I’ve had a little bit of time to digest what happened on the Trade Deadline now and I think taking that time was important. My initial reaction was a feeling of catastrophic disappointment due to the realization that this management group could never possibly evaluate defense properly nor could they appropriately assess what they had in front of them let alone what is on the roster for the other teams. I’m sure the Germans have a word for that feeling.
Regardless of how I feel, Jeff Petry is gone and he would be a fool to come back. There is nobody here willing to go to bat for him. MacTavish will praise the play of Oscar Klefbom, tout the potential of Justin Schultz, he will assure us that Andrew Ference is leading this team and he will even claim until blue in the face that Nikita Nikitin is a top 4 defenseman, but he simply could not believe in Jeff Petry. The door is closed there. No matter how much I wish the Oilers would make him an offer on July 1 to get him back in the fold, there’s no reason to believe Craig MacTavish considers that move.
As of today, Edmonton’s Defense is effectively crippled and MacT said he’s comfortable moving forward with it as his base. He’s apparently comfortable with a Defense of Klefbom, Schultz, Fayne, Ference, and Niktin (no mention of Marincin even though he’s better than both Ference and Nikitin). Obviously the Oilers need to add there and the plan is pretty thinly veiled in the sense that nobody is saying it but everybody knows they want Johnny Boychuk who might not even become available as a Free Agent.
Let’s just pretend for a second that the Oilers sign Johnny Boychuk next season. We will also assume that MacTavish hasn’t traded Marincin for a 3rd round pick or ECHL fighter. That means next year’s defense could look something like this:
Nikitin Boychuk Klefbom Schultz Ference Fayne Nurse Marincin
Marincin will be waiver eligible next year and if the Oilers are at all being serious about developing their young players then we can probably put Nurse in the AHL to start the season and Marincin will be the 7th D.
Are those 3 pairings going to get you into a playoff spot in the West? Remember now, that’s supposed to be the goal every year. It actually was supposed to be the goal the last 2 years, but the team back-pedaled on that. So here we are, it is October 2015, and the Oilers are staring down a straight decade out of the playoffs. The last time they were there, the man running the team was running the bench, and he had a veteran top 4 with 1 Hall of Famer eating 30 minutes of ice a night and they still just barely scraped their way to the finals as underdogs the whole time.
How can anybody possibly say with a straight face that they would be comfortable with the group the Oilers have moving forward? Is it just face-noise for the cameras? Is it delusion? Is it simply arrogance?
I’d like to believe that Craig’s On It, but in order to keep that dream alive I have to ignore more and more of what he says and does.
LINEUP
Obviously the team has a permanent change to the defense and as per Bob Stauffer’s tweets and MacT’s press conference we are going to see more faces from the farm show what they can do at the NHL level. That is to say that they will fill the obvious holes in the lineup until the team mercifully closes out the year. The Oilers also failed to acquire any other goaltender yesterday so we can bet on Scrivens working his way out of this funk until Fasth is ready or his body also gives out on him.
Pouliot RNH Eberle Purcell Roy Yak Gazdic Gordon Klinkhammer Hamilton Hendricks Fraser
Klefbom Schultz Marincin Fayne Ference Oesterle
Scrivens
OILERS KEYS TO THE GAME
1) Exposure 1. One of my biggest worries now that Petry is gone is that Andrew Ference will really be exposed as a defenseman. People were apparently calling MacT about this player and he looked better this year than he did last year, but now we’re going to see how much of that was on him and how much of that was on Petry. The Captain doesn’t have a veteran player in his prime doing the heavy lifting. The next 19 games are going to be as hard on him on the ice than any other individual player. He just lost a good partner and will likely be inheriting a rookie of some description the rest of the way.
2) Exposure 2. I’ve written about this before, but the Petry pair often had to take on assignments that the Klefbom and Schultz duo had to be sheltered from. The dynamic of the team has changed and while their ice time might only jump a little, their quality of competition will probably skyrocket. This is not the ideal way I had envisioned young Klefbom’s early experience in the NHL. If he can rise to the occasion then I will be overjoyed. If he struggles we need to remember that his GM just took away his life preserver.
3) Tooth and Nail. Los Angeles, San Jose, and the Flames are tied for points and fighting for the 3rd spot in the Pacific. They are 3 points behind the last Wild Card spot in the West so it seems least likely they will make it that way. They will be clawing for every point available from here on out and the Oilers stand in their way tonight. This team should play like a cornered animal and the Oilers just need to find a way to not to get gored.
Puck drops at 7:38 PM Mountain Time on Sportsnet West. Tank On!
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