THE GOALTENDING
The work that MacT has done converting the Oilers’ situation in Net into a position of strength has been nothing short of extraordinary. No position has travelled a transformative arc the way Goaltending has. Unquestionably it has gone from the reason they were out of the Playoff hunt before November to the thing that is keeping them in games. The Silver Fox deserves as much credit as can possibly be given for solidifying one of the singularly most important positions on the team with extremely low risk moves.
MacT’s shrewd dealings took advantage of the devalued market of unestablished Goaltenders. Every year there is some star struck GM who pays an arm and a leg to get a name Goalie despite the fact that this goalie has a very average Save Percentage. They may have been labeled “A Winner… or “Clutch… for work they have done in the past but in terms of the amount of saves they make they are clearly overrated. That’s not to say they are poor goaltenders, but the price to acquire them is just much higher than others who can do the job just as well or better but haven’t earned Marquee status.
This year that guy was Ryan Miller. Make no mistake, a quality netminder having a decent year. He’s also a pending UFA but the cost to acquire him (and Ott) was Halak, Stewart, Carrier, a 1st, and a 3rd. Compared to the rest of the market for pending UFAs that price is astronomical. First, Buffalo should be lauded for being able to get that kind of haul for their guy. Second, we should be very thankful that MacTavish went a different route to fill that position.
For two 3rd Round picks and a 5th Rounder the Oilers acquired this year’s Save Percentage leader and a guy who had a .921 sv% last year. And, in the process of getting rid of their poor goaltender they acquired Hendricks who was a player the team had coveted in the off-season and who adds a physical element that the club lacked prior to his arrival. That is one heck of a switcheroo MacTavish pulled off. THE DEFENSE
Now that MacTavish has pulled the rabbit out of the hat with his Goalies naturally we expect he will turn his eye towards the Defense. But this is where I want to stop the reader and point out that using essentially the same strategy MacTavish has already tried and failed miserably with his blueliners. Yes, MacTavish already tried the same methods with his Defense but the results yielded wildly different results.
MacTavish looked towards an unappreciated market for his goaltenders and found a weakness he could exploit to find impact players for cheap. On Defense he tried to look for under-appreciated players. He went after KHL standout Anton Belov and signed him to a one year deal. He went after former NHL player Dennis Grebeshkov and gave him an above league minimum deal. He acquired Philip Larsen in the Horcoff deal as an undersized puck mover, classically undervalued in the NHL. The results were…unfortunate.
So what’s the difference? Why did things go belly up on defense? Well, for one, good defensemen in the NHL are generally not undervalued the way a good goalie can be. They are notoriously difficult to acquire and good teams have no interest in giving them up for nothing. There’s also the matter of the fact that the shortage of Goalie positions means that there are more qualified candidates than there are openings. There are only 30 starting jobs in the NHL. Period. 30 openings means there will be quality players who are not afforded opportunities to earn jobs. And finally maybe the most important difference, playing Defense in the NHL is incredibly complex and takes years to master (if that can ever happen). The Oilers can have fewer than 100 NHL games of experience in Net because the job is pretty much the same no matter what league you come from: Stop The Puck. An NHL rookie Blueliner, be he 18, 27, or 35, will have a massive learning curve.
MacTavish tried to rebuild his defense to something credible on the cheap, but he couldn’t. He added veterans, flawed youngsters, and standouts from outside leagues but it didn’t work, and it will never work because the market place for quality NHL defensemen doesn’t have the same exploit as the market for Goaltenders. Now there will sometimes be a Tom Gilbert available who can play and bring a lot to the table for very little money, but the Oilers are looking for impact Defensemen and I’m not so sure anyone would classify Gilbert as an impact player.
MacT will need to bring a completely different approach to building the upper tier of the Defense. There are no minute eating, puck moving, stalwart defensemen waiting to be had for middling picks in next year’s entry draft. Those players will cost him significant assets, it’s just a matter of deciding who will be the ones to stay and who will be the ones to go.
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