Monday Mailbag – What are the Oilers’ strengths?

Another Monday is here to ruin your practice retirement and that sucks, there’s no doubt, but the first day of the week also means another edition of the Monday Mailbag. As always, the mailbag is here to help you kill off a few minutes of your day and maybe, just maybe, help you learn a little something while you’re at it. If you’d like to join in the fun, I need questions for next week and you can always email them to me at baggedmilk@oilersnation.com or hit me up on Twitter at @jsbmbaggedmilk. Now sit back, relax, and waste as much company time as is humanly possible. Have a good week, everybody.

Their left defence is solid. Their left wing with RNH, Lucic, Khaira and Caggiula is pretty good in my eyes. They have two top-six LW and two bottom-six.

RNH will likely be used as a left winger. That aside, left defence, with Nurse, Sekera and Klefbom is fine, assuming they are healthy. That, of course, is a big assumption.

They covered at left defence. Oscar Klefbom, Darnell Nurse, and Andrej Sekera should fill out the left side of their top four. Whoever is left out should be a luxurious third-pairing guy. Kris Russell is another left-handed third-pairing defenceman.

Pretty solid abs among the team, I’d say. Decent hair as well. As far as strength I go center>abs>hair>defense>goaltending>left wing>right wing>head coach>general manager.

If you would have asked me this before last season I would have said goaltending, special teams, as well as havaing grit & energy. Right now we’re at a middle point where we’re waiting to see how everyone performs. I don’t really feel comfortable saying we have ‘strengths’ in any other area of our game because we’re banking on a lot of bounce backs from players.

I wanted to go off the board and say that I feel good about the Oilers goaltending. I believe in Cam Talbot and I think he’s going to have a solid year after he, along with many others, didn’t play up to their own standards last season. Who the hell knows what Mikko Koskinen is going to be like, but I’m trying to have faith in management on this. Summer positivity!

I agree completely. If Mclellan tells them what he thinks it could influence what they see, and they would look for those traits, pro or con, in the player. It is better to let the coaches have their own opinion, because what they see could differ from McLellan and it might change how he views a player or what situations he uses them in.

Yes, it’s a good idea. Why bring in fresh sets of eyes to form opinions if you are going to try to influence how those new coaches assess players ahead of time?

Absolutely. I’m sure McLellan has made up his mind with many players on the roster, but the new assistants should challenge him and bring their own analysis without hearing his input first.

Yes. McLellan’s judgment is suspect and they fired/“promoted” his entire staff because so much went wrong. Not poisoning the minds of his new assistants is probably the best decision he’s made in over a year.

I think that’s a great decision. Todd is putting his ego aside and not telling the new coaches what he already thinks. This is a great way to bring new ideas into the dressing room, and for the new coaches to pickup on things that Todd doesn’t see.

I really like this approach and think it’s the only one that makes sense. McLellan telling the new guys exactly what he thinks about the players won’t help anything apart from creating biases.

Veterans can look at the Oilers lineup and see the void. If there is a right-shot winger, he could agree to come here. Tommy Wingels or Drew Stafford could be options, but neither excite me that much.

Jason Chimera.

I’d invite Nick Shore, Jannik Hansen and Cody Franson. Shore could add another depth centre. Hansen was a useful player for a long time, he could rebound. Franson has heavy boots but he can play.

DAVYYYYYYYYYYY

Nope. We don’t know Darnell’s contract yet but I’m pretty confident there won’t be any cap space left.

Honestly, I don’t know what to say here. What I can definitely tell you is that I hope they pick up someone with some experience that can play on the right wing.

You could move Arizona to the Central division. They used to be in the same division as Dallas. It isn’t ideal, but moving them to the Central and sliding Seattle into the Pacific makes the most sense for me.

Putting Seattle in the Central Division is the easiest. There is no compelling reason not to do it that way.

It’s too early to tell. The NHL will most likely mix the divisions up again with the Pacific already having eight teams in the division.

Seattle will be in the Pacific and the NHL will realign. Edmonton might find themselves in the central (but I hope not).

Good question. I couldn’t see it being possible to add another team to the Pacific. They’d have to force someone from the Pacific over to the Central to even things up probably. It would definitely be a complicated conversation to have. I’m curious to see how that would play out.

Who knows what the NHL will do. Remember when Detroit was a Western Conference team? Someone is going to have to slide out East and there are a couple teams that might make sense based on geography. Chicago? Dallas? St. Louis? What the hell do I know?

Waterton National Park and Cypress Hills. Both are awesome.

No idea where to go because I haven’t gone camping in 40 years. Are we talking tent or RV/trailer here? It makes a difference. This may sound silly, but if you’re taking a little guy tenting for the first time, you might consider a test run by spending a night in the backyard to make sure he’s good with a different bed and different sounds and surroundings. Chances are he’ll be just fine and will really enjoy being out under the stars etc. If you’re in an RV or trailer, it just comes down to picking the most family friendly area you can find and avoiding the spot beside the guys on the stag camping weekend.

I’ll leave this to the other guys. I’m not a camping guy at all.

We went camping all the time as kids but I haven’t been in a long time. My wife practically needs an EpiPen when she gets a mosquito bite and my kids aren’t far behind. The last time I tried was near Drumheller because we thought we could do the Tyrell Museum and get the camping itch all scratched up at the same time. It was a nightmare. It was one of those scenarios in life where you know you’re acting like a crazy person but you just keep going. My family ended up hiding from a swarm of mosquitos in the car while I “set up the tent” until I decided to drive to a motel and leave the next morning. *This close* to leaving my family behind. I dream about what life would be like if I hadn’t let them get in the car that morning. How much happier would I be? How fewer would the burdens I carry be? Would I still go camping? Sigh. Anyway, what were we talking about?

I would definitely take him to the mountains someplace. There are a ton of campgrounds in and around Canmore that I would recommend. He’ll never forget a mountain trip with some kayaking/hiking/fishing involved in my opinion.

Realistically, the little man is seven and he won’t care where you guys go as long as you have a good time. Take him somewhere you can go fishing. Or maybe take him to one of those little cabin things near Jasper.

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