So explained to me how they are going to fill out the roster with almost half the cap spread amongst 5 to 6 players
- Yeti1181
Just for you...
EDMONTON - It’s a team only four games into a new era and clearly a long way from coming together.
And already you have to ask the question: Are the Edmonton Oilers going to be able to keep the team together?
It’s been three weeks since a new collective bargaining agreement ended the lockout and long enough for Kevin Lowe, Steve Tambellini, Craig MacTavish and Ricky Olczyk and the big picture team to have an idea of what it’s going to mean going through the 10-year CBA. Which is about the same time you’d like to be able to keep the expanding core group of this talented young troupe together.
But is that going to be possible?
A lot of people are pretty pessimistic about that.
But Lowe isn’t one of them.
“I don’t see it being a problem to be honest,” he said after leaving the first of four days of the annual mid-season meetings with Stu MacGregor and his amateur scouting staff.
“Short term we are in great shape with the salary cap. Short term it’s really spaced out nicely with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Justin Schultz having two years on their entry level contracts and Nail Yakupov three.
“We have a lot of room in the cap in the next couple of years. If the cap follows the same path it did after the last lockout, we should be able to manage it down the road, too.”
Lowe, as president of hockey operations, is the biggest picture guy of the big picture guys. He also owns Oiler Stanley Cup rings with one, two, three, four and five bites of a carrot engraved on them from a group conscious of keeping the team together until owner Peter Pocklington sold Wayne Gretzky. Lowe was one of the last to leave to go to New York to join a half a dozen Oilers on the Rangers to win his sixth Stanley Cup.
Having headed an inspired short-term rebuild after the last lockout to get the Oilers to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals in 2006 and having survived many mistakes in seasons which followed, Lowe is inspired to try to keep this team together to be the team it can be for as long as it can be.
“We’ve gone through a lot to get a real solid core,” he said. “I think for sure we’re going to be able to keep it for the next seven years. But the goal is as long as possible.”
Some point to what happened to the Chicago Blackhawks who won a Stanley Cup and had to tear part of their team apart the following year.
But Lowe says the Oilers, if they’re smart about it, aren’t going to be in Chicago’s situation.
“The problem with Chicago’s situation was that prior to their success, they went out and signed some guys. Then Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Brent Seabrook and Duncan Keith developed and they had to move guys like Dustin Byfuglien, Kris Versteeg and Andrew Ladd after their Cup year. They had Christobal Huet, Martin Havlat and Bryan Campbell when they got frustrated by their lack of success. Then the young guys came in. And it was a lower cap then, too.
“We’re in a good place to be because there were enough lessons to learn through the last CBA that if we’ve learned the lessons we should be able to manage through the cap. Pittsburgh has done a great job.”
Before the lockout began the Oilers signed Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle to deals through 2019-20 and 2018-19 respectively, at $6 million each per year.
There’s every expectation that they’ll be extending Ryan Nugent-Hopkins to a similar long-term deal at the end of this season.
That’ll be $18 million a year for the first line.
Four games into the season, with what we’ve already witnessed watching Justin Schultz, you have to figure there’s going to be another $6 million-a-year-range long term deal there.
Schultz hasn’t missed a beat in his transition from U.S. college hockey to the AHL to the NHL. Since the 22-year-old free agent picked Edmonton over 29 other teams, he played 38 games, scoring 18 goals and producing 48 points with the Oklahoma City Barons averaging an estimated 28 minutes of ice time a game.
Despite having the assist on Sam Gagner’s buzzer-beater in Calgary Saturday taken away and given to Hall, Schultz is tied for the team scoring lead with Hall and Eberle with five points only four games into his NHL career. He leads the entire team in ice time at 24:02 right out of the box.
So maybe you have to figure there’s another $6 million a year long-term deal there.
Who knows what will be a fair contract for Nail Yakupov when his entry-level deal expires, but Ales Hemsky has this year and next to go on his $5.5 million a year deal and Gagner will be a restricted free agent coming off a $3.2 million a year deal at the end of this season. So whether there’s a trade of one of those guys for a different part for the second line or you keep it intact, you figure it’s going to combine to maybe be about $12 million for the second line.
Jeff Petry, already playing the second most minutes to Schultz at 20:53 a game, will be a UFA at the end of next year but might be looking at a long-term extension this summer the way he’s developing if you ignore his stinker Saturday in Calgary.
So it’s looking like maybe $18 million for their top four defencemen when it comes together.
Add maybe $5 million for your No. 1 goalie (Devan Dubnyk is making $3.75 million through to the end of next year) and then add it up.
Bottom line is: for your top six forwards, top four defencemen and starting goalie by the time the team moves into the new downtown arena it projects to be paying about $53 million.
“With the new CBA the cap can’t go below $64.7 million,” said Lowe.
“Based on the last CBA, I’ve read some projections that it could go up to $90 million toward the end of the CBA. You know it’s not going down. And history tells you that it’s probably going to go up.”
Short term, the Oilers are in sensational shape.
“Right now, this year, we have lots of room contract-wise. We couldn’t be in any better position,” said Lowe.
“We’re at roughly $54 million now. The cap is $70 million this year. If we’re in position and there’s something available, we’re going to be making a deal. We’re not going to gut any of our core players to try sneak into the playoffs this year or anything like that, but if we’re in position and there’s a deal to be done ... absolutely!
“Lets put it this way. The goal for the organization is to be thinking about acquiring somebody at the trade deadline as opposed to trading away someone for a draft pick or prospect because we’re out of the playoffs. If there’s a piece or pieces we feel we are missing, we’ll do the deal.”
That said, Lowe assures, there is zero chance anybody is going to pry away a prized prospect. I believe that to mean nobody need inquire about Oscar Kleftbom.
But with $53 million likely to be tied up on the top 11 players, Lowe admits now that the picking of first overall draft choices is done and he’s not sitting around with Tambellini, MacGregor and his gang this week playing cards.
“We’re going to need to continue to draft well and we’re certainly going to need to develop well. We’re going to need draft picks to be developed to fit into spots.
“Our guys picked Eberle 22nd. We’re going to need to improve on an already improved scouting philosophy.”
As for the development, there’s suddenly concern that nobody has been developing worth a damn down in OKC lately.
“Obviously the ice time was slim with our guys down there,” said Lowe of Eberle, Hall, Nugent-Hopkins and Schultz with Magnus Paajarvi and Teemu Hartikainen also up to start the season.
“We left the team with a little bit of a void.”
Lowe says he’s confident that the Barons will start to show development progress again in short order.
After 30 years of basically not being in the minor-league development business at all, the big picture guys are not going to take their eyes off that, he swears. Even if now it’s hard not for all eyes to be on the big league club and the ride-the-bike, fall-off-the-bike, get-on-the-bike-again adventure they’re already having to start on their trip toward the top.
Thanks for coming out. Any other brain busters?
