MACTAVISH SHEDS SOME LIGHT

Well, I think that that will be determined as the summer goes along with Shawn. I have a lot of respect for Shawn as a guy that really saw him come into the league. He was a player that played at Michigan State and played in our minor league team and came in and I saw him really develop as a player and as a person over the years. The one thing I will say about players like Shawn that have been here for a long period of time, it can have a little bit of a negative effect on your spirit, when Shawn’s reaching a certain age in his career. He’s gotta get energized as well and we’ll see what happens or what the summer has in store for Shawn and the Edmonton Oilers. 

Well, we’re going to be very active in finding at least a couple goalies. I’d like to say about Nik Khabibulin that when he did play, he played very well for us this year. The problem with Nik, from our perspective, is that he’s a 40-year-old body who wasn’t able to stay as healthy as what you need. But, he did play exceptionally well when he did play and gave us very adequate backup goaltending.

As for Devan, I think that you’re right, the verdict is out on Devan. I’ve always believed that when you’re assessing goaltenders, if you have to ask the question you know the answer. The question would be, has Devan established himself as a number one goalie in the National Hockey League? And I still think it’s a valid question. So, I think that Devan, although he’s trending upwards in his numbers and played adequately for us this year, I still think, and I know Devan feels the same way, that there’s another level for him. From our standpoint, we’ll see that he can get to that level.

We are looking for a number two goalie and the jury is still out on Yann Danis, who has done a great job for us in the American Hockey League playoffs in Oklahoma City. We definitely have identified goaltending as not an area of strength within our organization. We have very little depth in our organization in net and we’re going to address that, too, as well. 

The one guy that’s definitely on our radar in terms of guys that we want to sign is Sam Gagner. He’s maybe our most highly profiled restricted free agent. If he chose not to sign a contract with us and took us to arbitration this year, he’d get a one-year award in arbitration and Sam would have the distinction of being the youngest player in the history of the National Hockey League to reach unrestricted status. So, we want to make sure that that doesn’t happen. 

Sam likes it here, he has been a valuable member of our team and is always trending up and he’ll be a guy that we’ll be looking to sign. 

Firstly, they’re guys that have an exceptionally bright future. Nugent-Hopkins, at his age, being able to accomplish what he’s accomplished so far is quite spectacular, really. And he’s 20 years old. Sam Gagner is a 23-year-old centerman. 

We’re in a league of men and it’s a man’s game and our guys are very much developing. There’s every reason to expect that these players will continue, obviously, to develop and to be able to compete very well against the best centermen in all of hockey. You look at Detroit with Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg as their 1-2 punch, they’re not players that are going to overpower you. But, they’re players that can win battles and I feel like our centermen are very capable of doing that.

Would we like to add a big centerman? Absolutely, and we’ll be trying to acquire that piece. 

The UFA market is always a very… I approach that market very cautiously. I think there are a lot of mistakes made with the UFA’s when you sign players who are diminishing in terms of what their contribution can be and they’re always inflated contracts. It is a vehicle where you can help your team and we’ll be as active as we can in the UFA market.