Monday Mailbag – The Oilers’ shopping list

Happy Family Day long weekend, Nation! I hope you’re using this time off to sleep in, add Baileys to your coffee, and do all of the things you’ve ever wanted to. For those of you that have to work today, I offer my condolences and this mailbag to help you get to quitting time just a little bit faster. As always, I need questions and if there’s something you’d like to ask, email it to me at baggedmilk@oilersnation.com or hit me up on Twitter at @jsbmbaggedmilk. Have a good week, everyone.

Cammalleri is playing more minutes now in hopes a team wants to acquire him at the deadline. I’m not sure it will impact his trade value, to be honest, but after the deadline, I expect the young players will play more.

I agree with you.

Once the trade deadline has passed its time to see what these kids have got. If JP is playing 9 minutes a night in March then there’s a problem. I get pumping the moveable assets as much as possible though.

Get Slepyshev and Puljujarvi in the top six and use Draisaitl on his own line. Those are things that actually matter beyond this year.

Cammalleri will probably be gone by the deadline. Give Slepyshev extended time in the top six. Call up Ty Rattie. Maybe even give Joey Laleggia a shot. Now’s the time.

I agree with that to a certain extent. If you’re giving someone like Puljujarvi more minutes now, I’m afraid you’re essentially throwing him into a dumpster fire already which won’t be good for his development anyways. If overall team chemistry and effort is lacking, then more minutes for younger players won’t really be helping them but instead maybe creating bad habits for them.

I hope it’s because they’re trying to pump and dump some of the UFAs but honestly who knows at this point. Sometimes I feel like Todd McLellan is trolling Peter Chiarelli with some of these line combinations but I obviously have nothing to bass that on.

Not all three. They don’t have enough assets to move to acquire all three. I’m not sure they need the latter that badly. Talbot is having a down year, but I expect him to be better next year. I’d sure hope Chiarelli has learned from the Hall and Eberle trade, so if he does deal RNH, he needs a player of equal skill back. If not, then don’t make the trade. Simple.

Do-able? Yes. The ask in return is the rub. The least of my concerns is the goaltender to “push” Talbot. I believe he can bounce back from a bad season. Need a competent option behind him.

No. He might as well be asking for a unicorn. With Chia in charge it’s much more likely all the assets in play net the Oilers nothing higher than a 3rd rounder and it would take moving Nuge to get another 4D who shoots left.

It’s amazing that Pistol Pete has dealt two of the best things that came out of the Decade of Darkness and still has the same gaping hole anyway along with a brand new one. Chiarelli hasn’t been able to make good moves consistently and he’s pissed away a good chunk of his assets. Why should we believe he can pull it together?

No. It reflects poorly on Peter Chiarelli. I’d be curious how he thinks they can acquire all these players next season. He hasn’t exactly shown he can acquire good players for very little. Most of these should have been acquired last summer.

I mean it’s true, but do we really want Peter Chiarelli to make those moves for us? I sure don’t trust him.

Pretty amazing that they have the same shopping list as they did before trading Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle. Not sure how they managed to pull that off but here we are.

Oilers have a lot of LD. Most players are “available” for the right price. I don’t see them shopping Klefbom, but, for argument sake if Arizona wanted Klefbom as main piece (plus more of course) in an Oliver Ekman-Larsson trade then I suspect Chiarelli would listen. Many names are brought up around the league and 90% of the time those names don’t get moved. I do, however, understand the trepidation from Oilers fans when they hear Klefbom is available, because they fear losing the trade.

I would hope that he wouldn’t. Klefbom is a good player having a bad year. I wouldn’t trade him.

Because Chiarelli does not understand what PDO is. He’s shown that his entire management career. He can’t help himself.

Don’t let him make any more trades. Please.

Well, Andrej Sekera and Kris Russell have no-move clauses. Adam Larsson is the lone right-shot defenceman who can play top-four minutes. Darnell Nurse is loved by the organization and needs a new contract, and the other big-money defenceman have trade protection. I wouldn’t trade Klefbom, but Chiarelli’s painted himself in a corner. This is the way he operates so I could see Klefbom for a less valuable player. He always deals off the top.

Why would Peter Chiarelli trade Taylor Hall for JUST Adam Larsson? Why would Peter Chiarelli trade Jordan Eberle for JUST Ryan Strome? Chiarelli does a lot of things no one understands. If Chia does get fleeced in another trade, this time including Klefbom, it will add another move onto his already bad resume.

Why would Peter Chiarelli trade Jordan Eberle for cap space and do absolutely nothing with the savings? His moves don’t always have to make sense for him to pull the trigger and he’s just proving why he was fired in Boston after leaving that team in shambles.

With the cap expected to go above $80 million I don’t see Oilers in a massive cap crunch. They won’t be able to overspend, which is probably a good thing, but adding a $4-$5 million top-line winger won’t crush their cap. They have many cheap contracts across the lineup in Caggiula, Slepyshev, Benning, Davidson, Khaira and I expect those players to be better next year. But Chiarelli needs to reverse his recent trend of losing big deals or overpaying players.

I think he can. The question is if he will. Chiarelli has made some good moves, but he can’t keep sending out offensive talent for lesser players.

No. Of course it’s not realistic. He made the team significantly worse in 3 years while convincing himself it was getting better. He is a poor negotiator in trades and contracts. Edmonton needed him to make the club better last summer. That was the critical point. He paid through the nose for his players and downgraded his roster. Nobody should be confident in him.

No!

No. The bulk of Chiarelli’s moves as Oilers general manager have been either trading down in talent or adding a tough contract. He’s put the Oilers in this cap situation, I’m not sure why you’d trust him to get them out of it.

That’s exactly what I’m thinking. Do we want Chia to attempt to fix this mess he created? Or should we put it in the hands of someone else? I hate the idea of quick GM turnover but I mean what else can we do at this point?

Is it realistic that Miranda Kerr divorces the founder of Snapchat to instead date a lowly blogger named Baggedmilk? No, it’s not but it could happen.

Just be competitive, but one game will never tell the entire story. I’d like to see more consistency from the group, especially in their defensive zone coverage. All the talk about losing skill has overshadowed the fact the Oilers have been a trainwreck in their own end for much of the season. They are 20th in 5×5 goals allowed this year. Last season they allowed the 9^th fewest. Don’t just focus on scoring wingers. They need to play better team defence from the goalie out to the forwards.

You can’t take one game and draw a conclusion like that. What I want is the kind of assessment you’re talking about over the remaining games. Let’s see who folds when the chips are down and who goes hard to the wire.

Season is over. I’m looking for McPoints and signs of life from Puljujarvi and Talbot. Shut the injured players down and play the kids. Otherwise, tank on!

This is a group that looked like they had given up two weeks into the season so these poor efforts aren’t a surprise.

I don’t think it matters. They’ll be worse when they sell off Maroon and Letestu. That means more AHL-caliber players in the lineup. It’s better for the organization to realize what this team is rather than get fooled by a strong finish.

Will to compete?

Honestly, I don’t expect much from them for the rest of the season as terrible as that sounds. They’ve just lost five in a row and their playoff hopes are unofficially dead. It’s not really natural for a human to give 110% in circumstances like these so I don’t really blame them.

Just show up to play for 60 minutes. That’s all I ask. I mean, that shouldn’t be too tall of an order considering what these some of these guys get paid to do for a living.

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