Re: Edmonton Moves?
Originally Posted by
Jouko-Pouko
The Oilers should either sign Niemi or trade for Howard who seems to have lost his starting position. They don't need to sacrifice any of their top players for that, an early 2nd round pick should be enough for Howard if the Wings want him out.
Free Agents will now want to play in Edmonton, so the Oilers should go after players like Mike Green, Paul Martin, Ehrhoff and Franson. They don't need to overpay anymore (at least not more than any other team). If that plan happens to fail, they can go after someone like Phaneuf. The Leafs want to get rid of him, so the price is not huge. Maybe Pittsburgh's 1st round pick and a good prospect.
I see no reason why the Oilers should trade any of their top forwards at this point. They have at least 2 years to figure out who stays and who goes. They can start the season with:
Hall-RNH-Eberle
Pouliot-McDavid-Yakupov
Gordon-Draisaitl-Purcell
Or they could go with:
Hall-RNH-Eberle
Draisaitl-McDavid-Yakupov
Pouliot-Gordon-Purcell
Either way, there's room for all of them while Draisaitl and McDavid are still on their ELC, and Yakupov is signed for $2.5M for two years. Take your time, there's no rush. If Draisaitl is not a fit on wing and he proves himself to be good enough for Top-6, the Oilers will need to trade one of their centers (RNH or Draisaitl). If Draisaitl happens to be a good winger, they can keep all of them long-term. Either way, RNH's value will not go down in two years, and Draisaitl's value only goes up.
Cap space could become an issue but they need to dump players like Nikitin and Purcell if that allows them to sign a better free agent this summer. Those players are badly overpaid, so even a buyout is a good option.
This is the correct answer. There is no reason to trade any of the core right now. Everyone has their panties in a bunch because they won the lottery and want to fleece them to somehow rectify how they shouldn't have won it. There is a 2 year window to let the team work itself out before the cap may become an issue. Who knows where the cap is going, and a close parallel to a different team in a different sport is the OKC Thunder. Traded away Harden because of cap issues they thought they would have a year early and ended up trading away someone they could have made work and who is now an MVP candidate for a different team while the assets they received back are negligible. The biggest advantage the lottery made may arguably be the huge upgrade in possibility of signing UFA's. I'd rather have them sign Niemi than having to give up real assets for Talbot, Jones, Crawford or Anderson. Matt O'Connor has another persuading reason to sign with the oilers. Martin, Michalek, Ehrhoff, Beauchemin are guys that went from 0 chance to some chance of signing in Edmonton. It's not time for MacT to be bold and if anything this buys him time. People aren't going to cancel their season tickets, hopefully they keep Nurse & Drai in the minors for longer than intended and they build a real backlog of talent banging the door to get into the league. I know it's juicy to think of deals for teams looking to prey on the oilers core, but it'll be hard for their assets' values to decrease from here, so it makes no sense to do it this year IMO.
16team H2H Keeper league. 12F, 6D, 2G & 5BN.. 4IR
G ,A, P, +/-, PIM, PPP, SHP, GWG, SOG
W, GAA, SV%, SHO
F:, Brouwer, Carter, Clarkson, Crosby, Datsyuk, Hemsky, Johansson, J.Jokinen, Kopitar, Lee, Lindholm, Michalek, Rick Nash, Reider, E.Staal
D: Zidlicky, Green, Streit, Hamonic, Weber, Gudas
G: Smith, Rinne, Greiss, Brossoit
Farm(Lottery tickets): Bjorkstrand, Deangelo, Dvorak, Nylander, Voynov
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). But the Oilers need a goalie and Anderson popped into my head. The Sens don't need a center, so there's a big flaw. Do you have any ideas (without such a big flaw?)
