OILERS ADDRESS NEEDS ON FIRST DAY OF FREE AGENCY

The New Guys...

Ben Eager

Cam Barker

Andy Sutton

Darcy Hodichuk

Eric Belanger

In one fail swoop the Edmoton Oilers GM Steve Tambellini has upgraded the team in several areas. First and most importantly... in the face off dot.

Eric Belanger won 55% of his draws last year. This tells me that Cogliano is the most likely to get shipped out. There isn't enough spots or ice time for both players. 

There will likely be one other move to make room for tough guy Darcy Hodichuck. Darcy was quoted as saying "I'm hoping Vancouver gets a tough guy, and Calgary too, it's payback time!" I am so glad that we have a guy that is tough that other fighters will actually square off with. Don't get me wrong, I love Steve McIntyre, but no one wanted to fight the big man for fear of ending up like Ivanans in Calgary at the start of 2010.

After the frenzy was over for the Oilers today, some fans were jacked up over the moves that were made. On Twitter one fan @edmontoncritic wrote this little gem..."Dear rest of the league, you're fucked, we're comin! #GOilers" The fan's here seem quite happy with the teams performance according to an Edmonton Journal poll and media outlets around town.

I on the other hand, like some of the moves today, but I am going to wait until game 20 to really have an opinion. I don't know much about any of these players except Hordichuk who played us quite often while in Vancouver. The one thing I don't like is the money we paid Cam Barker. $2.25 Million for a one year deal. Last year he posted one goal, four assists for a total of 5 points in 52 games and was -13 according to hockeydb.com and as far as Ben Eager is concerned, he is a pest that we need but he hasn't been much in the way of ffence and since he's not here for that...I guess we'll see how pesky he can be.

While we did get rid of Kurtis Foster who had an abysmal season last year and was being paid $1.8 Million for his services. I have a little sympathy for the guy as he has had more personal tragedy off the ice than a lot of people. it was probably really hard for him to think about the game of Hockey after losing his daughter. I wish him the best.

All in all I hope that the confidence fans may have lost, based on the optics of the Ryan Smyth trade, was somewhat restored today knowing that we have a GM who understands the needs and is obviously willing to address them!

GO Oilers GO!!

A NEW ERA BEGINS...AGAIN

New Jersey Wins the Lottery, Edmonton Picks First!!!

So with the Draft Lottery over and Edmonton picking first over-all for the second straight year, the question now is...who will it be?

Last year it was clear choice between Taylor vs. Tyler. This year it's debatable as to who should be picked first, and do the Oilers pick based on need or do they pick the best player?

Personally I hope they pick based on need. The problem being that they need soooo much. If they can move up in the draft, and Sean Couturier falls a little further....you could get both the Center & the Defenseman that you need. The question in my mind for Oilers fans is, what are they willing to give up to move up far enough? Hemsky? Gagner? Both? What about a prospect being that we have a few coming now? 

If it was me, I would try my best to get back into the top 5 and see what happens. I want the Defenseman first, and everything else second. We have a lot of top six talent here and on the farm, and we do have a Center coming in Anton Lander. But with Petry already here, and Petiot close...I want to shore that up with a Franchise player on the back end. Now having said that...if Tambellini is going to make a run at Shea Weber in the off-season, then he better make that happen by over paying. Because, if he rolls the dice and misses out on a pick because Weber won't / doesn't sign here...

Either Way we will end up with a good player in the draft. I just hope that the player we get will be as effective as Taylor Hall was this year. 

GO Tamby GO!!!

REFFING IS NOT A FAIR PROCESS

Last Night...


I wrote a while back an article about reffing biases. Last night was quite evident that there is a definite bias happening with referees. 


I want to say first off, that had we got quality officiating last night, Edmonton still got beat by the Hawks. There were other contributing factor to the loss. A combination of rookie head coaching from Ralph Krueger, who is standing in for Tom Renney while he's away dealing with the death of his Dad. I mean let's face it, Reddox, Fraser, & Jones should not have been out against the Toews line.


That aside, Edmonton did not play well enough to win. They were flat, and were unable to put together a 60 minute performance.

But...when the officials gave the Hawks 6 consecutive power-plays without a make-up call of any kind, it is a little one sided in my estimation. The six calls were legit penalties (maybe), but there were some blatant missed calls that should've garnered us some PP time as well. Case-in-point: the slash that Keith made on Penner right in front of the official. Keith was upset with Penner as Pen's had  hit him cleanly, but hard a couple of times. Keith decided to slash Penner and there was no call what-so-ever! It was a blatant call too, as the slash was a one handed chop to the back of Penner's leg.


After 5 consecutive PK's, Teddy Peckman & Cogliano were a little frustrated and Peckman told the ref off and both Peckman and Cogs got 10 min mis-conducts. UNREAL!! I have never seen two of those called at the same time for the same team. Peckman after the game said that he only said 4 words to the official. I would've loved to hear what those words were to garner a 10 minute mis-conduct! I'm not quite sure why Cog's got the penalty, I didn't see him saying or doing anything untoward.


When the officials finally called Toews on a hook at 9:50 of the third...you would've thought we just scored based on the cheering from the crowd. The Fans (myself included) were giving it to the refs quite hard as well, and I think that the whole arena cheering when a Hawk got called, sent a pretty clear message if you ask me.


The caricature above of Mick McGeough is fitting here based on the fact that he blundered that call a few years ago on Horcoff for the hand pass off the face-off that cost us a game. It turns out that one McGeough retired from officiating, he landed a gig training refs. I wonder if there's a correlation there....


GO Oilers GO!

SPECIAL TEAMS WOES

Your Comments are being moderated...


So we're 2-1 to start the season this year. If anyone tracks the standings this early on in the season, then you're probably not too happy about it. 


Going in to the Excel Energy Centre in St. Paul Minnesota, we were a perfect 0-13 in our last 13 games. The streak continues. Nik Backstrom the Wild's goalie is now a perfect 12-0 in his last 12 starts against us. This is a pretty impressive record no matter how bad the Oilers have been last couple of years. Personally I thought with all the new changes to the Oilers this past off season, we might be able to break this streak. I wonder if the mindset of the team, knowing the record, gets in the players head a little?


Our special teams play is what killed us last night. The Oilers gave up 4 goals on the power play and only scored 1 goal on the PP. It was curious to me that Pjaarvi only got approximately one minute of PP time out of 7 PP opportunities. I hope that they maybe try putting one less defenseman on the point and try Pjaarvi there instead. The penalty killers have to be better than this. We can't afford to allow 4 PP goals on 6 attempts. That's just not good enough, even for this young group.


It all boiled down to face-off wins. We need to be better in this area. The three best players in the dot were; Colin Fraser (58% 7-12), Dustin Penner (67% 2-3), & Gilbert Brule (80% 4-5). Ales Hemsky was perfect in the dot, but he only took the one face-off. Andrew Cogliano was atrocious in the face off circle again at only 14% going 1-7. Cogliano told us all that his Face-offs was something he worked at over the summer and he was confident he would be improved this year. We haven't seen it yet Andrew.


All-in-all the special teams and the lack of face-off prowess led to the loss. we are definitely going to need to focus on these abilities going forward.


I wanted to give a shout-out to Rod Phillips, Hall of Fame play-by-play voice for the Oilers for the last 37+ years. Rod will be calling his last 10 games this year that have been dubbed "Rod's Classics." his first of these games is Saturday night in Calgary. If you've never listened to Rod or it's been awhile, you should turn the radio up and the TV volume down and hear the master do his thing. I can't tell you how many times Rod has made me feel like I was listening to the most exciting game in history, even though the Oilers were struggling on the ice. No dis-respect to the new guy Jack Michaels, but Mr. Phillips is the best you will hear and his last battle of Alberta will be on my stereo rather than guys at CBC's Hockey Night in Canada. Thanks for the memories Rod!


It sounds like Mackintyre will be back in the line-up against the Flames this weekend, and you can bet that Calgary will be looking for a little redemption from the shut-out loss and the TKO Smack put on Ivanans. See previous post entitled "couldn't have asked for better" Where I included the video of they're fight.


GO Oilers Go!