Monday Mailbag – How did the Oilers do at the NHL Draft?

Welcome, Nation, to another edition of the award-winning Monday Mailbag! Here we are on the first Monday after the NHL Draft and it’s time to get recap the weekend and get ourselves set for free agency. Once again, the mailbag is here to help you kill off a few minutes of company time with 3000 words of pure wisdom. How’s that for an early gift? As always, this feature depends on you so please send me your questions by email or Twitter for next week and I’ll try to sneak you in. Until then, I hope you all have a wonderful week and please enjoy the free learning opportunity.

The agent works for the player. Make no mistake Puljujarvi is on board with his agent going public. Taking it public doesn’t alter much in my eyes. Jonathon Drouin went public he wanted out of Tampa, and even left the team, but he returned and eventually was traded. Steve Yzerman was patient and didn’t trade Drouin until he found a trade he wanted. I suspect Ken Holland will do the same.

The agent works for the player and the player obviously wants out of Edmonton. Going public does nothing to enhance Holland’s ability to make a trade. Going public is always a bad move — the only question is degree, as in how bad?

Going public is rarely ever a good thing. Puljujarvi could have just told the Oilers that he wants out and will not play in Edmonton next season and then they could have worked behind the scenes to get a deal done. Now, the Oilers are in a position of weakness when it comes to trades and that makes a trade more difficult to pull off. It’s a lose-lose situation at this point.

I think it definitely hurts both parties. Now the league knows he wants out, which reduced Holland’s power in any trade negotiation, AND doing it this way makes Jesse and his camp come off pretty badly in my opinion. Would anyone want a guy on his team where the agent pulls tricks like this?

I think it’s dumb, personally. We all know that Puljujarvi wants out but I don’t see how scorching the earth like his agent seems to be doing helps anything at all.

Not really. The NHL is a very tight-knit community. Many people get third and fourth opportunities. He and Jim Benning worked together before so I’m not surprised he might hire a former co-worker. I’m curious to see what role he would have.

I’m not sure talking to Chiarelli amounts to “chasing” Chiarelli. Like any executive who has been around as long as Chiarelli has, he’s built a lot of relationships with people along the way. Won’t be surprised if one of those people gives him a chance

It doesn’t surprise me at all. For the most part, the NHL is just a giant old boys club and everyone has friends in every organization. I’m sure there are executives that still think Chiarelli is a smart hockey man who can contribute to their organization. I don’t think we’ll ever see the day where Chiarelli is a general manager again, but I won’t be shocked to see him

Yeah, I’m pretty shocked. To be fair, these positions aren’t in the GM role which makes sense. Who knows, Chia might be able to thrive in a different hockey ops role in an organization, as long as it’s not general manager.

Frankly, I don’t know why any team would touch Chiarelli with a ten-foot pole based on his uselessness here in Edmonton, but I am happy that it could be Vancouver that picks him up.

Hard to say. But I could see it happening in 2021 because of McDavid and Draisaitl. A lot can change in two years.

Define legitimate. I think the Oilers could make the playoffs next season. Would anybody have called them legitimate Cup contenders going into the 2006 playoffs? I can’t see Ken Holland making all the changes necessary to address every question about the roster in one off-season, but he could re-shape this team considerably by the start of the 2020-21 season.

2022-23 sounds about right. They’ll have Sekera and Russell off the books and hopefully, by then players like Evan Bouchard, Caleb Jones, and Dmitri Somorukov are close to their full potential on the backend. Up front, Tyler Benson, Raphael Lavoie, and Kailer Yamamoto could be contributing at the NHL level as well. I know that’s a lot of wishful thinking, but they’ll have cap flexibility and potentially some good young players. In the summer of 2023, Milan Lucic comes off the books as well, so provided they play their cards right, they could be in a position to sign or acquire an impact player as well.

I think they’ll be playoff bound next season, but legit cup contenders? I agree, 2022/23, maybe a year earlier.

Get in and you never know what can happen. I think the Oilers will make the playoffs this coming season and once that happens then it’s anyone’s game.

I wasn’t expecting them to do anything at the draft that would help them next year. I’d have drafted Boldy or Krebs, but that is me, and in a few years we will see how the players develop. The good news is under Ken Holland none of the players selected this past weekend will be rushed to the NHL. No more quick fixes and unrealistic expectations for 18 and 19 year olds.

How are we to know? Lots of consternation about taking Broberg eighth because it didn’t line up with projections by many scouting outfits and media types, but I don’t know how he’ll turn out and neither does anybody else. On the flipside, people think Raphael Lavoie was a steal with the 38th pick because he was rated higher by many. Again, we don’t know.

Broberg was a reach at eighth overall, but I’ve never seen him play so I’m trying not to be too hard on the selection. In my opinion, they got an absolute steal at 38th overall with Raphael Lavoie. He looks to be a natural goal scorer and he has size as well. I have high hopes for him.

Meh, overall I’m not upset about anything. I never like to judge picks until I see these prospects at the pro level. We won’t know how these prospects pan out for a few years.

I thought the Broberg pick was weird based on the forwards available in that slot but I’m not going to stress about it. Defensive depth matters so I can understand the overall idea and we’ll see how the upcoming year goes for the kid. I like Lavoie at #38 because the kid is gigantic and has some filthy mitts to go along with his size so he’ll be fun to track over the upcoming season.

You might see it with the odd older player, but I don’t see it becoming a trend. NHL stars only play 20-25 minutes a night compared to 33-36 for NBA players. Leonard was coming off a pretty significant injury, and while sports do copy cat, usually it pertains to the individual league. Could we see more NBA stars not play a full season after an injury? Absolutely.

More of a factor in basketball where key players can regularly play 33-plus minutes a night. The best NHL teams already manage the wear and tear on key players with optional practices and diminished ice time in games that get out of hand score-wise one way or another. I don’t see healthy players being kept out of the line-up for rest purposes.

I think it could definitely benefit a team but I also think just shaving down some tough minutes during games could help as well. Easing the amount of defensive zone starts for Andrej Sekera, having him kill fewer penalties. That sort of thing. I don’t think we’ll ever get to the point in the NHL where Connor McDavid or Sidney Crosby are sitting the second half of back-to-backs simply for rest like we see in the NBA though.

That’s actually a pretty interesting strategy. I think circumstances would be dependent on where your team is in the standings, and what point of the season it is. I wouldn’t be opposed to it if the player and team are on board. AND you’ll need a deep roster to be able to pull it off as well.

Limiting minutes makes sense but that already happens, depending on the situation. If your team is any good, the stars won’t have to play as much which isn’t necessarily the case in basketball.

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