Rumor: Rumors and Proposals Thread | Goaltending Upgrade(s) In Season or Off Season?

so find another, cheaper player to tap pucks in

Hallsy is a shadow of himself from 2017-18....-30 since his Hart year

 

I really wish Hall would’ve signed long term last year so we could stop hearing about him coming back here.

 

Again people said this about Barrie done, shadow of himself, done, useless, etc. etc.

He can still skate explosively which means Leon will get him a lot of freebie goals and he will rack up a lot of gimme assists just passing the puck around on our PP.

This is a powerful UFA card we can now play -- going after guys who have underperformed somewhere else and enticing them to come here to pump up their value on a 1 year contract.

We should look to take advantage of it all the time.

Hopefully you can develop a situation where every summer there is a Barrie/Hall type player looking to bounce back here.

 

and I keep saying....I ain't paying him a penny over 4 million if he's willing to take a huge haircut to play with skill

then again, he took a 1-year deal to play with skill in Buffalo and it hasn't gone well thus far

 

Well, at a certain point if you are already very wealthy, being slightly more wealthy doesn’t really change your life anymore. At that point, lifestyle and other factors comes into play. One of these things, historically for professional athletes, is to have an opportunity to play on a really good team and win a championship. Maybe Hall cares about the Stanley Cup. Maybe he doesn’t. My point is that he certainly doesn’t NEED to play in a destination that maximizes his income to set him up. He’s not some 4th liner trying to build a nest egg.

 

People knew Barrie was getting misused in Toronto. Everyone but Mike Babcock knew what Barrie was--a horrendous defender, but can pay dividends as a rover defenseman with skilled forwards. It should be a shock to no one he's scoring at a career high rate this season.

Hall? He's showing you what he is today. He did in NJ, he did in AZ and he's doing it in BUF. He's a high-risk forward, requires primary minutes with elite linemates and gives you middling results. Why is that intriguing?

 

Friedman is the king of saying a lot of stuff without actually saying anything new.

Nuge wants to stay in Edmonton, the Oilers want to keep him and it will be challenging due to Covid landscape. Thanks for the scoop Elliott.

I do like his 31 thoughts though.

 

It does raise the interesting possibility that RNH is now considering a 1 or 2 year deal, which I don't think anyone thought he would do. I guess there may be a middle-ground between a long-term deal and him not playing on the team. I'd be intrigued by a short deal and how that could help the Oilers fill out their roster better.

 

I'm not going to cite a source for this or claim this is gospel, this is just what I've heard, I don't know if its 100% reliable so I'm not claiming to be some super insider:

- Hall was gutted when he was traded. Moreso than RNH, Eberle, he really was invested in the "vision" for the team, playing on a McDavid team, playing in the shiny new arena, etc. etc. He was really upset that was taken away from him. Nothing really new there.

- He has two desired destinations. Edmonton is top of the list because he wants to play with Connor and Leon. He still is in touch with Connor. He feels like he has unfinished business here.

The other destination he would like is Toronto, but they have no cap room. He has a new home there and is really into the Toronto scene (became a big Raptors fan, Jays fan, etc.).

- That's why he chose Buffalo as a fall back option ... it's close to Toronto. He liked Krueger also. If the Oilers had offered less than Buffalo but still in a relative ball park, he would have chosen Edmonton. Oilers just didn't have enough cap room last year but they will next season. That's also partly why he's OK with the 1 year in Buffalo that baffled people ... he's waiting for the Oilers to open up cap. Could have signed a multi-year in Colorado but he wants to be here.

Take that for whatever you want.

 

I don't disagree. I'm just saying that Friedman basically reiterated what we've known for a long while now, unless he mentioned the 1-2 year possibility in his article that I missed.

 

He didn't mention that specifically. I think what he does say raises the possibility, but I may be reading too much into it.

 

Kahun has really been a huge let down at 2 LW position -- on pace for 25 points (pro rated to a full 82 game season) is unacceptable production for being a winger on the freaking reigning Hart/Art Ross trophy winner.

It's not a huge pressing need because Leon still gets his points, but it is a bottleneck for the team, you shouldn't have such crap production next to a center that good.

So if Hall can turn that 25 points into even a 60 point pace and is cool with a 1 year deal ... that's an upgrade for us all day.

If Jesse continues to develop decent chemistry with McDavid too, maybe you can actually deploy 3 line depth

Holloway + McDavid + Poolparty
Hall + Draisaitl + Kassian
RNH + Yamamoto + Benson (?)

Next year for example, that would make things very hard on other teams match up wise.

IF Hall is willing to do the Barrie thing and take a 1 year deal, I'd rather spend that money on one Hall instead of getting two Kahun + Chiasson types. It's not need no.1 on the priority list but if we can cash in continually on these 1 year players that want a bounce back year here, we may as well. We've suffered many years having problems getting UFAs, we might as well cash in now that we some appeal for guys who want to increase their value.

 

Yea you really have to take out bits and pieces and try to understand what he’s hinting at sometimes because he’s pretty picky about the words he uses.

The way I’m interpreting it is that they’re a >50% chance Nuge remains an Oiler and a deal probably gets done since both sides want one.

 

Yeah, I heard Colorado's offer was something like $6m x 3. A 3 year deal for him would have been a pretty bad scenario, as it isn't very long-term, but it also takes him to age 32 and certainly no long-term deal available afterwards.

I wonder what he will be looking for this summer and which teams will be suitors. My assumption is that he'd want a long(ish) term deal, because he seems to value stability and not want to do the UFA thing again, but maybe he'd be willing to go 4-5 years at $6m instead of chasing 6+ years. Not sure whether that fits with Edmonton's plans, as we have several players that will be needing RFA deals in that time frame, but we'll see.

 

What is wrong with people, dictating what a player is from this point forward based on 15 games on a shitty dysfunctional team when the career results have been pretty stellar on top of that Hall has a completely unsustainable PDO of 91.6 (extremely unlucky), while still putting up a solid CF% of 56.6% at even strength (higher than any player on our team) and CF%rel of 9.3 a.k.a. outperforming his teammates in this respect by a significant margin.

On top of that him performing "badly" still has him with 55 point pace (82 game pro-rata) that still nets you more than $4M on the open market. If Hall wants back I'd easily give him $6M without a second thought.

 

Yeah, everything I've looked at seems to indicate just a cold/unlucky start for Hall. He's getting a heavy offensive zone start %, but the Corsi vs the PDO just scream that he's had a run of bad luck. It's also far from uncommon for a player to have a cold start on a new team.

His chemistry with Draisaitl while he was here also makes me curious about bringing him back (if there is mutual interest and cap space).

 

Easy solution: play Hall and RNH as your 5v5 soft minutes "third" line. Spread out the icetime and minimize the wear and tear on 97 and 29.

 

Yeah exactly, with Hall you can as an option simply run 3 lines that can tilt the ice if you want and then a 4th line of like Khaira + Archibald + who cares can take gravy minutes and PK time.

 

Good luck convincing those guys to take those minutes long-term watching their point totals diminish along with their ice time.

A big part of RNH's value right now is his ability to log big minutes. He's like a defenseman that plays wing. It's probably why McDavid wants him on his line.

If you could somehow convince Taylor Hall to agree to play that role moving forward, while also agreeing to be paid like a third line forward, I'd absolutely be fine with Hall coming back. But as a primary scoring always trying to skate through a wall Taylor Hall, no interest whatsoever. Unnecessary.

 

Again, good luck convincing any self-respecting point producer to play third line minutes long term. This isn't NHL 20. These are professional hockey players that know their worth.

Dominik Kahun, Tyler Ennis, Josh Archibald, Gaetan Haas, Kyle Turris, Alex Chiasson, Devin Shore....all of these guys are depth signings. Low risk, low salary. So none of them are capable of being overly disappointing. They suck, you waive them.

The problem with our bottom six is that it has consistently been composed of a combination of these players for years. And the mindset has consistently been to continue to do so to continue moving the deck chairs on a top six that doesn't need the help. If that's not running in place, I'm not sure what is.

 

I'm willing to consider Hall at the right price since he has demonstrated chemistry with Drai, but of course the core would have to be cool with it. Our window is opening and you go for it next year while Nurse is still relatively cheap along with JP, Yamo, Bear and all the rest of the young dmen. We can fit Hall, RNH & Larsson on reasonable deals along with a goalie if we lose Chaisson, Russell, Barrie, Smith and buy out Neal.

 

I wonder if focus shifts away from defensive upgrades in the summer to top 6 wingers.

 

But then the problem is that you're paying two 3rd liners $14-$15M+ for how many years? It's a waste of resources to have those two on the 3rd line playing lesser minutes at those prices.

If they sign Hall, they aren't leaving the McDavid line dry so it'll probably be a RNH/McDavid and Hall/Draisaitl pair. There's also a defense, a legit #3C and a #1 goalie to address which I feel are all bigger issues than top 6 winger.

The top 6 is fine, they will almost always outscore opponents. They need to build a 3rd line, upgrade the defense (even just one top 4 upgrade would go a long way) and goaltending. Those are all still weaknesses where this team is average to below average at those positions compared to the rest of the league.

I've said it before. Hall is a luxury add and the Oilers can't afford to use up a chunk of cap space to add a luxury because of the roster holes elsewhere.

 

I would take Barrie over Hall at this point in their respective careers.

 

RNH really should be the third line center. Him/Eberle/Lucic did fine as a line a few years ago.