Monday Mailbag – Digging into the Cam Talbot trade rumours

What have we here? A brand new mailbag for a brand new week! I hope all of you had an excellent practice retirement and that the overall punishment on your livers was kept in check. With everyone back at work for another week, I wanted to put together something to read and help you kill off a few minutes of company time and ease yourselves into this Monday. As always, I’ve sent your wonderings out to the writers and waited for all of their worldly wisdom to come back to me. I still need questions for next week, so if there is something Oilers related (or not) that you want to ask, feel free to hit me up by email or on Twitter. Enjoy.

Glen Sather insisting on getting the rights to Mike Grier as part of the Curtis Joseph trade with St. Louis for draft picks in 1995 was a terrific trade where the “throw in” turned out way better than anybody thought it would. Grier played 448 games with the Oilers.

Chris Pronger for Eric Brewer, Doug Lynch and Jeff Woywitka and then during the season Jaro Spacek for Tony Salmalainen. Those two trades were main reasons Oilers went to Cup Finals in 2006.

There are a few steals I can think of but my mind always gets drawn to the ones we lost because I’m a staunch kill-joy. Let’s give Chia some credit for his best overall move, Pat Maroon with salary retained for bits of belly lint and ticket stubs from Avatar opening night. That was a steal. I also really liked Matt Green and Jarret Stoll for Lubo. It worked out for the Kings but I’d trade a 5D and a 3C for a top pairing offensive blue liner every day of the week.

It’s wild how the Oilers turned Jason Bonsignore and Steve Kelly, two of the worst draft picks in franchise history, into Roman Hamrlik. In recent memory, though? Kevin Lowe’s deals before the cup run in 2006 were amazing. Obviously the Pronger one stands out most along with the Roloson acquisition, but getting Jaro Spacek, Sergei Samsonov, and Dick Tarnstrom without giving up much was amazing.

That Klefbom deal was fantastic, but some credit has to go to the scouting department as well. The Oilers haven’t had a lot of picks outside the top ten pan out, but Klefbom is an exception to that. I know he’s playing bad right now, but the Talbot deal was a really good move by Chiarelli.  Apart from that, it’s hard to find deals that are clear “steals”. Lame answer, but I just can’t find a deal.

I think it’s the first-round pick that’s important and then Tambellini nailed the pick too. If we’re talking Oilers trades, I always liked the David Perron trades by Craig MacTavish. He got a good scoring winger and then flipped him for a first in a deep draft. They used that first and added a key part of their team. Yupp. That’s how it went. End of story. Outside Edmonton, the Francois Beauchemin trade for Joffrey Lupul and Jake Gardiner was pretty sweet. Gardiner’s been a top-four guy in Toronto and Lupul had a resurgence there too before ended up on Robidas Island.

Sometimes I wish Peter Chiarelli had a little bit of Steve Tambellini in him, ya know? What I mean is that Tambo never did anything and if ‘Sell Low’ Chiarelli had that mentality then we’d probably have a lot more capable players in the lineup.

No. These are relatively minor trades and you can’t judge how they’ll turn out in a few weeks. Spooner got the winner against Vegas Saturday. Is that now a good trade? Resist the urge to rush to judgment.

The Wideman trade is fine. Get a RD for a 6th round pick. The Spooner/Strome deal looked like Oilers felt Strome couldn’t score, but it is funny how he is playing RW in NYR and producing a bit. I thought he was playing well here, he just wasn’t scoring. Spooner was a risk. He has produced better offensively, but he needs to help out on 2nd PP and produce against easy comp to help the Oilers.

I think Wideman is there if Hitch feels like he can’t salvage Benning. He’s ready to give 3rd pairing minutes filling basically the playing style. Spooner just finally did something positive the last game but that was a bad trade from the second it was made. It took me 30 seconds of digging to see the very real problems with Spooners outcomes. Chiarelli is banking on blind luck to bail him out. It’s concerning that he still has a job at all. It means there are people even stupider than him who hold even higher positions of power.

The spooner deal was an odd one given the fact Strome actually had a niche on the team as a decent defensive centre. That said, Spooner deserves some time to figure things out here. He scored at a pretty impressive clip in 2017-18 and isn’t just a hack of a player.

I’m not ready to label the Spooner deal a loss just yet. He could be taking some time to adjust to playing with a new team, so I’ll cut him some slack for a slow start to his Oilers career. The Wideman deal was a low-cost acquisition, but it is weird how he hasn’t found a way to draw into the lineup yet. At the end of the day, the Oilers didn’t give up very much in these deals, so I’m not worried about it at all. The time to judge will be at the end of the season.

The Chris Wideman trade was basically for nothing. I wouldn’t worry about him. Spooner? Yeah, he doesn’t seem like a Hitchcock player. Strome was struggling, but he was a decent bottom-six forward. There’s still time for Spooner to turn it around, but so far it looks like another bad contract Chiarelli’s added.

This question honestly made me laugh a little bit. Yes, there’s some concern that one of Chiarelli’s latest acquisition is getting 4th line minutes when it’s clear that is not what was expected. But to be fair, Spooner got the game winner on Saturday night and maybe that will kick off his offence here. In his post-game interview, he admitted the lack of production had been weighing on him a little bit. Positive thinking, people!

They don’t. Speculation is speculation. Koskinen is on a really good roll. No need to do anything right now but sit back and take a longer look at how he performs.

I don’t see him being on the block today. Rumours are often just that. Would they trade him for a cheaper backup, possibly, but right now he is a $4.1m backup. His last 82 games he has a .906sv%. Not good enough, and that is a big enough sample size to wonder if he can find his game again.

Chiarelli is GMing for his life. If he thinks his bosses want a goalie trade, he’ll do it. He doesn’t have the luxury of large sample sizes evening themselves out. He’s plum out of slack. Every loss could be his last as a GM in the NHL.

What has Peter Chiarelli done in the past three-and-a-half years that makes you think he’s going to make a good decision? Selling low on Talbot would be right up his alley.

I’m also confused. Goalies get on hot streaks and while I’m not trying to take anything away from Mikko Koskinen, I think the Oilers need to be 100% sure that he can be a starter before they move Talbot out, unless they’re getting another experienced NHL goalie in return. I’ve been a Talbot supporter for the past two seasons, so I’m not ready to give up on him either. There’s a part of me that still believes if this team wants to win a playoff round, they need Talbot between the pipes to do it, but Koskinen is slowly starting to change my mind.

I don’t think you re-sign Cam Talbot anyways. He’s dropped off the last season and hasn’t shown signs of recovering to previous levels yet. They need someone better and it’s too early to tell if that’s Mikko Koskinen, but Talbot’s struggles means they should be looking for a new starter for 2019-2020 anyways.

What is wrong with having two goalies that can play? Is Dadbot doing his job right now, no? Does that mean he won’t be able to regain his form again? Also no. Let Koskinen and Talbot battle for playing time, the competition is healthy. Not to mention, do you really want Chiarelli selling low again? I’d much rather see if Talbot can inflate those totals a bit first.

Hitchcock won’t limit that approach to RNH. He monitors everybody’s playing time and rather than deem practices “optional,” he designates who will practice and who won’t based on what he sees. Ken has always been ahead of the curve in ensuring players get enough breaks from the grind.

No problem. RNH isn’t a big guy. He will wear down if they don’t give him extra rest. I agree with his thinking. It looks wise to me.

I think it’s cool to see an old-school coach showing a lot of forward thinking. In the NBA, star players won’t play every game of the season, even if healthy. We’re talking about practice. Practice? Practice! Not the game.

It’s certainly necessary given the lack of depth the team has. McDavid, RNH, and Draisaitl are going to be leaned on heavily to play a lot this year, so taking a day off to rest is a great idea.

I like it. Hitch has shown he isn’t afraid to really run this teams stars and if they need an extra day of rest between games it’s understandable. I don’t really think there is a downside to having RNH sit out the odd practice and if for some reason his game starts to suffer because of it, I’m confident Hitchcock would find a way to correct it.

Practice is overrated. I’m fine with it.

It just warms my heart to see Hitchcock say nice things about Nuge. He can talk to me about him all day.

I respect all of them. It’s a great gig, but a tough one. I lean away from the guys who use the “hot take” approach to make waves. I know why it happens because it’s very competitive, but I prefer the guys who are proven over the long haul — 20 years or more — to be reliable and fair. Iain MacIntyre at Sportsnet, Mike Russo, Aaron Portzline, Mark Spector, Jim Matheson, Michael Farber and Kevin Paul Dupont are top of the heap for me.

I respect anyone who puts in the time to add something insightful to the conversation. I like to read people I don’t always agree with, because it makes me think differently, and as long as they can present solid analysis I enjoy it. If you only read writers you agree with then you become too close-minded, which happens far too often in politics. Read columnists, reporters or bloggers. But always read the NATION.

Half the people I really respect got scooped up by the Athletic and the other half are barely writing anymore. I’ve always admired Willis and Blackdog Pat. I like Dellow and Woodguy. Sunil is one of the smartest and even-minded people I’ve ever met. Down Goes Brown is hilarious. Those are good writers. The way Pat puts together his thoughts is pretty special, actually. It’s a real treat.

There’s a lot of good people out there, not just writers but follows on Twitter, who think and speak about the game and league in insightful and interesting ways. It’s really worthwhile to follow fans of other teams to get these different perspectives.

Around Edmonton, I’m obviously a big fan of everyone around The Nation. I also have a soft spot for Lowetide, for obvious reasons. Outside of Edmonton, I like a guy like Down Goes Brown who mixes in some humour with his writing. I don’t think there’s enough of that around the hockey media world, sometimes it’s nice to read something that makes you chuckle and isn’t so serious.

I like Tyler Dellow and Dom Luszczyszyn.

Read them all! Get a range of takes in, form your opinion, and yell at everyone on Twitter.

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