Monday Mailbag – Last Competent Defence?

Remember last weekend? Remember how good it felt to not have to go into work on Monday after you spent the past couple days binge drinking and rolling in your own filth? Good times. Thanks for nothing, this week’s Monday! Now we’re all back to our jobs and trying to kill enough company time to last until next Monday. Luckily, this week’s Mailbag is a hefty read and should kill enough time to get you to your first coffee/smoke break. Hopefully. 

I would move the blue line and goal line back to previous spots. 

Get rid of asinine offside video rule. Limit coaching staffs to only one hour of video a day. Would lead to more chances being created.

I would let the fans sit on the bench. Maybe even let them coach. They are all experts!

Get rid of TV timeouts, or at least cut them down to only a handful per game. Watching the World Championships the last couple weeks really reenforced just how damn long an NHL game can be sometimes. There were maybe five TV timeouts per period during those WC games, compared to what feels like one for every three minutes of play in an NHL game. Those WC games FLEW by! The game itself felt faster because it seemed like the action never really stopped. I will say that I do appreciate the TV timeouts while attending a game live (BEER! BATHROOM!) but in general I think they should get rid of them.

To me, the bottom line when it comes to fan experience is providing a better product on the ice. For starters, the league has to continue to consider ways to open up the game and make it more entertaining — that’s an endless laundry list of discussion and debate right there.

No games before 6PM on weekdays. I would experiment with music playing during game play. Contract the NHL by four teams at least. TSN gets hockey back.

Eliminate the Pacific Time Zone. Everyone in California, Washington, BC, and otherwise will now move forward to Mountain Standard Time. This way, we eliminate 8:30pm starts. We’ll be thankful, the people down east will be thankful, everybody wins. Thank you. 

This is a great question, but without knowing the date of the expansion draft or the rules it is a difficult one to answer. I will say yes, it will impact things. That is a very unsatisfactory answer, and I apologize for it. If the NHL had its act together we would already know.

Not sure why? If you are signing a player to a multi-year this summer you’d hope he is good enough to be on your team next year. If expansion draft was in three years, then it might be issue, but it shouldn’t be a factor for only one year. And I only see players being bought out who aren’t worth the money or talented enough anymore, not because they have a NMC.

Sure this is all possible but I am not convinced that the expansion draft rules we hear about now are in fact what will take place in the future.

I mean, who even knows if there will be an expansion draft next year? But even if there was one for certain I doubt it would really have that much of an affect. GMs should already be thinking twice about handing out all these NMC/NTCs due to the cap, so maybe this will help prevent non-franchise players from getting them as often as they do now. And GMs hardly ever trade anymore as is, even those in dire need of turning their franchise around, so I can’t really foresee a scenario in which they start making trades because of a potential expansion draft. I think business will carry on as usual and teams will cross the expansion bridge if/when they come to it.

They should be more reluctant to hand out NMCs because there are too many of them now. I imagine teams that haven’t used all their buy-outs will take a look at marginal veterans making too much money and try to move them rather than risk losing younger, upcoming players who will need to be protected.

In general there will be fewer NMCs but, naturally, Benning won’t get the memo in Vancouver and hand out two of them to bit players. I’m expecting more buyouts than blockbusters. The expansion draft should make this year’s first rounders worth that much more as the players taken would be exempt.

If I’m a GM I’m giving everybody no move clauses. That way I ensure that I can’t lose anybody by the time the expansion draft comes around. Circumvent the system! Damn the man. 

I heard they were going to send Baggedmilk down there to run promotions.

Typical NHL. Their inability to understand how to properly grow their game has always been an issue.

I am not a fan of it. In those types of markets anything that creates a buzz or an event for the NHL should be viewed as a success.

The NHL has this amazing strategy going where they are trying to grow the game while simultaneously doing everything in their power to stop people from watching. A southern team trying to bolster their fanbase by having a fun event that people can enjoy with hundreds of other fans? GO HOME EVERYONE, YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS ON TV! (Side note: EVERY team does events like this, and have been doing it for ages now, which takes this whole thing to another level of stupidity). 

Spend $200 on GameCentre Live so you can watch your favourite team? WELL IF YOU LIVE IN THAT TEAM’S BROADCAST AREA ALL THE GAMES ARE BLACKED OUT AND SO ARE ALL NATIONALLY TELEVISED GAMES! Oh you wanted to WATCH these games? LOL NOPE! 

They keep trying to bring in new fans by doing everything they can to try and turn away their already existing fan base. It’s mind numbing, and if you needed evidence as to why it’s probably time for a new NHL commissioner to take the reigns, I’d start there.

Lame. There are no negatives to events like these that can expose the game to more people — especially in a non-traditional hockey market.

I think it’s bush league to clamp down on fan enjoyment/engagement in hopes that those households just sit in their homes and watch the games by themselves. How pathetic are the ratings in these markets that an official party MIGHT hurt ratings? And IF it is that bad, won’t it already be too late to save? Wouldn’t the NHL be better served growing the game (as the Lightning were trying to do) so that NEXT YEAR the numbers are better?

I always find that the best way to grow the market is to eliminate a really cool way of enjoying your product. I mean, why on earth would you want thousands of your fans gathering in one place to celebrate a team they willingly pay to follow? Who needs that? Good call by the NHL. 

Many moons ago, Al Arbour and Bill Torrey had a motto, Laura. Get good players, keep good players. The Oilers must do the same, and I do agree some quality veterans—older than Hall and Eberle—need to be added to track back the previous damage.

Incompetent organization from 2007-2014 is why. At every level of management, coaching and scouting.

This is a result of many losing seasons and a quest to turn over the roster to win. I believe a more patient approach to player development is needed. There are not many players who are signed as a result of pro scouting or traded for that become the longest serving members of the team. This is more on drafting and developing.

It’s pro scouting with a little dash of incompetent GMing. I mean, just look at the guys with NHL experience that were brought in during the Tambellini and MacT eras: Khabibulin, Nikita Nikitin, Eric Belanger, Darcy Hordichuk, Cam Barker, Mark Fraser, Matt Fraser, Keith Aulie, Jesse Joensuu, etc, ON TOP of guys who had prior AHL experience like Will Acton and Corey Potter. That is an alarming amount of guys who shouldn’t have been getting minutes in the NHL, let alone being every day players! 

And as far as I’m concerned this has already been addressed. Chia has made some great moves (the Maroon and Talbot acquisitions alone already make his tenure 2000x more successful than the previous two guys combined) and while obviously there is still a lot of work to be done (DID YOU GUYS KNOW THE OILERS DEFENSE IS BAD AND THEY NEED TO ACQUIRE GOOD DEFENSE? Don’t worry, someone will surely let you know in the comment section of every single Oilers article ever written), I have a lot of faith this current regime will continue to turn this boat around.

Bottom-feeder teams always have the most turnover. Veterans come and go but trading away young promising players, like Hall and Eberle, doesn’t make a lot of sense, so it’s no surprise they are the longest serving. Becoming competitive for a playoff spot again will slow down the rate of turnover.

It’s the result of a half-baked philosophical tenet of the organization that lead the team to surround Edmonton’s draftees with nothing but fringe players for years. The past can’t be fixed. The good news is that it looks like Chia is done filling holes with replacement level players.

Where’s the all of the above option? The amateur scouting/drafting has sucked and so has the pro-scouting. 

To paraphrase: “I think Nikita Nikitin is a top four defenceman” -Mact

To paraphrase: “With the 31st overall pick the Edmonton Oilers select Mitch Moroz.” 

2005-06. It was beautiful.

I’d say the start of the 2010/2011 season. They had Ryan Whitney, Jeff Petry, Tom Gilbert, Lady Smid and some vets in the third pair in Vandermeer and Foster. Whitney had 27 points in 35 games, but then he got injured and was never the same. But at the start of that season they had a guy who could play top pair minutes and produce offensively. It wasn’t elite, but had Whitney stayed healthy they would have been okay. His injury was a big blow.

2008 – 2009 It was a good mix on the back end.

I’d say sometime during the 2007-08 season. They had Tom Gilbert, Joni Pitkanen, Denis Grebeshkov (who, despite what SOME people will try to tell you was a competent defender at that time), Steve Staios, a young Ladi Smid, Matt Greene and pre-career ending injury/being buried by Tambo Sheldon Souray. That team only missed the playoffs by three points, and while it’s obviously not a murders row of high end D-men, it’s better than pretty much any defense core the Oilers have deployed since.

The Stanley Cup final team of 2006.

2006. We’ve had competent defenders since then but, as a whole, the last time there was a completely competent group was the 2006 run. It had elite talent at the top and had depth all the way down. The fact that Matt Greene was the weakest link goes to show how good that group was.

Remember when Steve Tambellini buried Sheldon Souray in the minors and then got absolutely nothing for him on the trade market? Good times. But to answer the question, I would say maybe 2009-10. They had some decent pieces in place that needed better support, but as a whole it smelled like an NHL defensive core. 

 

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