With the first round of the NHL Draft coming up tomorrow night, Peter Chiarelli spoke to the media this morning to give a little bit of insight as to what he’s got planned for the weekend, the Milan Lucic trade rumours, buying out Eric Gryba and much more. Let’s break it down.

To get things started, Chiarelli was asked about this morning’s decision to buy out Eric Gryba when it would have probably made more sense just to bury his contract in the AHL.

With the way Chiarelli answered the question, it kinda seems like this buyout was doing Gryba a solid. Chiarelli specifically mentioned that buying Gryba out gives him a chance to look for work elsewhere, so that makes me think that this was nothing more than being good to a guy that wasn’t in the plans. It’s an admirable thing to do even if it doesn’t make any sense from an asset or cap management perspective.

Obviously, with the first round of the Draft kicking off tomorrow, the bulk of the questions asked were in regards to the Oilers’ plan for the 10th overall pick. When asked about his overall philosophy, Chiarelli said what you’d want to hear from your GM at this time of the year.

I like that, Pete. That’s the right answer. Regardless of position, you always take the best player available. Period. Full stop. I’d rather not revisit the years where the scouts thought Mitch Moroz at 32nd overall was a good idea, ya know? You get it.

The idea of moving the pick for immediate help has been talked about since the season ended, but it doesn’t really make sense to me because the Oilers are in dire need for skilled prospects in the system. Drafting 10th overall would likely give them another player to help remedy that issue. Not only that, Chiarelli has a solid drafting record so why wouldn’t they just go up to the podium and grab the best possible prospect they can? Make the pick, Pete. You know you want to. Besides, the last time you traded on of our first round picks it didn’t exactly go over so well, ya know?

But what about the whole right-handed vs left-handed balance thing? Do you care? Does it have to be a right shot defenceman if the guy can put up points?

Ah, okay. So you’re not going to turn down a guy necessarily because of what hand he shoots. I get that. That would be like Paul Dorion refusing to make trades within his own division, ya know? If you approach things that way then you’re basically eliminating a good chunk of the available talent pool, limiting your chances of actually winning a trade. I’m curious, though, does that mean that you’re mostly looking at taking a defenceman tomorrow regardless of who’s still available?

Ah, okay. So it’s not like you’ll turn down Oliver Wahlstrom if he’s still there. I get it. What else?

Now, that’s interesting. Considering the third cluster of players is supposed to be so evenly matched, I wonder if we could see the Oilers trade down in the Draft order to add more bullets to their gun? Personally, I like the way Keith Gretzky has drafted so it wouldn’t be the worst idea to give him more swings at the plate if the players that are left are mostly considered equal. I guess we’ll see.

We’ve talked a lot about Peter Chiarelli going out and finding an offensive d-man that can put up points and run a power play, but as we saw with the Hall for Larsson trade, it’s not that easy to execute without the risk of getting burned. Chiarelli basically admitted as much when asked about going out to find that offensive guy that we all covet so much.

Just wipe the idea of another one-for-one out of your brain, alright? We cool? Cool.

Obviously, the Milan Lucic trade rumours have been a huge part of the summer so far and it was obvious that Chiarelli was going to be asked about it. Last week, we had basically turned the site into Lucic Nation so I was curious to see how the GM was going to handle any questions about him at his press availability today. Hilariously, Jim Matheson just came out and bluntly asked, “Did Milan Lucic ask for a trade?”

Man, Pete, for a guy that went to Harvard you should have had a better answer in your pocket for this question than running with ‘no comment.’ I’m just saying that ‘no comment’ is, in fact, a comment and it’s pretty obvious what it means given the topic. Wouldn’t it have been easier to say that Lucic hadn’t asked for a trade? That probably would have killed everything dead in their tracks but instead, you basically admitted that it happened and that Sergeant Swagger wants out. That said, thanks for confirming what I’ve been saying for weeks, though. I appreciate it.

Honestly, this one felt like he was trying to put the genie back in the bottle by suggesting they expect him back and feeling better. We all know that he wants out, Pete. You can just be honest.

Considering the Oilers won’t have much cap space left when guys like Nurse and Strome get signed, I was curious to know what Chiarelli’s thoughts were on free agency. Will the Oilers still be active? Dabble? What say you, Peter?

Free agency hasn’t exactly been kind to the Oilers over the years so maybe the lack of cap space will actually be a positive thing for once. Personally, I think Chiarelli does better with his small deals than he does with the big ones and having so little cap space to work with will probably keep him in his ‘small deal’ wheelhouse. A guy like Vanek probably wouldn’t cost them much and that’s the kind of guy I’m expecting them to sign.

I have to admit that I was pretty surprised by how upset some folks were with the Matt Benning contract. I think Benning is a solid player that was asked to do too much last year, and it wasn’t exactly surprising that a young guy would struggle with being thrown into the deep end before he was ready. When asked about Benning, Chiarelli expected, as I do, that he will have a bounce back year for the Oilers.

No arguments from me. I think Benning is a solid option when properly slotted and it will be up to the Oilers to make sure that happens. The tricky part, of course, will be making sure that he’s not fighting above his weight class again. Confidence is a real thing and the Oilers didn’t do the guy any favours by giving him top-4 minutes before it was ready.

With the Oilers taking care of some housekeeping leading up to the Draft (Caggiula, and Benning), it seems like only a matter of time before Darryl gets his name on a dotted line. When will that be? Chiarelli wasn’t handing out clues about how things are going, but did say that it’s on the to-do list.

Atta negotiate, Darryl!

With Taylor Hall winning the Hart Trophy last night, I was wondering if anyone was going to ask about it and that’s when my boy Reid Wilkins stepped up with a heater. To paraphrase, he said “Oilers draft picks had a good night at the awards last night. What did you think of Connor winning the Ted Lindsay and Taylor Hall winning the Hart.” Oh man, that’s comedy. Anyway, Chiarelli gave the diplomatic answer that you’d expect him to give.

Sometimes it’s the price you have to pay. Honestly, I feel bad for Adam Larsson in all of this. He was getting trashed directly or indirectly on Twitter last night but this really has nothing to do with him. It’s not his fault that Chiarelli would pay $6000 for a slice of pizza but he gets lumped into this whole thing because he was the sole return in that trade. It’s not fair to Larsson, and I think people should leave his name out of the whole conversation.

At the end of the day, what we got was another classic Chiarelli presser where he said a lot of words about not much at all. What we learned is that he’s willing to move up or down at the Draft provided the right deal comes along, but that he’d also be happy to stay put. We also learned that acquiring defence is hard and that he’s not married to the idea that the offensive d-man has to be right-handed. Aside from that, there really wasn’t anything new to report, but that’s exactly what I expected.

I’ve transcribed and live-tweeted enough of Peter Chiarelli’s pressers by now to know that he’s not going to be overly forthcoming with his answers, and that’s fine for the most part. Frankly, I’d rather see him execute winning trades and draft properly than spill his plans to the media like MacT used to do. That said, there’s no doubt that Chiarelli is on the hot seat and this coming weekend will be huge for his future with this franchise. If he doesn’t start landing a few wins on his own personal scoreboard then he’ll certainly be hunting for a new gig, but scoring a ‘W’ at the Draft would definitely be a step in the right direction. I, for one, am very interested to see how things go this weekend. We wait.

What do you guys think?

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