@Kgill39 @klimaslid Fans haven’t been this aligned on something since the Trent Frederic extension.
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Lessy
9.8K posts
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32 Thoughts Monday morning playoff preview, news & interview pod. Not reported in it, but heard this morning: Oilers have permission to talk to Craig Berube.
Today's guest is Henrik Sedin. Great answers to terrible questions.
Links to your preferred platform, here:
sportsnet.ca/podcasts/32-th…
Happy Victoria Day. Have a great week.
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@nielsonTSN1260 If you did a poll like this on every Oilers move, “fan consensus” would ouperform every Oilers GM of the McDavid era.
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@FriedgeHNIC Not hard to identify top coaches.
Use xGF% and compare to some metric of roster quality. Completely ignore goaltending.
Berube is most certainly not the answer here.
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@dantencer @Lowetide To me, Dickinson is the buyer beware for Bowman. Depth player that he just paid up for and is on the wrong side of 30.
4C moving forward which is great but not at the rumoured $.
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The Oilers should have enough walking around money to land one significant free agent.
nytimes.com/athletic/72821…
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@dantencer @Lowetide I’d go hard for Alex Tuch and failing that, dabble in the discount bin.
Pay for top of the lineup players and squeeze the bottom for 6 figure contracts. Pretty simple.
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@Lowetide I’d operate this off season with the priority of being able to add ~ 10M worth of players around the deadline. This free agent class isn’t terribly attractive and they’ve missed more than hit in July. An in season trade or trades for true blue chip is, I think, their best bet.
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@jmmaczsports @AzorcanGlobal Dickinson is a stretch as a 3C even.
Give me Ryan O’Reilly in that spot.
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@AzorcanGlobal Dickinson is the only 3C here lol. The other 2 are 4 C’s
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Who should the #Oilers sign for 3C? Stenlund, McCarron or Dickinson?
Or maybe they sign two of them.
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@futurdgduCH @HommedePaix1 @akaRCN Agreed, you shouldn’t have to give up your 5th best asset for the best player on the planet.
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@Petespucks @Oil_Drop They should play the duration of all PP’s and zero PK.
It’s the PK minutes that are exhausting and unnecessary.
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If we use the bodies currently in house, the Oilers can run two PP units:
PP1 - McDavid, Draisaitl, Hyman, RNH, Bouchard
PP2 - McDavid, Draisaitl, Howard, Podkolzin, Bouchard
Give guys time on the man advantage & pile up some points. Scoring always helps with confidence.
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@Sumit_Tripathi_ I’d wager a significant sum of money that his next job is as an NHL assistant coach.
Doesn’t have the presence to be a head coach above junior hockey.
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If KK is as good as Edmonton MSM thinks He will be scooped up by another good team in weeks
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@TheLineBlender Kulak’s getting 5-6 AAV this summer. Great player.
The correct move (in hindsight) was shipping out Kulak and keeping Broberg.
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I quite disagree. My 2 cents.
The rewriting of history going on with Kulak this season is out of control after that round winning goal imo.
Kulak had some god-awful stats this season in a ~2nd line role. He has been about even in a bigger role this playoffs with better teammates + higher comp, which is solid.
He's a real wildcard moving forward. His footspeed is significantly decreased this year. He may have played himself into a more team-friendly contract in the regular season than what may have been 4+ x4, but is playing into a larger contract again now in the early playoff rounds.
Kulak was a good top 4 stopgap with Oilers too in early playoff rounds -- but he always sucked in the later playoffs, particularly Round 4 twice vs FLA. That's why I was team "Keep Broberg" before, and am now team "Get Zellweger or Similar".
Kulak has limitations and they are seemingly growing with age. He was never irreplaceable and Walman is a better puck mover, skater as Kulak ages, and big-game top 4 player, even with a cap hit that will be 2x Kulak's.
We'll see how Rounds 3 and 4 go for Kulak too.
Jeffery Ade@Ade780
The Edmonton Oilers should’ve extended Brett Kulak instead of Jake Walman.
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@Steele131 The guy was an absolute dog every year in the playoffs. Not to mention a solid 4-5 every regular season before this small sample. Probably best not to throw those guys into already lopsided trades.
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Can we stop doing revisionist history on Kulak? Yes he was a fine defenseman and I’m not defending the trade. But Kulak was terrible for the first half of the year
Ryan Rishaug@TSNRyanRishaug
If the Oilers plan all along was to let Knoblauch go, then their handling of this has been horrendous. If they wanted to explore Cassidy as an option, and if it didn’t work out retain Kris, then it was risky - if it got out, they’d be scuttling a coach they just re-signed and were considering keeping. The fact it got out made a return for Knoblauch impossible. Arguably the most important off season in 30 years for this franchise gets off to a rough start. Have to think Bowman and Jackson are very much on the clock as well. Fatigue and injuries only go so far in masking a body of work with some massive mistakes at critical junctures. Brett Kulak with a series winner last night puts an exclamation point on mishandled assets and mis-reads on players. Will be an interesting few months for the organization.
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@dstaples @KevinMcCurdy @50in39 I’m no Nurse fan but do we really trust Stan Bowman to better spend 9.25 million bucks elsewhere?
For reference, look at what he’s paying Jarry and Frederic combined.
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@KevinMcCurdy @50in39 The issue has rarely been his regular season play, which has been inconsistent, but good on average.
The issue is Nurse's horrendous annual crash in playoff performance.
Five years in a row he too often struggles to cover his man or make a pass.
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I'm going to take some heat for this, but seriously, have a deeper look at Nurse's real world impact, it's not nearly as tragic as his reputation would have you believe. This sheet is @50in39's work, so he gets full credit. Bars in blue are the only ones he's finished outside the top 64 (32 teams x 2 defensemen) in his career. I certainly was more surprised by this than I expected, maybe you will be too.
This isn't to say that there isn't development Nurse should be doing, and that he couldn't make smarter plays or whatever, but these results do say something valuable.
Kevin McCurdy@KevinMcCurdy
@Madi39 I think a lot of people vastly underestimate what Nurse is actually worth. There are some compelling arguments to be made that he's still a top pairing defenseman in this league that is greatly overshadowed by his contract.
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Some tend to forget, but Knoblauch did show fire behind closed doors. He had quite the bark during practices, even when fans were allowed to watch.
There was a clip on Oilers+ where he ripped into the team after a game.
He showed emotion but showed it when felt appropriate.
Bleed Oil Blue@BleedOilBlue
Former Oilers and TNT broadcaster Anson Carter says Knoblauch never showed any fire behind the bench. 📹 @FAN590
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@thackattack41 And it will.
Zero chance you can let him make the McDavid trade. This mess is primarily his own doing.
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If the next coach doesn't work out, that'll be on Stan Bowman, there'll be no more excuses. If SB doesn't get the next HC decision correct, it should cost him his job.
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@jimmathesonnhl Woodcroft should never have been fired.
Knoblauch is not NHL head coach material.
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Knoblauch coached 233 Oilers games with .624 winning percentage in regular season and 53 more in playoffs going 31-22. Coach before him Jay Woodcroft coached 133 games with .643 winning percentage. And yet both got fired. This is organizational dysfunction
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@jimmathesonnhl The root of the issue is that they’ve hired the same GM 3 different times, just with a different name.
Old school hockey men with no idea what a salary cap is…
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OK David. Yes, Knoblauch will be fine financially but you can’t have a different coach every 2.3 years. This is not a coaching problem here and hasn’t been for a long time…
David Staples@dstaples
If you're blaming this fiasco on Edmonton -- and some folks are -- well, the outlier here isn't the Oilers. The weird part, as Friedman describes it, isn't on the Oilers. The Oilers are conducting business as usual in the NHL. It's the Vegas Golden Knight who are acting in an unusual and possibly petty, small and mean fashion, at least so far as we can judge now. If you're feeling sorry for Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch, well, he is just starting a new three-year deal where he will make many millions. He also knows NHL coaches have a shelf life and they're hired to be fired. He's not a child and there's no need to pity him. He'll be fine.
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@Sports1440 @JasonGregor @ConnorHalley It has to be an F.
He’s made arguably the 3 worst moves in the entire NHL since taking over.
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"He's had some home runs, and then he's had some pretty big misses..."
What letter grade would you give Stan Bowman? C+? B-? 🤔
@JasonGregor x @ConnorHalley. Brought to you by Go Auto.
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