The Monday Mailbag – “The closest Canadian team to a Stanley Cup”

Welcome, welcome to another edition of your favourite call-in blog segment. This week we take a look at which Canadian team is closest to winning a Stanley Cup, whether or not Brossoit should be the backup next season, and which movie tells the Oilers story. If you have a question for next week you can email them to me, or hit me up on Twitter. I need questions. Do it. Until then, it’s time to learn something. Enjoy. 

The Ottawa Senators. They have wasted a season piddling about trying to find six defensemen, obscuring their obvious and substantial gifts. Unforgivable, but if they can fix the D in the summer, Erik Karlsson could lead them deep in 2017. 

Despite the absolute tire fire they’ve taken the form of since December, the Canadiens are probably closest to being a cup contender than everyone else. They have arguably the best goalie in the world, one of the top five defensemen in the world, and a solid mix of good, young players and solid veterans. I’m sure someone smarter than me could pinpoint where the Habs have gone wrong this season, but on paper they should be closer to the team we saw at the beginning of the year, not the one currently falling down a bottomless pit.

Montreal.  They’ve gone from having the best goaltending in the league most seasons to a 0.900 save percentage starter, and once Carey Price gets back that’s going to change. I also wonder to what degree the team would improve under a different coach; even if we limit the options to obvious names like Guiy Boucher there would seem to be room for improvement. This was a pretty good team not all that long ago.

This season? None of them are close. You’re asking to pick the best of a bad bunch of teams and none of them brings to mind the word Stanley Cup “contender.”

I want to preface it by saying none are close today. I would say the Habs if Price was healthy are clearly the best team, but if you look at the history of generational players in the past 45 years: Orr, Gretzky, Lemieux, Lindros and Crosby they all made a Cup Final appearance and all of them won at least one Cup, except Lindros. So I’d say Oilers are second.

Throw a dart at a board! This isn’t an easy call to make. Two teams jump to the top of my mind: the Habs and Flames. With Carey Price anything is possible on any given night, and I really like the Flames’ top end defenseman. But at this point any of the groups could be the answer.

Closest to being a Cup contender? Yeesh. The Canadiens are terrible but they have a top tier defenseman and goalie. Carey Price alone is apparently the difference between an Oiler-like team and a playoff contender. If they find a quality centre then they have the pieces needed, I guess.

Edmonton. McDavid. Good things will follow. 

I think Peter Chiarelli will cast about looking for options. If a legit NHL goalie is available via free agency of a fair trade price, he may add that player. In my opinion the idea is to build the best 23-man roster possible. If Brossoit beats out the other goalies for the backup job, we will know he is ready. Handing it to him would be a mistake.

I honestly think that Brossoit will legitimately challenge Talbot for the Oilers’ crease next year. And in my perfect scenario they run them as a 1A/1B platoon. HOWEVER, since my instincts are usually terrible and I’m always wrong what’s more likely to happen is the Oilers do go out and sign another replacement level goalie to back up Talbot (Chad Johnson on a cheap contract anyone?) and let Brossoit continue to progress in the AHL until they literally have no choice but to call him up because he’s outgrown that level. Yes, that means they fire Nilsson off into the sun AKA the KHL, which I don’t think anyone will be sad about, unless you consider the fact he brings up the handsomeness of the Oilers by quite a bit.

I don’t have the answer to what the Oilers will do; either course of action is plausible, particularly if they can find a competent backup on a cheap contract. Anton Khudobin, who played very well for Chiarelli in Boston, would seem like an obvious candidate for that kind of job. Generally I think minutes are good for development but Brossoit will be 23 next season and certainly looks NHL-ready.

Can’t say right now. As for development, it depends on the age of the goaltending prospect and where he’s at in his development. I’d lean toward having Broissoit spent another season in the AHL.

I’d sign a veteran backup and have Brossoit start most games in the AHL. If he is lighting it up at Christmas I could recall him and send the veteran down to the AHL. I’d rather Brossoit play a lot, than play one out of every four games in the NHL.

I think having Brossoit back up next year makes sense. He is ready for that next step. There is a difference in quickness between the AHL and NHL and it will take time to adjust.

I would make him play in the AHL as the starter until he’s no longer waiver exempt and then he’s the backup. Might as well give him every chance to hone his craft before bringing him up.

I think that Laurent Brossoit is probably ready to be the backup in Edmonton, but with Cam Talbot recently re-signed then maybe it makes more sense for him to keep playing huge minutes in the AHL. If he’s there for a full season, next season, then I would be surprised.

Their goaltending is better and I like their 5×5 offense, but the improvement overall is very small. Now, I cannot tell you how much of that is due to injury, and how much is due to other things like lack of balance in roster and players not playing to their max abilities. 

You say the results are the same, but are they? As of right now (58 games into the season) the Oilers are only two wins away from tying their total for all of last season. And if the Oilers could find the gumption to lose half these one goal games in OT or the shootout, rather than in regulation, then they’d be in the same ballpark as the Canucks who are hoarding pity points like some kind of doomsday prepper.

I’ll concede that yes, it’s still been another fairly frustrating season thanks to a combination of losses, injuries, a non-existent power play for most of the season, among a host of other things. And I know everyone around here hates hearing about moral victories, but the fact is the Oilers have been more competitive this year than they have in the last like three seasons combined. Yes they’re losing, but they’re losing by one rather than four. They’re hanging around in games. They’re mounting comebacks — they’re still generally losing them anyway, but they’re at least forcing other teams’ hands rather than just folding up shop the second Ben Scrivens lets in the first two shots on goal like last year. It’s been a LONG, arduous process, but to me I can see the progress. The results will come along here shortly, guaranteed.

I think so. If nothing else, they’ve identified a starting goaltender and added McDavid and that’s quite a bit. I’d also argue with you about the results being the same. Standings position and wins/losses are the same, but goal differential has improved and that’s a very positive sign.

The results don’t remain the same. They’re ahead of their pace of last season and they’ve done it with significant long-term injuries to key players.

They are better, but that isn’t saying much considering how bad they were before. Injuries have prevented them from being playoff competitive, and for me until they are in an actual playoff hunt in March this team really hasn’t improved. I do see signs where they are better, but their place in the standings hasn’t changed, so it is hard to say they’ve improved much.

Yes. I think they are improving. There was a ways to go. The details and consistency are missing. An example would be taking care of the front of your net. Todd has spoken about this often.

Yes. They are definitely better. People hate it when this gets mentioned because this team has been rotten for a decade, but the fortunes are different if McDavid, RNH, and Klefbom don’t all three suffer major injury. The Oilers might not yet be worthy of making the playoffs, but a healthy roster isn’t nearly as far out as they are today.

The results in the standings are similar, I agree, but this is a different Oilers team than the one we’ve been watching for the last few years. The Oilers are in far more games, late into the game, than they have been in years. I’m not saying that they’re piling up wins, but the Oilers are definitely a better hockey club. 

4) Alex D. asks – Does Benoit Pouliot really take as many bad penalties as people are suggesting? It seems to me that he’s not the only forward that ends up in the box a little bit too often. 

Great question. Benoit Pouliot (for me) takes a few more O-zone penalties, because he is also very aggressive on the forecheck and backcheck. I have no quarrel with Pouliot as a player, like him a lot.

NOPE! He’s taken 14 minor penalties, which is only two more than he’s drawn, and is two less than Taylor Hall. And speaking of Taylor Hall he’s taken FIVE penalties while the Oilers have been on the power play, while Pouliot has taken zero. Pouliot does seem to have a knack for taking bad, offensive zone penalties at the worst possible time which does not help the appearance of him being a horrible penalty taker. But at this point he’s basically just become the newest target of Oiler fans ire due to losing, rather than him ACTUALLY being a huge detriment to the team (which he’s not).

He does take bad penalties, and a lot of times they’re such blatant mistakes that they really stand out in memory. That said, as of this writing he has 58 penalty minutes over two seasons with the Oilers and it’s not like his penalty differential is much worse than some other Edmonton forwards over that same span, so it probably does get more attention than it deserves relative to his considerable merits.

Ending up in the box for playing aggressively is one thing. Being there for selfish penalties — knocking the stick out of Ryan Kesler’s hands or sticking a guy in the groin 200 feet from your own net because you’re pissed off — is quite another. Pouliot takes too many of those.

He doesn’t take a lot of penalties, but the ones he takes are often noticeable for the wrong reasons. I expect him to take a few offensive zone penalties every year because he is aggressive on the forecheck, but his penalties versus the Ducks were not a result of that. They were bad penalties, and the coach addressed it. I have no issue with a coach trying to instill a level of discipline. This team needs it in many areas of their game.

I always got frustrated with offensive zone penalties like hooking or holding. They are just plain dumb to take. Move your feet to catch up or just let him go. He isn’t the only one but for some reason his stand out. I am not in the camp of Oilers fans who think the team would be better off with out him.

He takes penalties in the offensive zone and that makes people crazy. He’s taken fewer penalties than Hall this year though, and he draws his fair share as well. He is a very aggressive forechecker. We don’t remember all the times that’s resulted in the play staying in the offensive zone but we sure remember when he crosses the line. He takes more penalties than others but his playing style will do that.

He doesn’t necessarily take more penalties than his teammates but I do think that his penalties are more obvious. It seems like everyone call he gets against him is in the offensive zone, and I think that’s what people remember. Let’s not forget that he’s having a pretty solid season.

I Know What You DIDN’T do last summer.

Triage.

Cool Hand Luke. It’s not that it’s a bad movie, or that it doesn’t have some really cool stuff going on. It’s just that a lot of characters suffer, Paul Newman breaks his collarbone misses the playoffs dies  and in the end not much changes.

50 Shades of Grey.

The life of times of Helen Hunt

Team Of The Living Dead. The Hurt Locker Room. Groundhog Day. Pete and Todd’s Bogus Adventure. The Collarbone Collector.

Gregor stole my answer so to come up with something different I’ll go with Kill Me Now.