Not long ago the Oilers filed arbitration against Justin Schultz. This move, likely, has a lot more to do with opening the buyout window that comes after the resolution of the contract than it does with keeping the cost down for Schultz.
The Buyout Option
The normal buyout window came and went without the Oilers ridding themselves of either Ference or (more obviously) Nikitin. Surely the hope was that Nikitin could be traded if the Oilers retain salary. The benefit to that is obvious. It costs the Oilers potentially more on their Cap this year but after the 2015-2016 season Nikitin would be off the books completely. Buying him out on the other hand, would mean that a Cap penalty will stay with the Oilers for the 2016-2017 season as well.
The Oilers would receive a 3M savings on the Cap this year in exchange for 1.5M on the Cap next year for nobody.
Is it worth it to buy out Nikitin for 3 Million dollars of space this year?
The answer all depends on what else Chiarelli has up his sleeve. The Oilers have roughly 7.5M in Cap Space according to General Fanager but that does not count the minimum of 3.75M that the Oilers owe to Justin Schultz. That leaves the Oilers just 3.75M dollars to play with. That’s great at the Trade deadline when the 3.75M pro-rates to a significant amount, but if Chiarelli wants to add an expensive piece right now then they simply cant.
What kind of piece would they want to add? Who knows what they might have cooking but let’s say they wanted to upgrade the 1D position by signing Cody Franson then they can’t. They don’t have the coin. Another 3 Million in Space, however, takes them to 6.75M in space and all kinds of flexibility.
Alternatively the Oilers could keep Nikitin because at his best he is still an NHL player. He does possess a strong point shot and he has size. He is unquestionably too expensive for what he provides but at the same time, he can actually spot in on the PP and move the puck a little. He is 28 years old but he hasn’t even hit the 300 game mark yet in his career. It is possible that his inconsistencies get hammered out a bit.
But What About Justin Schultz?
To the eyes of most who actually watched him play, Schultz had a rough year. He continued to spin his tires defensively and even inspired the new verb “To Jultz… which is used to describe the act of leaning towards an opponent with one hand on the stick to simulate an attempt at making physical contact but without following through.
The problem is that the Oilers kept throwing Schultz over the boards. He would fail and the coach would send him over. He would fail again and they would keep going. He was terrible on the PP all year and they didn’t identify him as a problem.
His ice time totals don’t look like that of someone you cant trust on the ice. At 22:36 per game he was easily the most played Oiler all season long. His total time on ice is almost 300 more minutes than Ryan Nugent-Hopkins who was 2nd on the club. If the case ever went to arbitration the Oilers would have a very difficult time explaining why they think Schultz was so terrible if they continued to use him so much.
Indeed the advanced stats are also now usable in arbitration cases and I doubt the arbitrators will be particularly adept enough to look past the fact that Justin Schultz had the 2nd best raw Corsi For percentage on the club last season at 50.1%. The argument against it’s value is that he played almost exclusively away from his own zone and with the best offensive forwards on the team, but that can be easily spun to sound like he was an offensive weapon on par with those player.
In short, there isn’t exactly a slam dunk case against Justin Schultz that wont require getting really ugly about his actual abilities as a defender. So if, for some reason, the Oilers do need to actually get in front of an arbitrator they might actually end up paying Schultz MORE than what they are paying him now. With the kind of arbitration they probably filed (there are multiple types) they cant actually win a case that pays him less than what is owed.
One of the main benefits to his kind of arbitration is that it prevents hold-outs, not necessarily that it keeps costs down.
All that said, the likelihood of the Oilers and Schultz failing to come to an agreement on his deal are low. For all we know Schultz was willing to sign his Qualifying Offer for a 1 year deal at 3.75M and the Oilers asked him to hold off just so they could file for arbitration and open the 2nd Buyout window. Most of these cases get resolved before ever seeing an arbitrator because the process can be so divisive.
TL;DR
The Oilers probably elected for arbitration just so they could open a 2nd Buyout window. If that’s the case then it’s reasonable to assume Peter Chiarelli might have something else cooking that upgrades the club. If the club ends up actually seeing an arbitrator, however, then Schultz has a pretty solid case for himself because the Oilers played him about 4 minutes a game too much throughout all of last season.
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