Good morning, Nation! The NHL regular season is in full swing and your friendly Nation writers are back to start off your week by answering your questions and making sense of all things Edmonton Oilers. As always, I need you guys to make this feature work so if you’ve got a question you’d like to ask you can email it to me at baggedmilk@oilersnation.com or DM on Twitter at @jsbmbaggedmilk. Until then, happy deadline day, people.

It is a good question. Kris Russell can play RD, but it isn’t ideal. I’ve liked @Ethan Bear’s game right from day one. @Matt Benning has been solid in both games. I’d say I am a 5.5 right now. Players want more opportunity so it will be up to all the righties to step up. Bear and Persson move the puck better, but there will be times where they miss Larsson’s pure defensive game. I think some might be surprised by how well the others play.

There is more than one way to make up for the loss of a player like Larsson and depth is just one of them. The Oilers can get by with Persson, Bear and Benning on the right side as long as the team pays attention to detail, defends as a group and gets some goaltending. If that happens, the drop-off from Larsson is mitigated. The wrench in the works comes if there’s another injury back there.

I’m about a 4/10. He is their only veteran right-shot option and losing him eliminates their only true shutdown pairing. Now the left-side will have to carry every single pairing because the three best right-side options have combined for less than 250 NHL games (assuming it’s Bear/Persson/Benning). Of course, I could see them shifting Russell over to his off-side and then bringing up someone like Caleb Jones to play on the third pair. That might be the best solution. They’re in trouble, but they have plenty of young defensemen in the system. There’s a chance someone steps up and proves they belong in the NHL.

It’ll be interesting to see how guys like Bear are able to handle the extra minutes. So far so good, right? I mean, there are bound to be mistakes and bumps in the road, but I think that this is also an excellent opportunity for the team to truly see what they have with some of these young guys.

Not at all for me. If they don’t buy him out they don’t have room to sign @Mike Smith. They buyout opened up $3m in cap space. If Sekera wasn’t bought out he’d have started the season as the third pair LD, and Russell would be on the right side. And nothing would have changed. The buyout made sense, and one injury won’t change that. Move forward and they need a young player like Bear or Persson step up and play well.

Second guessing with the benefit of hindsight is easy, but even with that said, I’d say no. How much does a team miss an aging blueliner who played only 60 of 164 games over the last two seasons because of injury? I’d say not very much.

Well, it’s the Sekera buyout combined with the fact that they could have just bought out Sam Gagner if they wanted to save more money. Now, they’re short a veteran d-man and Gagner is in the minors. It’s a really bad look for GM Ken Holland who apart from that move, had a solid summer. Hindsight is always 20/20, but I was against the Sekera buyout from the day it happened. It looks worse now, no doubt.

I certainly think it would be nice to have another experienced defenceman around in case of an injury but I’m not going to lose sleep over it either. At some point, guys like Bear need a chance to show they can play and that’s exactly what’s happening. We’ll see if it was the right call moving forward.

I’d guess at least five to ten games. He won’t panic. The good news is the Oilers aren’t playing any of the elite teams right away, other than Washington.

He’ll assess the group playing now. If he finds that group lacking, he’ll look at the AHL to see if there’s somebody who can help. Holland has already said he’s not going to jerk players up and down between the minors and the NHL. He’ll look outside, if need be. We’re two games into the season. The leash you talk about will depend on a combination or what’s needed here and now and the bigger picture.

I don’t think he’ll go out and make a trade. The LTIR space is nice for the time being, but if they go out and grab a guy like Mark Pysyk it just creates more problems when Larsson is inevitably healthy again. I don’t expect a trade to be made. I think Holland will just wait it out and trust that one of the young options can handle the added responsibility.

If the wheels fall off then I could see Holland doing something, but right now, the team is 2-0 and all is well. Could that change on the upcoming road trip? Absolutely. We’ll have to wait and see how things go, I guess.

No. Koskinen is 31. He isn’t going to be spending a lot of time in practice trying to upgrade his puck handling skills. This isn’t a fun game, it is pro hockey so it would be a bad decision to waste precious practice time trying to hone a skill that he isn’t that good at. Smith is very good, but as we saw against LA, sometimes even he can struggle. I expect zero change in Koskinen’s puck handling ability. I want him to focus on drills that help him stop the puck.

But one goalie to watch is Stuart Skinner. If you watch AHL games online this year, take note of Skinner’s puck handling skills. They are quite good.

I don’t foresee significant change in how Koskinen plays at this stage in his career. Puck-handling, if you’ve never done it, isn’t something you’re going to learn and master in a few weeks or a few months. Even with Smith’s experience handling the puck, he had a tough night against Los Angeles.

We already saw Koskinen take to the ice earlier than his teammates on Thursday to work on his puck handling, but this isn’t a skill you can just become really good at after practising for a few weeks. Smith is a rare breed and one of the best puck movers in the league at his position. I think Koskinen could benefit from it, but I don’t think anyone should be expecting him to get on the same level as Smith. It could lead to more problems than it solves.

The funny part about this question is that it came in before game two against LA when Smith got caught out of the net a couple of times. I wonder how you feel now, Jayson? I think it’s going to be one of the scenarios where sometimes he looks awesome and sometimes he doesn’t, and we’ll just have to live with the results.

I don’t see it being an issue. It was two games, I’m curious why you believe it is still an issue. They don’t have Sheahan and he will be an upgrade on Colby Cave when he returns to the lineup. The Oilers will not be rushing to call players up from Bakersfield.

Did the bottom six look like an issue against Los Angeles? Not to me. I think the status of the bottom six is difficult to properly assess in two games. Dave Tippett also has @Riley Sheahan coming back into the line-up.

Again, Ken Holland is a patient GM. I don’t think he’s sitting in his office after one game and worrying about the bottom six. If things are going bad in November and the bottom part of the lineup isn’t scoring then I expect that we’d see a change but I don’t expect to see Benson or Marody up any earlier than that barring an injury.

I don’t know how long it’ll take for these guys to get a call up to the show, but if they play well enough in Bakersfield, they’ll end up forcing the team’s hand and that’s a good thing.

If you’ve ever been to one of our events, you’ll already know that your ticket to the event will not only guarantee you memories that last a lifetime, a swag bag that will help power to your through life, but it also helps us raise money for a local charity all at the same time. This time around, we wanted to make the event as accessible as possible so that we can pack the Brewhouse and kick off the season with as many Nation citizens as we get in the building. And since the party starts so early on a Saturday, the Brewhouse is able to offer an all-ages event, meaning this is the perfect event to bring your kids to.

Where: The Canadian Brewhouse – Lewis Estates (1320 Webber Greens Dr NW)
When: Saturday, October 12th, with doors opening at 10 AM and the hockey game starting at 11 AM
How much: Tickets are $15 each with net proceeds going directly to the Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation.
The bag: Exclusive Season Opener Party tee, Brewhouse GC, Oodle Noodle GC, stickers, and a ticket to enter all of the draws and raffles
How: Tickets are available here.