EDMONTON — Perhaps the most enlightening part of being in Edmonton these last few days has been all the helpful information being volunteered by our thoughtful and compassionate friends across the hockey world.
Like that guy in Calgary, with the tutorial on playoff rounds and which one matters most?
See…? I never knew that Round 4 really was the most important one.
The reader is a Toronto man mansplaining roster construction and salary allocation? Wait — let me get a pen!
Or the Canucks fan advising on dressing room chemistry, and how Connor McDavid has clearly lost his?
Where would we be without such kind direction from such qualified sources?
As it turns out, the Edmonton Oilers aren’t a very good team at all — despite back-to-back trips to the Stanley Cup Final. But just to be sure, we attended the season-ending press conference with Oilers general manager Stan Bowman and head coach Kris Knoblauch.
Our goal: to find out how they were going to put this messed-up group back on track next year — without McDavid, of course. Because he’ll be playing for the Leafs/Canadiens/Blackhawks/Rangers/Lightning/Bruins.
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The Fan Hockey Show
Sportsnet’s Matt Marchese and former Los Angeles Kings executive Mike Futa take you around the league on Sportsnet 590 The FAN’s national hockey show, airing live across the country daily from noon-2 p.m. ET.
The goaltending question
For two Stanley Cups in a row, we mentioned to Bowman, the Oilers have had the second-best goaltending. What is a GM to do about that?
“I was kind of expecting that question,” Bowman said. Generally in agreement with our position, Bowman went on to note you can’t “just go down to the corner and pick up an elite goalie. They’re not just waiting to join your team, right?”
No doubt. And even a possible future elite, like Utah’s Karel Vejmelka or Calgary’s Dustin Wolf — the GM who traded them away would be fired in a week.
If there’s an elite goalie out there, you have to acquire him before anyone knows he’s elite, the way the Panthers got Bobrovsky out of Columbus.
“Goaltending is a strange part of the game,” admitted Bowman, who won Cups in Chicago with Antti Niemi and Corey Crawford — neither of whom will receive Hall of Fame consideration. “On one hand, it’s simultaneously the most important thing, but also the hardest thing to really understand.
“In three of the four rounds, we had better goaltending than our opponent. (Darcy) Kuemper, Adin Hill and (Jake) Oettinger — our goalies were better than them in each of those series.”
He’s not wrong.
“But then in the Final, it flipped.”
He’s not wrong there either.
“Even if you look at the guys that I think are considered the elite, some of them have had some tough playoffs. So there’s no guarantee in the goaltending world.”
Connor Hellebuyck, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Oettinger — every one of them is better than Stuart Skinner. And every one of them was worse — this spring — than Skinner.
Our impression, in the end, is that Bowman realizes the importance — both inside and outside his dressing room — of publicly acknowledging that the goaltending could be better. He’ll turn over every stone on that front, but that does not guarantee he’ll find a solution under one of them.
Who stays, who returns?
Bowman stated that his defence corps likely won’t change much in the off-season. I believe they lose John Klingberg to free agency, but with their top five — Evan Bouchard, Mattias Ekholm, Darnell Nurse, Brett Kulak, Jake Walman — plus Troy Stecher and Ty Emberson, Edmonton’s D-corps is above average.
They’ve certainly got more than enough to get to the trade deadline and address any issues in March.
Up front, we believe they’ll trade Viktor Arvidsson in a contract dump, they’ll move Evander Kane for something more tangible, and Jeff Skinner isn’t coming back. Trent Frederic will be signed within the next two weeks, and there will be a concerted effort, Knoblauch said, to improve the penalty kill.
That tells us that UFA forwards Connor Brown, Kasperi Kapanen, and Corey Perry will all be under review, pending the acquisition of harder, penalty-killing types who can give the Oilers some of the edge they lacked against the Panthers.
“I’ve always thought that, win or lose, it’s good to have some new players in your group,” Bowman said. “We’re going to have some changes. We’re not going to bring the same group back. How many is tough to say right now.”
I feel that, if Bowman is happy with his 12 forwards come July 15th, Perry will stick around.
Remember, too, that you don’t have to completely fill out your lineup in the summertime. Saving some space for the Trade Deadline — when players become available who you could never acquire in the summer — has proven wise.
Bowman nabbed Kapanen off waivers last season, and signed Klingberg midway through the season.
We’d be surprised if Edmonton’s roster was a finished product on Oct. 15.
