Monday Mailbag – What happens next now that Sekera is out?

You survived the weekend, maybe got a bit Sunday Funday day drunk, and now you’re looking for ways to kill some company time until the clock tells you you’re allowed to leave. Luckily, your ol’ pal Baggedmilk is back with another chapter of the award-winning mailbag that’s here to not only kill those worktime minutes, but also to teach you a little something about the Oilers and life in general. As always, the mailbag depends on your questions.  If you have one, you can email it to me at baggedmilk@oilersnation.com or on Twitter at @jsbmbaggedmilk. Enjoy the distraction, my friends, you’ve earned it.

The wildcards are Kevin Gravel and Evan Bouchard. I don’t know enough about Gravel and we haven’t seen Bouchard against NHL competition. I’d rather see the Oilers bring in a D-man — easier said than done — than force Bouchard into the mix. Do you make a call on the back end now or wait until you get a look at everybody in pre-season?

Well, it really puts Edmonton in a precarious position of depending on Kris Russell to anchor his own pairing. I pray that they at least invite one of a couple players like Davidson and/or Franson to try out so there’s SOME competition back there for the 6-7 spots. It’s bad enough that the team is always trying to rush their kids but now there’s a chance to play Bouchard AND Lowe’s son and all they have to do is neglect their jobs as managers for another few more months.

I imagine Klefbom-Larsson and Nurse-Benning will be two pairs while Russell will play on a third pair with somebody else. I hope that somebody else isn’t Evan Bouchard because that’s a horrendous way to bring a rookie into the NHL, but the Oilers badly need to find another legitimate NHL defender to bring on for the third pair. They’re one more injury away from Russell being their second LD and, like, Kevin Gravel playing 18 minutes a night. This D group was pretty ugly even before Sekera got injured.

Oscar Klefbom and Darnell Nurse are the two left-side defenceman in the top four. Maybe Kris Russell slides down to the left side of the third pairing and plays with Evan Bouchard or someone else while Matt Benning moves up to play with Nurse. I’d add another veteran guy, even though you’re getting the scraps of free agency now. Tobias Enstrom is interesting. Alexei Emelin might be a capable guy in fewer minutes. Peter Chiarelli’s acquired Dennis Seidenberg once before. I don’t think this group is good enough at it stands.

I’m awfully scared that Chia will make some sort of trade. I’d be down to trade for Torey Krug, but I don’t really trust Chia to make that trade without giving up one of our prized possessions. I think the best/easiest move for Pete is to sign one of the UFA’s right now. Brandon Davidson? Cody Franson?

At this point, it looks like they’re going to roll the dice again like they did last year. Not having a replacement for Sekera when he missed the start of the season was a major problem for the team last year, and it looks like, at this point, that this is the strategy they’ll be running with again this year. Fingers crossed, I guess?

Yes, it does make it more likely based on numbers alone if Chiarelli doesn’t bring in anybody. I see no connection between Schultz and Bouchard. Expectations for Schultz were unreasonably elevated because he came in with a high price tag because of free agency.

It opens the door wide for the club to play Evan Bouchard more than nine games, which would be silly unless he is conveniently more ready than any D drafted in his spot in a very long time. Oh, and Bouchard would be learning NHL defense from his partner, who would probably be Russell. So it’s basically worst case scenario for the kid in my head. The kid is most likely not ready (I’m open to possibilities but let’s be real) and Edmonton has a fragile blueline right now. If he’s up in the NHL he might be the best passing and shooting RHD they have and that’s going to mean opportunities whether he’s up to the task or not. So yeah, now I have Jultz-a-phobia too. Thanks for that.

It makes zero sense to rush a player out of necessity but most of what the Oilers do doesn’t make any sense. Like I said above, putting Bouchard on the ice with Russell would be a pretty difficult way to get him acclimatized to the NHL game.

Yes. This is the Edmonton Oilers. They played Leon Draisaitl when he wasn’t ready. Then did it again with Jesse Puljujarvi. They resisted with Kailer Yamamoto but played him nine games. Bouchard plays a position the Oilers are desperate for. It wouldn’t be surprising at all if he made the team.

I too am nervous about that. Honestly, we can speculate all we want right now but we won’t know for sure until Bouchard gets a couple NHL games under his belt. What if he scores 15 points in his first eight games? Are you really going to want to send him back to junior just to follow tradition? If he absolutely flops in training camp then I will hope he won’t be rushed through.

Schultz and Bouchard are different in their situations but I understand what you’re getting at. Schultz was brought in and given way too much responsibility too early on and it completely sunk his ship here, and the Oilers would be wise not to let the same thing happen to Bouchard. I’d like to see them bring in another veteran as a stopgap, but who knows if that’ll happen. I heard from a source I trust that Brandon Davidson turned down a PTO offer from the Oilers so that one is off the table.

Gulutzan has already said we’ll see the Oilers speed up the pace of play and I imagine that’ll include a more aggressive forecheck. You cannot totally revamp a roster to add faster players, but you can play quicker.

No idea. Plenty of room for change on the PP and the PK. All the change possible would be welcome. 5v5 I would like to see a strategy of some kind for the three lines that don’t feature McDavid.

I’m guessing really abstract stuff like scoring more goals than the other team.

Spending less time in their zone, playing faster with the puck, moving it up ice well. Basically everything new coaches say when they come to a new team. It’ll be good to have some new voices.

I think he’s referring to speed of play up and down the ice. The Oilers have quite a few fast players but don’t really utilize their speed. McLellan and his staff have to convert the team to a quick moving, quick breakout team to match the rest of the NHL.

I assume he means better support which would allow for quicker transitions through the neutral zone. I don’t know how many times I complained about the Oilers firing cross-ice passes to nobody last year but it seemed like an infinite amount. More support and shorter passes will help them speed things up.

I’m not sure there are plenty of exceptions in the bottom six, not if you’re talking 20 goals. Strome is the best bet right now. I think Jujhar Khaira could be a 30-40 point guy in time.

I can see Strome between 30-40 points and 20 goals in a good year. Kassian is much more talented than his production ever shows so maybe if everything broke the right way for him. And it’s possible that Khaira can break 30 points one day if he keeps figuring out how to play in the NHL. He’s really proven me wrong plenty already so I won’t bet against him.

Teams that don’t think their bottom-six forwards should score goals are teams who are getting left behind in the modern game. It’s dinosaur thinking. That said, the Oilers could trot out a third line of Lucic-Strome-Puljujarvi that could generate some offence if used properly.

That’s a tall order for a bottom-six player. I’m not sure many can score 20 goals in those minutes but I could see a 15 goals and 30-ish points from Milan Lucic, Pontus Aberg, and Ryan Strome.

I’m going to ignore Rieder and Brodziak on this one cause I don’t know too much about them and how they play. With the bottom six Oilers squad that we had last year, I think Ryan Strome has the most potential to put up 20 goals or 40 points. Hopefully, he clicks a little more with the team this year and settles into his groove.

I could see Jujhar getting 20 goals one day, but I’m not about to put that kind of pressure or expectations on him now. I’d be pumped to see him keep developing and taking another step forward after last year’s encouraging campaign. Kassian could maybe get close but he’d have to get more ice time than he does now.

Consistency matters, but there’s more to it than that if you’re talking greatest of all time in any sport — talent level, willingness to work, being surrounded by good teammates and playing on contending teams. Then, there’s staying healthy, which might be the most important aspect. In hockey, one of the best examples of that for me was Mario Lemieux. While Mario was considered one of the most talented players ever, it’s difficult to put him in the GOAT time conversation alongside Wayne Gretzky because of the disparity in their career points. Between non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and back issues, Mario was limited to 915 games and had 1,723 points, while Gretzky played 1,487 and had 2,857. Mario’s PPG was 1.88. Gretzky was 1.92.

Jeez. I bet there are a ton of players/athletes in every sport that we never heard of because they lacked that one thing. Oiler names that pop up for me are like Linus Omark, Robert Nilsson, and Benoit Pouliot. All three could play great in a flash then disappear for longer than they should have.

Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite. If he has been put in the fourth quarter the team would have won state and he would have gone pro. I bet he could throw a ball over them mountains.

Daigle.

Isn’t this question like saying if Georges Laraque could consistently score a hat trick every game like he did that one time, he could be one of the greatest athletes?

I’m going to pick Ales Hemsky because I always thought he was going to break out. Every summer, I’d convince myself that Hemmer was going to bust out for a big year but it just never materialized that way. He had a lot of injuries in his time here, and it still bums me out.

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