Edmonton Oilers

Expansion Pressures
June 12, 2017, 12:44 PM ET [233 Comments]
Matt Henderson
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Congratulations to the Pittsburgh Penguins and yadda yadda yadda. The Cup has finally been awarded and the 29 other teams who were forced to wait around can get back to business. And there isn’t a lot of time to get down to work.

The Expansion Draft is in just a little more than a week, so the clubs who need to fix their ratio of quality forwards to defensemen have very little time to make deals. We hope that this forces some movement across the league because trades are fun and GMs under pressure make ridiculous decisions. The league is executing a significant amount of pressure on teams right now.

Edmonton is situated well with all 5 of their defenders under contract next year either protected or not eligible to be taken by Vegas. Combine that with McDavid also ineligible to be selected and the Oilers can skate through the Expansion process if it likes while only potentially losing players of the Reinhart or Khaira ilk. These are not established NHL players, but more like long-term prospects with a decent chance of playing between 100-200 NHL games in their career.

If all Edmonton does is sit back and wait for Expansion to pass and they lose Khaira or Reinhart, they will be better off than a lot of other teams. Everybody will lose someone. Chiarelli’s Oilers aren’t going to be broken by the player they will lose. When you combine that with the fact that the team will gain a lot of Cap Space this summer then the financial pressure of 2017-2018 is also a non-factor.

The easiness with the financial situation is not the case in Chicago, where they appear to have banked on a rising Cap and lost. They might be $4.5 Million over the Cap, without resigning or adding anyone. $10.5 million for Toews and $6.8 million for Seabrook doesn’t feel so good right now, does it? The Hawks may be looking to make a deal with the Golden Knights that ensures they take Kruger AND they might have to trade away Hjalmarsson just to have some breathing room.

Between the Cap and the expansion, it might cost Chicago a 1st, Kruger, TvR, and Hjalmarsson with the return to Chicago being nothing. It’s hard to predict what the exact cost will be to them, but it’s high. So Edmonton getting through the summer only forced to lose Jujhar Khaira is pretty OK.

Of course, that’s the safest route through Expansion. Edmonton loses negligible talent then is free to make a deal with Vegas for someone that they poached. We have no idea who actually will be available. We can guess, but reports are surfacing that teams are requesting NMC’s be waived all over the league. For example, if Kevin Bieksa waives his NMC then he can be exposed in Expansion and not someone like Vatanen. It’s much better for Anaheim and Vegas maybe doesn’t even take Bieksa because he’s Kevin Bieksa and nobody wants him.

The riskier play is taking advantage of the pressure applied to the GMs before the Expansion. Teams looking to get to 7-3-1 or face losing a quality defender will be looking for a forward. Every single insider in hockey is looking at Jordan Eberle on the Oilers and wondering how well he fits long term. If Edmonton can find a team willing to move a quality defender for cheaper than usual rather than lose him for nothing, then an Eberle for D move might materialize (or something along those lines).

Should Edmonton gain a 4th defender worth protecting then they would need to go to 8 skaters and a goaltender. The protection list would look almost certainly like this:

Protected: Maroon, Draisaitl, Lucic, Nuge, Sekera, Larsson, Klefbom, Defender X, Talbot
Exempt: McDavid, Nurse, Benning, Caggiula, Puljujarvi, Slepyshev
Exposed: Letestu, Kassian, Pouliot, Pakarinen, Khaira, Fayne, Reinhart

This set-up exposes Letestu and Kassian in addition to the names we expect to be exposed regardless of how this plays out. Kassian is probably the most likely to be picked if the team goes down this route based on age, but he simply may not be a great fit for Vegas (or vice versa). Letestu being selected would be the most damaging to the Oilers because of the role he plays on special teams and as a faceoff specialist.

*Quick aside, the Oilers have probably asked Vegas what it would cost to incentivize them into taking Fayne or Pouliot already. We can circle back to that later.*

If Edmonton was willing to take that leap and trade for a defender right now, if the value of the D is high enough then it would more than offset the potential loss of Kassian or Letestu. Not to dimish the contributions of Zack Kassian, who had an awesome playoffs and seems to have turned his life around, but he’s still just a 7 goal, 24 point 3rd or 4th line forward. Letestu’ 16 goals this past year would be much harder to replace, but Edmonton can be an attractive spot to players entering the “Win-Now” phase of their careers. All players exposed even in a 4-4-1 scenario are replaceable.

We’re going to find out over the next 7-9 days how desperate teams are to make these deals and whether or not their panic forces Edmonton to make the riskier play ahead of expansion. It could very well be worth it. Edmonton is well situated.