hopefully will eventually make the fans in Edmonton saw “Chris who?”

Unfortunately, that still leaves a big hole on the blueline, and Spacek didn’t help matters when he departed shortly thereafter. The defence in Edmonton this year will be much younger, much less experienced, and will face some growing pains. Hopefully Edmonton doesn’t try to rush Smid into too much too fast. Plenty of players with big P potential have flubbed after facing too much pressure early in their careers. I think it’s safe to say however that Lowe and McTavish are too smart for that.

Locking up goaltender Dwayne Roloson and forwards Fernando Pisani, Ales Hemsky, Shawn Horcoff and Jarrett Stoll has occupied much of the rest of Lowe’s time, and it has been time well spent. Edmonton has perhaps the best crop of young forwards in the NHL this year, and they’ll all be a year older. Speed and depth will be had aplenty, and should make Edmonton both a fun team to watch and a hard team to face. The addition of Sykora adds even more depth and scoring punch. No team ever can have too many 20 goal scorers, but the Oilers are taking a run at being the first.

Edmonton should be safely in the playoffs next year and could walk away with the division title if Roloson stays healthy. Rolly the goalie has been a consistent performer his entire career and should continue that trend. The blueline may have been thinned too much to repeat a deep run, but the forward lines will roll all the way over most opponents. I doubt the Oilers can get much beyond the first round of the playoffs, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, with their combination of speed, youth, and that great ice in Edmonton, they put up the best home record in the league next year.