Cooper Marody will turn 23 on December 20th and where he will celebrate his birthday is undetermined. He could be in his second season in Bakersfield, or he could a member of the Edmonton Oilers. Marody had an excellent rookie season with the Condors, scoring 19 goal and 64 points in 58 games. He also…
James Neal scored 24 goals in his rookie season with the Dallas Stars, and over the next nine seasons, he produced 21+ goals each year. The fewest, 21, came in the lockout-shortened 2013 season and the most, 40, occurred the previous year, 2012, both with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
NHL training camps open six weeks from today. Rookies will report a week earlier and will play games against other NHL rookie teams in various different tournaments or simply home and away games like the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames rookies when they play Saturday, September 7th, in Red Deer, and Tuesday, September 10th, in…
“We fear the unknown because we can’t anticipate the outcome,” Anonymous. Human beings are very leery of change. A study actually showed that uncertainty is even more stressful than knowing something bad is definitely going to happen. So I understand why the NHL is hesitant to make the draft age one year older. However, there…
In the past decade, we have seen fewer Canadians playing in the NHL. There’s been a drop of almost 8%, down from 51.8% in 2009 to 43.6% in 2019. But that drop might be much higher in the next ten years if you look at the significant drop in the % of Canadians being drafted…
Leon Draisaitl had a remarkable 2019 NHL season. He scored 50 goals and 105 points to finish fourth in NHL scoring. He logged the most minutes of any NHL forward with 1,852:27 and only Connor McDavid averaged more TOI/game than Draisaitl. (McDavid missed four games which is why Draisaitl had the most TOI).
James Neal’s best asset is goal scoring. He and Bobby Orr are currently tied at 250th for the most goals in NHL history at 270. If he scores 20 goals this season he will move up to 215th all-time. Scoring goals has been his calling card for the vast majority of his career.
The Edmonton Oilers currently have 49 players on their 50-man roster, but that is a bit misleading. Jesse Puljujarvi is the only RFA unsigned, and some people are wondering if this is the roster you will see at training camp. I don’t believe it will be.
When an NHL team misses the playoffs in 12 of the past 13 seasons there isn’t just one person or strategy that failed. Virtually all of them did, especially when you consider only four franchises in the history of the NHL have endured such a streak of losing.
Does the schedule impact a team’s ability to make the playoffs? Likely not very much, but if you finished in the second wildcard spot, one point ahead of the ninth place team, maybe one game where you faced a tired opponent did make the difference. We know fatigue can be a factor, but it won’t…
Ken Holland hired Archie Henderson as director of pro scouting and Tyler Wright as director of amateur scouting on Friday. Henderson worked with Holland for four years in Detroit, while Wright spent six years In Detroit. They are familiar with each other, but both have worked for other organizations. The Oilers amateur scouting has been…
Dave Tippett played eleven seasons in the NHL, skating in 721 games which is 56th most in NHL history for an undrafted player. He was a solid checking forward, and when he was 33 years old he was out of the NHL and played one season with the Houston Aeros of the now-defunct International Hockey…
