Draft Day Live Blog presented by Prime Staffing

3 years ago

Happy draft day, folks! As we all know, the draft weekend festivities normally happen in June, but here in Coronacountry, all timelines have been shifted and that means an early-October shopping day for new toys and I’m here to cover it all. Are you excited? I’m excited. Since there’s bound to be plenty of action and speculation going around, I’ll be here all day to bring you all of the Oilers related news that may or may not even happen. Are you ready? Of course you are.

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THE OPTIONS

Over the past couple of weeks, Cam has been knocking out draft profiles for the players that could end up being available to the Oilers at 14th overall, and it’s going to see which guy actually gets snapped up seeing as it’s a sizeable range of players from all different backgrounds.

If you missed it, here is the list of players he’s covered with links to their respective profiles:

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Jake Sanderson – (6’2″ – LHD – US National Under-18 Team)
Kaiden Guhle – (6’2″ – LHD – Prince Albert Raiders)
Dylan Holloway – (6’1″ – C – Left-Handed – U. of Wisconsin)
Seth Jarvis – (5’10” – C – Right-Handed – Portland Winterhawks)
Yaroslav Askarov – (6’2″ – Goalie – St. Petersburg SKA)
Jack Quinn – (6’0″ – RW – Ottawa 67s)
Connor Zary – (6’0″ – C – Left-Handed – Kamloops Blazer)
John-Jason Peterka – (5’11” – LW – EHC Munchen)

Yesterday, Ken Holland said in his conference call with the media that he couldn’t see the Oilers trading up from 14th overall or picking a defenceman with that selection, but that doesn’t exactly mean much of anything when we’re still hours away from knowing what the draft board will look like by the time it’s Edmonton’s turn. One thing I do know for sure is that the cupboards are bare when it comes to skilled forwards and if I were a betting man, I’d bet the farm that whoever the Oilers do pick will be someone they hope can play up front.

TRADES?

Looking through the contracts at PuckPedia, the Oilers certainly have a few contracts that they might consider moving to free up some cap space provided that Ken Holland would able to find a dance partner so I’ve listed some of the plausible scenarios below. That said, every time I put one of these sections together, I never seem to get anything right, but I’m also stubborn and a big subscriber of the whole ‘what the hell do I know’ lifestyle when it comes to this team and stranger things have certainly happened.

@Kris Russell – With only one year left on his contract that will pay him $1.5 million in real dollars despite his $4 million cap hit, I could see some of the budget teams being interested in scooping up a guy that can inflate their cap number without doing the same to their bottom line. That said, Kris Russell does have a modified no-trade clause so he will be at least partially in control of how this plays out. Could we actually see our cowboy ride into the sunset? We shall see.

@Adam Larsson – Even though Adam Larsson is a guy that I don’t expect to get traded, especially with the Oscar Klefbom news that’s come down over the past week, he’s heading into the last year of his contract that will pay him $4.16 million and I could certainly understand why other teams would be interested in his shutdown services. Plausible? Maybe, but I would certainly be surprised to see him moved at this stage.

@Matt Benning – While I would certainly consider myself a Matt Benning guy, it doesn’t look like the Oilers will be hanging onto the 26-year-old defender as a result of the cap crunch they find themselves in. That said, I don’t know that there would be much of a market for his rights seeing as he’ll likely be a UFA come Friday.

@Andreas Athanasiou – Like Benning, Athanasiou will not be qualified by the Edmonton Oilers as a result of the $3 million price tag and I wonder if anyone would be willing to flip a late pick for the chance to sign him before free agency kicks off on October 9th? No matter what happens, the trade that brought Athanasiou to town is going to go down as a brutal one for the Oilers even though his departure has more to do with circumstance than the team not wanting to have him back.

RUMOURS

Since I’m the one without an adult job, I’ll be spending most of my day cruising the Internet for Oilers news and this is where I’ll share anything interesting that I find. For those of you that have resisted the urge to join the devil that is social media, this will be the spot to watch to for any tidbits from the insiders, beat guys, or anything else I see pertaining to what Ken Holland might do today.

THE UPDATES

Don’t care about my nonsense and want to skip right to the updates? This is the section for you, friend.

9:35 am MT – Rise and Shine, Nation. It’s draft day. Nothing doing yet, but we’ll see what this post looks like by the time the show gets going later this evening. Check out the full draft schedule here.
10:25 am MT – I don’t know why I think it’s so funny, but word just broke that Oliver Ekman-Larsson has imposed a Friday deadline to accept a trade out of Arizona. He has the NTC and doesn’t seem to have any issues flexing it. Hilarious!
11:50 am MT – I legitimately can’t wrap my head around some of the names that are being thrown around right now. Laine, Sergachev, Tyler Johnson… the list goes on and on and I can’t help but feel like there are going to be some excellent players moved for pennies on the dollar today. Get in the mix, Uncle Ken. We believe in you!
12:55 pm MT – According to PuckPedia, the Oilers will be splitting their $676K bonus carryover overage over next two years which equals out to $338K per year.
2:00 pm MT – That Josh Anderson for Max Domi trade is the exact kind of deal that I’d like to see Old Dutch make. I BELIEVE!
3:50 pm MT – I just cruised Twitter for the past 20 minutes looking for relevant Oilers information and there ain’t jack squat out there right now. What gives?
4:22 pm MT – Nothing more bizarre than the total lack of Draft coverage on TV right now, ya know? I know the show starts at the top of the hour but where is my rumour central?
4:55 pm MT – Here we go!
5:12 pm MT – Not sure how the NHL doesn’t pipe in boos for Gary Bettman.
5:20 pm MT – No surprise here, but the Ranger take Alex Lafreniere at first overall.
5:21 pm MT – The NHL just released an announcement to say that they are targeting January 1st for the start of the new season.
5:27 pm MT – LA takes Quinton Byfield at #2.
5:33 pm MT – Tim Stutzle going to Ottawa at #3.
5:39 pm MT – According to Corey Pronman, Lucas Raymond is going to Detroit at #4. We shall see.
5:46 pm MT – Looks like Jake Sanderson is going to Ottawa at #5.
5:54 pm MT – Jamie Drysdale goes to Anaheim at #6.
5:58 pm MT – Corey Pronman is tweeting out picks about two minutes ahead of the broadcast and it is cracking me up. Some people are getting SOOOO MAD!
6:01 pm MT – Alexander Holtz going to New Jersey at #7.
6:06 pm MT – Jack Quinn going to Buffalo at #8.
6:11 pm MT – Marco Rossi going to Minnesota at #9. They don’t care how small he is.
6:21 pm MT – Surprised the Jets picked Perfetti over Seth Jarvis tbh
6:29 pm MT – There goes Askarov to the Nashville Predators. No goalie for Edmonton.
6:34 pm MT – Anton Lundell going to Florida at #12. Seth Jarvis still on the board.
6:40 pm MT – Carolina takes Seth Jarvis at #13. Weak. Damned Hurricanes always ruining our fun.
6:45 pm MT – Edmonton ends up taking Dylan Holloway at #14.
7:27 pm MT – Alright, I’m back… NJ on the clock and takes Shakir Mukhamadullin. That was a tough one to spell, friends.
7:34 pm MT – CBJ takes Yegor Chinakhov at #21 and everyone on the panel is incredibly confused about it.
7:41 pm MT – Calgary keeps trading back in the first round and collecting more picks while they’re at it.
7:45 pm MT – Hendrix Lapierre goes to Washington at #22 after Calgary trades out of that spot.
8:00 pm MT – Connor Zary goes to Calgary because they’re incredibly jealous of the Connor we have up here.
8:29 pm MT – Honestly, I completely forgot how long the first round of the NHL Draft is. Mercy…
8:58 pm MT – That’s all she wrote for the first round! See you folks tomorrow morning at 9:30am MT.

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