Monday Mailbag – February 23rd

It’s time for another edition of the (waste as much company time as you can) mailbag! As always, our writers are ready to answer your questions will all the expertise their lives can provide. This feature depends on your brains, and if you have a question you can email it to me at baggedmilk@oilersnation.com or hit me up on Twitter at @jsbmbaggedmilk. Now, grab a coffee and leave your work line off the hook – there’s learning to do.

Not a fan so far. He waffled on bold moves then he waffled on adding NHL bodies to his team. Gagner for Purcell, Perron for a pick, Marincin to the farm, 9 million to Nikita Nikitin, no goalies you can count on, Dallas Eakins over Krueger, no 2C to start the year. What is there to like? Fayne has been pretty good. Pouliot looks great while he’s shooting 20%. I’m not convinced he’s a good evaluator of talent and I don’t know what his plan is.

I think Craig MacTavish is a smart hockey man and an able head coach. However, his record as general manager has been at best a mixed bag, and his recent comments have outlined a plan that would seem to take the Oilers further away from competitiveness rather than toward it. At this point, I’d say the jury is very much out; if this team flat-lines next year it’s going to be very difficult to justify retaining him.

I respect MacT’s track record as coach and was hopeful we’d see that kind of analytical thinking from him as GM. Although he has made some astute moves (Gordon, Pouliot, Perron trade) I think it’s fair to say it’s been a learning curve for him. The 2014-15 season has been a very poor one for him.

I’m not sold at this point. I haven’t seen any improvement in the team in the standings. He clearly made an error hiring Eakins instead of Nelson two years ago. He has also traded too many proven NHL players, Horcoff, Hemsky, Perron and soon Petry and got nothing other than Klinkhammer that helps team immediately.

I’ve started to lose pretty much all hope at this point. To his credit there is at least a fairly easy to see method to his madness so far; trying a defence by committee approach to try and cover for the lack of a high end D-man. Signing guys with great possession numbers to hopefully help drive the offence. Gambling on two backup goalies who looked ready to break out and land a legitimate starters gig. Obviously pretty much all of these moves have gone up in flames, but it hasn’t been for lack of trying at least. 

He has made some good moves (Hendricks trade, Gordon signing, Roy trade, Klinkhammer re-signing) but overall his tenure so far has been a dud. I’m not against giving him one more crack at it next year, but again, my hope has been stretched to it’s limits already.

I’ve always considered MacTavish a very sharp guy. I know him reasonably well and have always felt he had a feel for the game. That said, I’ve been surprised at how he’s handled several issues. Bringing in Dallas Eakins over Ralph Krueger stunned me. I understand how he might have made a move (when he said coaching wasn’t a problem) if an established coach with a proven track record had come along, but to gas Krueger for Eakins? Why go outside to hire an AHL coach when he had one with roughly the same credentials in the organization? Still don’t get that. 

I didn’t think Nikitin would be as terrible as he has been, so I can’t say I hated the move at the time. It hasn’t worked out. I laughed out loud at the Norris talk regarding Schultz. Didn’t see that coming. Way too hard of a sell for an unproven player. Personnel move I disliked most was the refusal to address the lack of depth at centre. It’s like he was the only guy who didn’t see the problems coming. Based on what I expected, MacT’s been a huge disappointment so far.

MacT’s tenure as GM has been “interesting” to say the least. He does get some points for the PRV for Perron trade. I’ll also give him points for bringing in Mark Fayne (he hasn’t been great, but hasn’t been awful), Benoit Pouliot, Boyd Gordon, and Matt Hendricks. Those are four actual NHL players that play a solid role on the team (obviously Perron is gone now). It’s the mistakes that MacT has made that are just so ridiculous that you can’t look past them. How about only having two NHL centres to start the year? How about giving Nikitin all the money? How about signing Jeff Petry to a one-year deal last summer when the only possible outcome would be to trade Petry for magic beans?

Has MacT done some good things? Certainly, but they’re gross outweighed by the awful choices he’s made with the roster, and thinking it was good enough to compete in the NHL. Unfortunately, we’re talking about the Oilers so we’re stuck with him.

I would love to just drop the “To his team” part of the MVP debate then tell everybody to stop trying to outthink this. NHL awards are not just for teams in the playoff hunt. That is a dumb caveat that people add all the time. “I would have voted for X but his team wasn’t in the playoff hunt,” is not acceptable to me. Also, I would redefine the Selke to actually be an award for defensive forwards, not for offensive forwards who aren’t crappy in their own end. Give the guys doing the heavy lifting their dues. Most of the awards are fine, it’s just the people voting on them are horrible with definitions.

I mostly like the awards as-is, but my big change would be to the voting. I’d like to see a limited pool of voters – perhaps two covering each NHL team – and I’d further like all ballots to be publicized post-voting. The various voters (generally the PHWA) hold a public trust and given that these are generally journalists voting they should be champions of transparency.

I’d love to see a Bobby Orr award, given to the best defenseman in the NHL. The Norris could be given to the best offensive defender (NHL did this with the Vezina award years ago, changing its definition). For the Gretzky award, I think you simply change it from Hart Trophy to the Gretzky. 

And yes, it is time.

I’d like to see the voting overhauled. I’m not sure what would need be done, but I’m a firm believer in East Coast Bias being an actual thing, and to me it’s kind of silly to have people vote for awards where a large percentage of the members see certain teams/players to a much larger degree than the rest. I mean, Stan Fischler said the Oilers were a great team now that they’re under Todd Nelson, after admittedly only watching TWO games.

My main beef with the awards is that one of them seems to be handed out as consolation prize. The Selke Trophy shouldn’t go to a big-points guy who wasn’t quite good enough to win a scoring award or the Hart. It should go to a truly defensive forward who excels at the art of shutting opponents down and playing a defensively reliable game. Not a big deal to a lot of people, but I’d rather see it go to a modern-day version of Bob Gainey or Doug Jarvis than to somebody who just missed on another award.

I’m not really interested in the NHL awards too much. As an Oilers fan, I don’t feel that any of these awards apply to the team I like so what’s the point in paying attention? The NHL definitely needs a Gretzky award though. Seriously. 

Minimum qualifying offer then another one year deal at as little money as possible. He *might* turn it around and without Petry (probably) the team could use somebody. They will need to salvage some kind of career from him.

It really depends on his trade value. I’m of the view that at this moment in time Schultz is a third-pairing even-strength option with some offensive upside, and suspect that he might eventually emerge as a legitimate second-pairing type at even-strength. If other teams value him more than that, trade him; if not try and ink him to an extension. A three-year deal at comparable dollars to what he’s making now doesn’t strike me as ludicrous, though of course his agent could always threaten arbitration and a walk-away down the road.

I’d sign him to the same contract he got this season.

Only option is to sign him to same deal he has now. He makes more than league average so he doesn’t need a raise. Would have no trade value, so sign him to a one year deal and make him earn a raise.

They’re basically between a rock and a hard place now. The qualifying offer they’re going to have to give him is WAY too much. But you can’t really trade him, because I honestly don’t think his stock could be any lower. And as bad as he’s been this year, I’d still rather have him as a reclamation project who showed promise at one point, over a 5th round pick who inevitably never plays in the NHL. 

At this point I think all they can do is sign him to a two year deal max and pray that Nelson/whoever coaches next year finds the secret key to making him not an absolute tire fire in his own end. 

Either that or they could always try him on the wing! WHAT DO THEY HAVE TO LOSE?

He should do what he had the leverage to do last summer but didn’t do — a bridge deal that reflects the value of the player here and now, not what he MIGHT become one day with no track record to prove it. He can’t “trade for what they can get” if they lose Petry first. How do you ice an NHL blue line without Petry and Schultz and with Ference fading and Nikitin running the gamut from barely OK to awful?

Baggedmilk:

What CAN you do? All the Oilers can do is qualify him to the same deal he has this year and hope he signs it. I’m going to guess that signing Justin Schultz will never be that easy though, because I think he thinks he’s better than what we’re seeing. 

Stop moving NHL bodies out for picks. Start making good decisions at the draft table in rounds two onward. Continue on this course with Nelson.

Stop planning for the best case scenario. Some players will exceed expectations when bumped up the depth chart (Benoit Pouliot) but most won’t and counting on, say, Oscar Klefbom to anchor a top pairing or Nikita Nikitin to hold down a shutdown unit job after this season is planning for the best. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Start icing a lineup with more than four NHL centres. Lots of teams bump centres to wing and there are plenty of good reasons for it, including the fact that it gives the coach a lot more flexibility when injuries hit. Continue exercising faith in the young core. It hasn’t been that long and even a guy like Taylor Hall is probably still two years away from the prime of his career; these are very good players now and history tells us they aren’t at their peak yet. Moving them out is the Mike Milbury answer, and the general manager who turns to it deserves a Mike Milbury reputation.

The Oilers need to stop trading veterans like David Perron and Jeff Petry. Get good players, keep good players. Let Petry be the last good veteran to leave for some time. 

The Oilers need to start building a team with an idea to immediate improvement for 2015-16. 

The Oilers need to continue to develop these AHL kids like Klefbom and Lander for the rest of the season. Give them plenty of at-bats.

If you are asking bloggers for love advice then you need to re-evaluate your life choices. Wackiest thing I ever did? I burned a lot of gas driving between Edmonton and Red Water one summer. Looking back on it all I’d rather have that gas money back.

I’ve really never had to do anything wacky. The only thing that really comes to mind was arranging for flowers to be delivered to my then-girlfriend, now-wife two weeks into a month-long road trip I took with some friends to New York. I know that’s a lame story, but my dating days are so far back in the rear-view mirror that it’s the only thing I can think of.

I listened to what she had to say.

Not sure about wacky. I sent my wife on a surprise road trip with her best friend to Calgary for a spa day. It was an early birthday present, since at her B-day she would have been eight months pregnant and likely not wanting to travel. I arranged it and had her friend pick her up at the house. I picked the spa, the restaurant and hotel. Their other best friend lived in Calgary so I got her to surprise them at dinner. Putting thought into something is what matters. Not sure it won her over, since we were married, but it kept me in good books.

This girl I liked in high school, when asked by one of my friends what she thought of me, said “Oh I don’t even know who that is”. So I wrote my name in huge letters on a white T-shirt, with an arrow pointing up to my face, to let her know THIS GUY is who that was. She basically immediately said no to ever dating me, so it totally worked!

Never felt the need to do anything wacky.

The craziest thing that all guys do for their girls is pretending to actually enjoy the garbage they make us do. “Would I like to spend the afternoon at Michaels? Of course! What a thrilling way to spend a Sunday.”