Monday Mailbag – Does Dave Tippett deserve a Jack Adams nomination?

Despite the sporting world being shut down, the mailbag is back and we’re answering the questions you’ve always wanted to know about the NHL and life in general. As always, this feature depends on you guys so I need you to submit your questions. If you have something you’d like to know you can always email me, or DM me on Twitter. With that out of the way, it’s time to learn something. Enjoy.

I don’t think having a playoff in September or October after six months without hockey is needed. I’d just start the year. Teams will be very different after six months off due to rust, training etc. I’d just close the door on this season and start new in the fall.

I’d prefer this season be finished in full, but it completely depends on a start-up date. Teams have played 69-71 games now. Don’t want season cancelled, but at a certain point completing it will become impossible unless you’re drastically reducing regular season games and changing playoff format.

I’m really torn on this one. I really want to see this season conclude, especially considering the position the Oilers were in, but I understand why Bettman and the league wouldn’t want to disrupt the 2020-21 season. I still feel that if they tried to pick up the playoffs in a neutral site in the summer, it just wouldn’t feel the same. It wouldn’t have the same buzz or excitement so for that reason I would say they should cancel the rest of this season and focus on being able to start the 20/21 season on time.

I care much more about seeing playoffs and a Stanley Cup for the 2019-20 season than I do an 82-game 2020-21 season. The idea of just throwing 2019-20 out the window is incredibly depressing and, in my mind, the league should be prioritizing finding a conclusion, even if it means doing a shortened 2021 season that begins in January.

The fan of the game in me wants to see playoff hockey. It’s the best hockey of any season hands down. But the realist in me realizes that the league is driven off revenue from not only the good teams, but the bad ones as well. It makes me think we’re looking at a full season next year.

I’d rather finish up this year and have a shortened 2020-21 season. I think back to the 48-game, lockout shortened season and think it would be fine to have a situation like that where the league could get both years in. I know it’s not perfect, but no idea will be.

I understand why he did it. Comfort of playing in his home country and likely for similar money. Hard to call it a loss when he wasn’t on the team this year. I think he is a bottom six forward with potential to fill in the top six from time-to-time, but I think you can find many players similar to his skillset.

I think Slepyshev wanted to stay home in Russia right from the start and used the possibility of going back to the NHL as leverage for a new deal. Unless the Oilers were going to overpay him in a big way, he wasn’t coming here. Ken Holland wasn’t prepared to do that. Slepyshev can stay home and make good money with CSKA, so it works out well for him. No loss for the Oilers, really, although I wouldn’t have minded seeing him get another look here.

It’s not really a loss for the team. He would have been a good bottom-six winger and while he would have been a nice addition, they can use the $1.2-1.4 million elsewhere and be just as good. From Slepyshev’s perspective, it probably made a bit of financial sense for him to stay in the KHL and if he has two more good seasons with CSKA, he will be a UFA when his current deal ends which could lead to an even bigger payday.

Meh, it isn’t a big deal. It would have been a nice depth addition but I would prefer just keeping Tyler Ennis around anyway.

I don’t think it’s a big loss. I didn’t see him stepping into a major impact role, but rather as a complementary bottom-six guy. GMKH should be able to find someone in the free agent market who could give similar value to the club.

Meh. It would have been nice for him to get in here and create some competition on the wings, but I also don’t think it’s a huge deal. Maybe Holland wouldn’t give him two years as he got in Russia? Either way, I think that Holland will be able to find acceptable replacements to fill whatever spot would have gone to him.

I don’t see him being a finalist. Mike Sullivan, John Tortorella, Bruce Cassidy, Jared Bednar will get more consideration. Tippett added a lot, no question, but I don’t think it was Jack Adams worthy.

In the running? No, at least not in terms of being a finalist if the standings stay as they are now. I’d expect that he’ll get some consideration though. The Oilers have more points (83) through 71 games than they had all of last season (79).

He should. What he and his staff did to turn around the special teams and the way he has handled the duo of McDavid and Draisaitl this season, as well as the goaltending, are all reasons he deserves to be in the running. John Tortorella is another very deserving candidate though.

I would imagine he’ll get plenty of votes. It’s hard to vote against John Tortorella given the season the Blue Jackets had after they lost their entire team in free agency.

I made the argument in a post that Cam, Baggedmilk and I did last week. I’ll share my answer from that: I think Tippett is criminally underrated in the discussion for the Jack Adams and him taking Edmonton from sitting far from the playoff discussion to near the top of the Pacific tells you all you should know.

I’d love to see him get a nomination for the way he’s been able to turn this season around, but that doesn’t mean it’s likely to happen. I don’t think he’d win, there are other teams that are far more dominant than the Oilers, especially at even strength, but I do believe the work he’s done in his first year in Edmonton would draw some attention.

If it was for two months, I think players and their families could easily make it work. Many regular folk deal with that all the time. Working overseas, or even in the Oil patch you can be away for two months at a time. Army people do it for much longer, so it is more than doable if it came to that. I wouldn’t underestimate the desire of players wanting to play.

Don’t love the idea. A big part of playoff hockey is the atmosphere and it’s difficult to replicate that playing in cities that aren’t invested in the teams.

I agree with you. It sounds good on paper but as I said in my first answer, and in the article, I wrote about this, I’m just not sure if it’s the right way to go. It won’t have the same buzz, there would be no ticket revenue, and you’re asking a lot from these players to leave their families for an extended period of time during a pandemic. I would welcome neutral site games because I miss sports but I’m just not sold on the logistics of it.

It’s probably the best chance there is of getting games played any time in the next few months. Assuming that we’ll be able to carry on, business as usual, with fans in the seats and teams flying from to city anytime soon is wildly naive. This idea has been spitballed for Major League Baseball but the idea of having players in a Biodome-style quarantine away from their families for four months is kind of disturbing. But, with the NHL, if they can push out the playoffs in a month in North Dakota, or something, it isn’t quite as big of an ask. The logistics are incredibly challenging and a lot could go wrong, but, in my mind, it’s the only chance we have right now.

I think it’s a cool concept and I could see it happening. It’ll be tough for the players, but a lot of them already deal with distance already.

Personally, I think neutral site games would be fun because they would give us all a bit of normalcy at a time when it’s desperately needed. That said, there are a lot of logistical issues with something like this, and I believe that the idea sounds better on paper than it does in practice. We’ll see, but I’m not exactly hopeful.

Forrest Gump. He lived an incredible life. He was always positive, stood up for what is right and when given the responsibility of being a father he embraced it. He is the type of man we should all want to be, plus he experienced more than most of us could ever dream.

Dirty Harry. He takes out the trash.

Can I be Billy Beane? He’s technically a movie character and I would love to be the GM of an MLB team. That’s a lame answer though. In all honesty, I would just choose some super-rich person. That’s also a lame answer but whatever. I’m not a big movie guy.

Shrek. Because Shrek is love, Shrek is life.

Shaun from Shaun of the Dead because all I want to do is head down to The Winchester, have a pint, and wait for this all to blow over.

Can I be Bradley Cooper from the movie Limitless? I like the idea of having special brain pills that make me way smarter than everyone else.

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