MILAN LUCIC: FIRST IMPRESSIONS
7 years ago
Milan Lucic will be playing to an understandably tough crowd when he pulls on that new No. 27 jersey of his with the Edmonton Oilers next season, but there’s no question he hit the right notes when he was paraded in front of local media on Canada Day.
Yes, the seven-year contract worth $42 million Lucic signed is a couple years too long for the liking of many, myself included, but that’s the term it took to get a deal done and, in fact, convince the hulking left winger to leave some money on the table in another offer when the UFA bell rang Friday.
No, Lucic won’t be able to fill the void left by the trade that sent Taylor Hall to New Jersey for Adam Larsson. He won’t replicate the numbers put up by Hall. He won’t drive a line like Hall did and some of the options coach Todd McLellan had with Hall and Connor McDavid in the fold are gone. All this we know.
Those quibbles out of the way, as first impressions go, Lucic, draped in his new Oiler jersey and introduced with Rogers Place as the backdrop, said all the right things about all the right things in giving the reasons he is today a member of the Oilers instead of playing somewhere else. He hit all the right notes.
WHY EDMONTON?
Lucic, skilled, tough and mean as hell, cited three main reasons for choosing Edmonton, rebuffed by big-name UFAs more often than a guy with bad teeth and a comb-over at closing time, as his destination when he could have got his term and money elsewhere.
The chance to play with McDavid. “He’s definitely up there with the Crosbys of the world with his ability. To have that opportunity to play with a player like that doesn’t come around so often. And I think that having an opportunity to play with a guy like that, there’s definitely light at the end of the tunnel here and there hasn’t been that here in a long time.”
His relationship with GM Peter Chiarelli. “I was with Peter Chiarelli for eight years in Boston and saw what he was able to do there with the team we had. He turned us into champions.”
Edmonton’s hockey history and the belief he’ll have a chance to win here. “I chose Edmonton because of the fans and the history . . . to get to wear a jersey that some of the best players of all time have worn, I hope I get to do the same thing that they did and raise the Stanley Cup here in Edmonton.
“There’s definitely light at the end of the tunnel here. There hasn’t been that in a long time in Edmonton and I truly believe that in a couple of years we’re going to be contending for a Stanley Cup because we have a player like that (McDavid). It’s just finding the right pieces to make that happen.”
DID HE SAY SWAGGER?
The kicker for me in his silver-tongued address was that Lucic used the S-word – swagger. Swagger? In a hockey town where fans have too often watched their team lose and turn the other cheek while doing it so? Swagger? With a team that has been beaten on the scoreboard and pushed around in the alley for years and years?
“It’s also about time this team had a little bit of attitude and a little bit of swagger. That’s been missing,” understated Lucic. “I can tell you from an opponent standpoint, you were never scared or intimidated heading into a game against the Oilers. I think that’s something we all have the change as a group, not just one or two guys.”
Talk about intangibles like swagger drives some people nuts. Like talking team toughness or about relationships, like the one Lucic has with Chiarelli dating back to Boston, it’s difficult to put a number to it, to quantify it. What value is there in swagger? How many goals are scored and how many games are won because of swagger? You’ve got me there. I have no numbers.
Swagger, relationships and team toughness, the things Lucic put value in Friday, won’t plug the holes the Oilers still have on the blue line. It won’t make up for the loss of Hall or for a bad power play or penalty kill. Chiarelli still has work to do. No question.
That said, I’m buying what Lucic was selling. If opposing players have to think about Lucic – likewise Patrick Maroon, Zack Kassian and Darnell Nurse — and what might happen if somebody takes a run at McDavid or sticks a glove in his face, anybody’s face for that matter, I like it. I like it a lot. I believe it matters and that it will matter here.
That remains to be played out with the Oilers of course, but even allowing that one player can’t and won’t turn the team around on his own, that the contract Lucic inked is a touch too long and that talk has been especially cheap around here for a decade, I love this signing.
Listen to Robin Brownlee Wednesdays and Thursdays from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on the Jason Gregor Show on TEAM 1260.
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