It’s a rainy Saturday morning in Edmonton and it’ll be a while before we’re able to watch our beloved Edmonton Oilers play hockey again, which has given me plenty of time to think about what’s to come for the franchise and the league in general.

Over the past couple of weeks, there’s been a lot of trade talk showing up on the site with all of our writers offering up a variety of ideas about what Ken Holland can do to change things up before the start of next season. Unfortunately, anyone that has been an Oilers fan for any length of time has seen these types of conversations countless times before, and until this team actually improves, I doubt that they’re going to go away any time soon. This year, however, I wonder if we might actually see a sizeable move to go along with the speculation? Not only has Ken Holland been at the helm for over a year now, which is plenty of time to evaluate the group, but he’ll also be looking for upgrades and changes with a flat cap, making the trade route feel like a much more likely path to follow. Normally in the offseason, we get all kinds of rumours and speculation about which “core” piece the Oilers should be traded to fill hole A, B, or C but I honestly wonder if this is another time when we see it happen? Could this be another Taylor Hall for ____ type of summer? And no, I don’t mean a one-for-one lopsided trade loss type of scenario but rather the idea of having a major piece of the puzzle on the way out.

Right now, the Oilers have a bunch of left-handed defenceman on the depth chart and its a position of strength that I could see Ken Holland borrowing from to even out other areas. That said, how deep down the list would Holland be willing to go? Would he actually consider trading Oscar Klefbom, the team’s leading scorer from the back end? What about Darnell Nurse? You’d have to think that the return for either of those guys would be sizeable so maybe Holland would consider pulling the trigger as a means of upgrading the forward depth and ability for the team to create offence? Could you see it? I could see it. Then again, I’ve been wrong many times before. At the very least, I personally think that we’ve seen the last of Kris Russell in an Oilers uniform and I say that not because I dislike the player so much as I think his cap hit is a real problem right now. If you were to predict a move, what would it be?

For a lot of Oilers fans, one of the bigger items on Ken Holland’s to-do list is the need to put together a competent goaltending duo to backstop the Oilers next season. With Mikko Koskinen already locked in for two more years at a $4.5 million AAV, I started wondering how much money could/should be available to find someone else to mind the crease along with him, especially when you consider that the available dollars will be limited. Do you pay whatever it takes to get the best guy? Is there a trade to be made? On yesterday’s Real Life Podcast, we were talking about what the Oilers might do to upgrade the goaltending situation when an argument broke out about how much is too much to spend between the pipes. Investing $10 million between two goalies is too much, right? Would $8 million? Looking at PuckPedia.com, only three teams (New York Rangers, Montreal Canadiens, and Florida Panthers) spent more than $10 million on their goaltending while the league average falls somewhere around $6.74 million per team.

With names like Robin Lehner ($5 million in 2019-20) and Thomas Greiss ($3.75 million) being tossed around as potential targets for the Edmonton Oilers, you have to wonder how much money Ken Holland is willing to spend on his netminders or how he’s going to find the room to make it happen. Personally, I don’t necessarily think that having $10 million tied up in two goalies would be the best way to spend what limited funds the team will have considering the holes that remain throughout the roster, but I don’t know how he’ll upgrade the position without going there either. Unless Holland can find a way to dump off a high priced body or two — would anyone want Kris Russell and Alex Chiasson for example — I don’t see how he can sign anything more than a stopgap guy under the current circumstances and that’s a problem. As I’m watching the playoffs, it’s abundantly clear that mediocre goaltending won’t fly in the postseason and if the Oilers are ever going to make some waves of their own then they’re going to need to get an upgrade.

According to PuckPedia.com, the 31 NHL teams spent a total of $208,963,289 on goaltending in 2019-20.

Before the exhibition games/playoffs kicked off in late July, I was really curious to see how fanless games would translate to TV and what the presentation would look like with all of the NHL’s planned bells and whistles. Outside of being wrapped up in the weirdness of the situation for a few minutes of the first televised game, I actually haven’t minded not having the crowd there. To be honest, the only thing that really bothers me about fanless games in the playoffs is that I couldn’t be there and that the Oilers are already out, and not so much that the experience of watching the games has been all that different. Obviously, it goes without saying that I’d rather have a crowd in the arenas, providing an atmosphere and real-time reactions to whatever is happening on the ice, but I have to admit how happy it’s made me to have the chance to sit and watch hockey over the past three+ weeks. Frankly, I really didn’t realize how much I would truly miss sports until they were taken away for four and a half months, and I’m grateful for the way the NHL and players have been able to pull this off. Sometimes you just have to give credit when credit is due.

I don’t want to be the guy that adds unnecessary doom and gloom to your morning reading routine, but I would feel a lot better if the NHL started giving us a few details about how the next season is going to work. We know that the bubble concept has worked out wonderfully for the playoffs as both the league and players have each done their part to make sure the tournament plays on, but what’s going to happen when the postseason is over? Just because the 2020-21 season is set to start at some point in December doesn’t mean it’s actually going to happen unless they have an equally sound plan in place for what that’s going to look like. I mean, you can’t bubble everyone for six months to get a season done so what’s the play here? Are they going to let teams travel around and play to empty arenas like the MLB is doing? Are they going to come up with some kind of bubble scenario like Jason Gregor mentioned in this past week’s mailbag, where guys will settle into a hub for a few weeks and then get a few weeks out, completing the season in a series of shifts kinda like the folks that work up in Fort Mac? Now, I don’t think the NHL will or should offer up too many details on next season while the playoffs are still happening, but just knowing that they have a plan or are working on a plan would make me feel a lot better.

I honestly can’t believe we’re still talking about this right now, more than a year has passed since he returned to Finland to change lanes on his career, but here I am with another Jesse Puljujarvi update about having him come back to play for the Oilers. Over at Sportsnet, Mark Spector wrote an item about the neverending Pulju-saga and speculated that we could legitimately see the former fourth overall pick back in Edmonton for training camp in the fall.

Now, I’m not going to spend too much time on this as Zach Laing and Cam Lewis have covered everything, but in my opinion, I still believe that the Edmonton Oilers can offer this guy about as good of a chance to rekindle an NHL career as anywhere else in the league. From the reverse angle, I also think Puljujavi could offer this team some scoring depth that they desperately need providing that he can bring some of that Finnish confidence back over to the NHL. If he comes in here and plays well, there’s a reasonable chance that Puljujarvi would get some time playing alongside Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl and I can’t see how that could be a bad way to try and get his NHL dream going again. But will it happen? As Jesse has said multiple times over the past few months, “never say never.”

Either way, I’m just happy that it finally seems that we’re nearing a conclusion on this neverending story because this feels like it’s been going on forever.