Monday Mailbag – What would it take to get Parayko?

Welcome, Nation, to another edition of the award-winning Monday Mailbag! Here we are on the last Monday before the Christmas break and the Oilers are right in the mix for a playoff spot, and that’s a beautiful thing. Once again, the mailbag is here to help you kill off a few minutes of company time with 3000 words of pure wisdom. How’s that for an early gift? As always, this feature depends on you so please send me your questions by email or Twitter for next week and I’ll try to sneak you in. Until then, I hope you all have a wonderful week and please enjoy the free learning opportunity.

Garrison and Wideman aren’t capable of reliably playing the kind of minutes the Oilers are going to need with Klefbom and Russell out. Jones has been the best D-man in Bakersfield. It’s pretty straightforward.

Because he is a better skater than both and better defensively than Wideman.

Jones has been having a fantastic year down in Bakersfield and I think the team just saw this as a good chance for him to get his first real taste of NHL action. Wideman and Garrison haven’t been very good when they’ve been in the lineup and I get the sense that the organization isn’t exactly itching to get them in the lineup. Jones at least has some upside.

I think this is a good development opportunity for Caleb Jones. He’s been playing lights out in Bakersfield all season and deserves a call-up. Having Jones play sheltered minutes alongside some veteran defencemen is a great way to dip his toes into the NHL level.

It’s definitely an interesting question, but I think a big part of it is to reward Jones for his fine play in Bakersfield than it is to punish the other two, though they’re not exactly game breakers either. Garrison isn’t in the long term plans and I doubt Wideman is either, so it’s not the worst thing in the world to have those guys sit.

Consider the source. That is what armchair GMs do.

One report doesn’t make it a rumour in my eyes. It was a Boston writer. They aren’t trading him any time soon. Don’t fret about it.

I don’t like using the term “untouchable” because everyone but Connor McDavid has a price tag, but Ryan Nugent-Hopkins should be included with McDavid, Draisaitl, and Klefbom when talking about the core of this team. He’s been eating tough minutes and going toe to toe with some of the best centres in the NHL since he was 18 years old and it’s turned him into a fantastic two-way player. I love what I’ve been seeing from him this season and the Oilers would be insane to even consider trading him at this point. These rumours are usually just started by reporters from other cities who look at the Oilers and think “oh they have McDavid and Draisaitl. They could move a centre”.

RNH is a great two-way forward and anybody would absolutely and should absolutely love to have him on their team. Lately, all of the Nuge trade rumours have been stemming from outside organizations and it always flips Oilers Twitter upside down. Those trade rumour articles have no backing to them and it’s all speculation from a city looking to acquire a good centre.

I understand why other teams would think they can get him — look at the GM. Frankly, I don’t know how anyone on our side of the equation could think it’s a good idea, especially as we’re watching develop into a hell of a two-way centre.

It’s due diligence for every GM to call Doug Armstrong and get the exact scope of who and who isn’t available. The Oilers couldn’t get in on Parayko unless they sent salary back or if the Blues retained some. Really good player, but tough fit under the cap for Edmonton. You’d likely be creating a hole up front to fill one on the back.

If the Blues are foolish enough to trade him then yes Oilers should be in the mix. The problem is I don’t see a trade that makes sense. Oilers would need to shed similar salary to take on Parayko’s $5m salary and unless  Chiarelli can fool Armstrong into taking Sekera and a young player and pick I don’t see it happening.

If Colton Parayko is available, the Oilers will absolutely have to make a call and find out what the price is but I don’t think they have the assets to pull it off. A team like Toronto would likely be very interested in Parayko and they have a deep pool of young players they can offer up in a deal. The Oilers don’t really have that level of organizational depth and that could make a deal for Parayko difficult to pull off. Apart from him, I’m not sure if there is anyone on the Blues who would be a fit for the Oilers. Would Vlad Tarasenko look good here? For sure. A deal like that would probably need to involve Leon Draisaitl and I wouldn’t do that.

I’m in the same boat. I would love to take a shot at Parayko, however, I have absolutely no faith in Peter Chiarelli to make that move. Thinking about trades nowadays is so stressful for me because of our GM. Out of all the guys on the Blues, Parayko would be the guy we need.

Colton Parayko rumours! I’ve kinda missed ’em, you know? Personally, and feel free to call me an idiot if you want, but I think anyone outside of McDavid-Draisaitl-Nuge-Nurse-Bouchard should be made available to get a guy like this. Back around the NHL Draft, Dusty had a rumour that the Blues were looking for Puljujarvi and the 10th for Parayko but with Bouchard still on the board it didn’t happen.

Must have known something on Koskinen to offer him that much dough, so pretty astute. Chiasson was a PTO who has paid off beyond any reasonable expectations, so a lot of luck with him.

Good to be lucky, lucky to be good. They scouted Koskinen and felt he was worth paying more than the $2m they originally wanted. Chiasson picked Edm because he saw an opportunity. Luck is some of it for sure but also having no proven RW depth helped. Most good teams find a diamond in the rough or unexpected production.

Whoever was the pro scout who saw Mikko Koskinen deserves credit and Chiarelli deserves just as much for paying whatever price to get his guy. I liked the Chiasson PTO as well. I’m a big fan of the #PTOEveryone movement. It’s just such a low-risk move and this year, we’re seeing what can happen when everything goes perfectly. Chiarelli has always done well with these small, lower-risk moves and he deserves credit for stepping up again.

I shit on Peter Chiarelli enough, so I want to give credit where credit is due instead of calling every other move of his “complete luck.” The Chiasson PTO and Koskinen signing have been incredible for us, and he’s the man who pulled the trigger on it. Like we’ve said before, Chia has made some great moves when it comes to bottom six players with cheap contracts. It’s just the high-profile trades he sucks at.

Chiarelli should get credit for both guys, though I don’t think anyone would have expected the dominant performances from either guy. Chiasson broke his career high for goals in his 27th game of the season and I doubt that kind of scoring was on anyone’s mind. As for Koskinen, I’m happy to be wrong about his signing, though I still don’t know that giving NMCs to unproven UFAs should be a common practice. That said, he should get props for both guys. If we’re going to take shots at his horrible moves then we need to give props for the ones that worked too.

Earliest memory is of Vancouver-based businessman Nelson Skalbania getting and then selling Gretzky and the Oilers coming into the league and slapping the Canucks around for fun. They were so good so fast it was stunning.

No one specific reason. I liked sports as a kid and my parents liked sports and let me and my brother watch the odd game on TV. That got me into sports.

Ah, time for me to sound way younger than pretty much everyone else here. I remember watching games with my dad when I was really young. I was lucky because he took me a lot of games as well and he’s pretty passionate about the team. That definitely rubbed off on me. My first big memory was the ’06 Cup Run. I was lucky enough to go to game six of the Finals with my dad too and I’ll never forget being in the building for that.

My earliest Oilers memories were watching all of the Stars vs Oilers playoff rounds in the late 90’s. I can’t remember exactly which year it was (cause there were so many of them against the Stars), but I remember seeing my family so passionate and angry with Dallas that I remember cluing in how important these games must have been. I would have been around 6-7 years old I believe.

My dad used to work for the City of Edmonton when I was a kid and every now and then he’d get tickets to the game through work. Back in the early 90s, you were able to hang out right outside of the Oilers dressing room and wait for autographs and I remember my old man taking me down there any time we were lucky enough to see a game. I even got signatures from guys like Bill Ranford, which was incredible for me. I still have that autographed picture today.

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