Monday Mailbag – October 26th

Happy Monday, fine citizens. Here is yet another edition of the Mailbag to help you kill a few minutes of company time, and give you an opportunity to learn something at the same time. As always, this feature is completely dependant on you guys. If you’ve got a question you can email it to me at baggedmilk@oilersnation.com or DM on Twitter at @jsbmbaggedmilk.

Any former Oiler who was in Edmonton for a few years I still keep track of. But players who I’m still in contact with, or I liked how they played, I keep a closer eye on:  Cogliano, Brodziak, Hemsky, Stoll, Gagner, Chimera and Horcoff. I follow some more than others. It is amazing to me Cogliano still hasn’t missed a game. He’s played 629 in a row.

All of them, I think. Glen Sather has special sentimental value for any Oilers fan my age, even though he’d probably slug me for saying it. Slats had a long run of mediocre after the glory days, but those 80s Oilers were a dream. I pray to every God available we see one more Stanley, but the five Sather helped with are in my brain forever.

I wouldn’t say I keep tabs per say, but I do enjoy seeing how Andrew Cogliano, Sam Gagner and more recently Devan Dubnyk are doing. I always really liked Cogliano, and would still love to have him back on the team, albeit in a third line role like he currently occupies in Anaheim. Gagner had a solid year in Arizona last season, and just this last Wednesday against the Bruins he scored an absolute BEAUTY of a snipe! And I really enjoy the validation I feel when Dubnyk does well, since I felt like I was one of the few still waving his flag during his absolutely abysmal 2013-14 camp again. SIUTBOYC Duby, SUITBOYC. 

I do my best to keep up on Jeff Petry. Actually, I get constantly reminded about him because the Quebec media has been raving about him since he got there and even more so this year. Turns out he’s actually really good and playing behind Subban is a perfect fit for him. He just recently told the media that the Oilers had never offered him more than a two year deal before his final season in Edmonton. So…yeah.

I grew up watching the Stanley cup winning teams of the 80s. Any player from that era I am interested to see how they are and what they are up to.

Several, and different reasons for each.

Lots of them, but the guy who probably best fits your question is Patrick Thoresen. There’s a really fine line between a lot of bottom-six players who have long careers and ones which don’t, and I’d always felt that Thoresen had more to offer. It’s too late now, of course; he’s in his 30’s, but it’s been fun watching him rip up the KHL the last few years.

I used to follow Doug Weight pretty closely after he was traded. He was always my favourite Oiler growing up and I was devastated when he got traded. These days I will still check in on various guys (I was just checking up on Sam Gagner the other day) from time to time to see how they’re doing. Other times I’ll remember a ghost from rebuilds past and I’ll try to find what they’re doing now — I miss you, Jonesy. 

Hall and McDavid both like to carry the puck. To me they are “drivers” of a line. Yakupov isn’t, he rarely will carry the puck through the neutral zone and lead the attack. I’m sure Hall and McDavid could play together, and likely will at some points, but it benefits the Oilers to have two productive lines and one player on each line who can carry the play.

Hell if I know. Once a duo or line is established, it’s easy to point out their value to each other. Developing chemistry immediately? Not so easy. I will say Yakupov is passing extremely well on the line and McDavid is incredible.

Hall and McDavid are both guys who love driving the play, and when you’ve got two guys who constantly want the puck, that’s obviously not going to work out well most of the time. As we’ve seen so far, McDavid can wheel around basically anyone and pass the puck through the eye of a pin. Yak is best suited finding some open ice and firing laser beams on the net, and Pouliot is defensively sound and strong on the puck. It’s a pretty perfect mix if you ask me.

Stylistically the two match better than Hall and McDavid. Hall is a puck carrier. He gets it and uses his speed to drive wide. McDavid is a puck carrier as well who uses his speed with the puck as a weapon. Having them on at the same time means one is getting to do their thing while the other is not. Yakupov, though, is a shooter first and doesn’t need the puck in the neutral zone. It works to have McDavid draw all the attention and/or back defenders off while Yak gets open.

Connor makes players around him better. That is quite a statement considering his age. There does seem to be some chemistry there. I think we will see 4 ad 97 back together to try it again before all is said and done.

McDavid is a puck transporter. Yakupov is a shooter. Their styles are a match. I haven’t seen Pouliot, to this point, as effective as he should be with the other two.

There are a lot of reasons. It’s tempting to default to the fact that Pouliot/McDavid/Yakupov fits the old line archetype of grinder/playmaker/shooter, and of course having McDavid on that line makes him the feature puck carrier and he seems to relish the role. It’s important to remember too that Todd McLellan has tried to make things easy on the, both in terms of matchups and which end of the ice they start in.

McDavid is best when he has the puck and Yak knows this. He also knows that his job is to get open and expect to fire the puck at any moment because Connor will find him. When Connor was playing with Taylor Hall you had two guys that need to carry the puck and there weren’t enough touches to go around. 

It happens when a team is underachieving, and Bobrovsky wasn’t the only issue. Their team defence and overall effort was atrocious. You can’t fire the goalie, and they won’t be leaning on their back up, McElhinney, to carry them. He is 0-2 with a 3.06 GAA and .891 sv%. Yes, it is better than Bob’s 4.72 GAA and .840sv%, but Bobrovsky has proven he can be an effective starter. They hope he will find his groove and the team defence will improve.

I think the situation in Columbus is similar to EDM fall 2013, when Dubnyk cratered and the team stepped into the elevator shaft. Is CBJ better off dealing the goalie than firing the coach?

I do think it’s crazy, in the sense that it’s plain to see they are just not getting anywhere near NHL quality goaltending right now, and more than anything that’s what’s submarining their season. It’s the same thing that happened to the Oilers for the last two seasons. But at the same time I do understand that coaches have a limited shelf life, and that sometimes a shakeup like this is necessary. Todd Richards only got them to the playoffs once in his three and a half seasons as head coach. And while he never really had a great roster to work with during his tenure, the NHL is a results driven business. And on a more selfish level I CAN’T WAIT to see what kind of zany antics Torts gets up to! I honestly didn’t think we’d ever see him again! WELCOME BACK OLD FRIEND!

As of writing this I believe they are 0-8. The season is effectively over for the Jackets. They are playing a 74 game season while the rest of the NHL is playing 82. The problem is their goaltending, not necessarily their coaching, but you have to do something when 10% of the season is flushed down the drain. What’s crazy is that they gave up a second rounder for Torts. That’s the kind of decision that should get GMs fired.

Richards may have been on the hot seat before the season had even started. I had picked the Jackets to be a playoff team, something that looks impossible now. Their D is an issue. In a league where D support is huge it just isn’t there for the Bluejackets.

Crazy? Not sure about that, although I found it surprising because I wasn’t under the impression Richards was the problem. Then again, if the players were bristling about being “coached” on and off the ice, as has been suggested, that can become a problem. The players, especially Bobrovsky, haven’t been good enough.

He is, and I think they know that. Rumour had it that Columbus was looking for a trade but couldn’t get one done before finally firing Richards. I used to think this kind of thing was crazy and sometimes it is, but Richards’ Jackets were consistently pretty slow out of the gate so it’s not like this was a total aberration for them. Mostly, I think there’s tremendous pressure to do something, and sometimes the coach is the easiest lever to pull.

Columbus needs to get home playoff games to generate revenue and that’s probably not going to happen with the start that they’ve had. I wouldn’t say that I’m surprised Richards was fired so early in the season, because it does happen from time to time, but it does seem early to blame the coach. The Jackets have played poorly as a team and you can’t pin that all on the coach, but as history has shown it’s usually the coach that is the first to go.  

They want Laurent Brossoit to develop. That is their priority more than worrying about a potential injury. Also, he has no trade value at this point. Ramo just cleared waivers as well. Teams aren’t looking for backup goalies right now.

There may be visa issues. He played this weekend in Bakersfield.

You would think so, yes, but at the same time they also want to give Brossoit as many starts as possible. They’ve also got Eetu Laurikainen down there as a backup so it’s not like they’re really in need of Ben Scrivens per-say. And NHL GMs seem to have weird memories; for instance just recently there was that rumour Lou Lamoriello was interested in trading for Travis Zajac, who hasn’t broken 45 points since 2010. So despite the fact that Scrivens is coming off a bad year, and that he hasn’t suited up since the preseason, it would not surprise me at all if someone took a flyer on him because he WAS good for a few years in Toronto and L.A. Crazier things have happened (Pronger trade this summer, Nathan Horton trade this summer, etc).

I heard it was a visa issue at first. I have no idea if that’s the case still. I don’t know what you do with Scrivens except to say that he should be doing something that could prove his ability to stop pucks.

Ben is a veteran and we know what he is all about as a player. The AHL is a development league. That is why he isn’t playing.

The issue, as I understand it, is/was connected to having the proper paperwork done to allow him to work in the U.S.

He’s played a game now (and not well). It takes a while to get a work visa for another country and playing Laurent Brossoit is going to be the priority down on the farm in any event.

Gotta love a paid vacation, right? Obviously Scrivens wants to be playing in the NHL but that’s not the case, and I just hope he’s being a supportive teammate throughout the uncertainty. 

His ability to come out a turn with the same speed he entered is amazing to me. I’ve never seen another player do it at his speed. He is the real deal.

Music. Sweet, beautiful music. I set my evenings around the games and don’t make alternate plans. I plan my bathroom breaks around his shifts. Seriously.

He’s been everything that was advertised and more. He did look a little tentative his first few games, but not out of place at all. Then we saw him open things up in Calgary and he’s taken off like a rocket ship ever since. My absolute favourite part is he’s already THIS GOOD AT 18! I can’t even begin to imagine how insane he’s going to be when he’s like 24. Every game we’ve seen him get more and more confident and HOLY CRAP THIS SEASON IS GOING TO BE SO FUN GUYS!

He lives up to the hype. He’s as fast as they said he was. He’s as smart as they said he was. He makes plays at top speed the way they said he could. It’s all there. It’s the skating and the vision/awareness that stand out though. He makes passes to where people will be, not where they are. That’s incredible. But the speed?! Against teenagers in the OHL is one thing. Separating from real live NHL defenders or making them look like pylons is something completely different.

Very impressed. The way he plays at 18 makes me wonder what he will be doing at 25. #dreamon

Better than I expected, first and foremost because he has taken almost no time to adjust to the NHL. I thought we might see what we’ve already seen from the 20-game or so mark on, but he’s already got opposing teams game-planning about what they do about him.

He’s equal to the hype, and that’s extreme praise. Combine elite speed with wicked soft hands and a high-end processor and it’s hard to argue with the results.

He’s amazing. Every time Connor McDavid touches the puck you never know what’s going to happen, and I say that in the best possible way. He’s playing better, at the NHL level, than I would have expected. To start the year I said that I would be happy if McDavid hit 60 points and anything above that would be gravy. With the way he’s playing right now you have to take the over on that one.