The Edmonton Oilers are at a place where they need to trade to acquire some very specific pieces and everybody knows it. They need top-flight defenseman, but so do 29 other teams. Nobody has a spare Chris Pronger laying around except the Flyers but that’s a different topic for a different day. But there will be no greater impact to the team than finding a competent starting goaltender.
There are a few available that should cost nothing but money (Michael Neuvirth, Antti Niemi) but the ones still under contract will need to be picked up via a trade. That’s going to cost the Oilers something, and I’m going to suggest that most people are overvaluing the market for goaltenders quite heavily.
I see trade suggestions every day. It’s just part of the territory when you write about a team. People have ideas and they bounce them off of you. As a rule you can probably eliminate most deals just by understanding the old saying that’s starts “If it sounds too good to be true…… As the Oilers have been terrible for years it seems to me that trade proposals are getting worse and worse for the Oilers. Once upon a time these deals had the Oilers fleecing other teams, something along the lines of Martin Marincin and a first-round pick for Evgeni Malkin. But gradually, maybe as our hopes have died, they usually involve Edmonton trading multiple blue chip prospects, a first, and a roster player for someone’s second-line winger or unproven goalie.
If not a mix of all three then certainly a lot of proposed deals undervalue Edmonton’s assets greatly. And as much as I would love to say that’s limited to what Average Joe Twitter Account is saying, it isn’t. We should all breathe a sigh of relief that even the guys getting paid to analyze hockey say some pretty outrageous things sometimes. Whether it’s Darren Dreger famously saying the Oilers couldn’t trade Nail Yakupov for James Reimer or most recently Jim Matheson telling Bob Stauffer on Oilers Now that Edmonton should trade the 16th Overall Pick for Boston's Malcolm Subban, everybody is on board when it comes to overvaluing goaltenders.
The Matheson suggestion from today’s show dropped my jaw a bit though. Malcom Subban is a quality goaltending prospect, no doubt about it. He was drafted out of Belleville with a .923 save percentage. He followed that up with a .934 in his draft plus one year with the Bulls as well. He then graduated to the AHL where he posted a .920 in his rookie pro year and followed it up with .921 this year. At 21 years old he has built a solid resume for himself beginning in juniors and continuing to the pros.
That’s not an easy jump to make, even for good CHL goaltenders. Tyler Bunz was outstanding in the WHL. As soon as he starting making money for his craft he was horrible. So Subban is a quality young netminder. But he was drafted 24th Overall by the Bruins in a significantly weaker draft than this one is set to be in 2015 and we’re talking about the 16th overall pick.
I think we need to reset expectations here.
Here is pretty much every starting goalie who has been acquired via trade and the bounty it took to get them in order of how much it required:
Jaroslav Halak: 4th Round Pick Ben Bishop: Cory Conacher and a 4th Round Pick Kari Lehtonen: Ivan Vishnevskiy and a 4th Round Pick Ben Scrivens: 3rd Round Pick Sergei Bobrovsky: 2nd Round Pick and two 4th Round Picks Craig Anderson: Brian Elliott Steve Mason: Michael Leighton and a 3rd Round Pick Tuuka Rask: Andrew Raycroft Roberto Luongo: Jacob Markstrom and Shawn Matthias Jonathan Bernier: Matt Frattin, Ben Scrivens, and a 2nd Round Pick Semyon Varlamov: 1st Round Pick (unknown that it would become 11th Overall) and 2nd Round Pick Ryan Miller (with Steve Ott): William Carrier, Chris Stewart, Jaroslav Halak, and two 1st Round Picks (1 conditional that never met its condition) Cory Schneider: 9th Overall Pick
I think my order is pretty fair and I did list Schneider ahead of Miller despite the absolute wealth of pieces it took to get Miller just because those 1st Round Picks were of unknown value when the deal was made whereas the Devils knew they were giving up a top 10 pick to get Schneider. On Draft Day that’s a huge price to pay.
Note, however, that only 3 Goaltenders cost their acquiring teams a pick in the 1st Round. Cory Schneider is among the best goaltenders in the league and if you don’t believe that then there’s nothing that can help you. You are a lost soul. Semyon Varlamov had played in 50+ NHL games and was coming off of a .924 season when he was acquired. And Miller, well Miller still had a lot of hype for some reason and the Blues made a terrible, terrible deal.
If the Oilers do indeed use the 16th Overall pick on a goaltender, in such a deep Draft year as the 2015 Draft, then they better be getting something much more established than Malcom Subban. That pick is so valuable today that they can’t afford to deal it away for magic beans. They need something more concrete.
As Stauffer would say on his show, I expect the Oilers to move picks from their stockpiles in the 2nd and 3rd Rounds to acquire a goaltender.
If someone’s trade proposal for a Goaltender includes the 1st, Nail Yakupov, or Leon Draisaitl we should laugh at them unless Carey Price is coming the other way. The market for goaltenders, even very good ones, just isn’t such that it would require moving Blue Chip prospects or Top 6 forwards. That’s simply not what good NHL GMs pay to procure NHL goaltending.
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