Saturday Sunshine: Strome is where the heart is

The sunshine of positivity may have been too bright this week in Edmonton as we saw the mercury rise to the 40C mark just yesterday. Grab your sunscreen and hit play on that sultry summer song from Burt Bacharach and let us bask in the sunshine that is Ryan Strome.

Now there will be people who are upset with the way we obtained Ryan, and that’s fine. Leave that to another article as it’s easy to get negative for a player for things that are completely out of their control. For Strome, he is the player he has been through his entire career and for a third liner on this team, that’s great.

He is also consistently inconsistent as ON writer pointed out just yesterday in his very own article speaking of Strome:

Is that a bad thing? From a top-line guy, I would say yes. But when you’re looking at the centre of your bottom-six players having a guy who can pitch in when he is hot, and will be a defensive guy in the lulls, why not? Your bottom-six guy would be someone like say Jussi Jokinen, who I was very bullish on when he came to the team last summer and how did that work out for him?

When you speak of other bottom-six guys and look at Strome, I am pretty happy with what we have and it seems like perhaps the only real issue for the player is other’s unfair expectations of him (once again based off the return for the trade). When good content boy Cooom looked at Strome for his RFA profile (prior to Strome’s signing) he summed up the season well with:

“Strome’s point-per-game in all situations in the past three seasons have been 0.39, 0.43, and 0.41 respectively. In 2014-15, Strome had what appeared to be a breakout season in which he recorded 50 points in 81 games, but given the two follow-up seasons, it’s pretty obvious that was the exception rather than the rule. With that considered, the Oilers got the player in 2017-18 they should have been expecting. If the Oilers expected more from Strome, that’s on them. That’s on their professional scouts who watched him, it’s on Peter Chiarelli for targeting him in a one-for-one deal for Eberle.”

The stats Cooom was referring to:

In Ryan, we now have a player who is “who we thought he is” and if you expect that kind of player, the team should be comfortable going forward with him solidifying the third-line grouping.

Lest we forget, Strome is one who believed in this team right from the outset of his trade:

The prediction didn’t come to fruition, but you have to love a guy who buys in.

Ryan Strome is definitely a positive.