C or a D. Seems like lots of fingers being crossed for Turris, Barrie, and Pulju but the fact is that they're all guys who will need to rebound to move the needle at all for this team.
That combined with the hope that some prospects will actually take the next step and the even bigger hope that the goaltending doesn't just go out and die every night and it feels like every other Oilers off-season.
Just going to piggyback on some of these points:
- Disappointing that we ended up stuck with all of the money from Russell, Chiasson, Neal (Larsson to a lesser degree). Will be rejoicing when some of this clears in 2021.
- Very happy Holland was patient with Puljujarvi, could be a real player
- I think Turris is a really weird fit but it can work with Tippett's coaching, just he's not a defensively sound player so that 3rd line becomes awkward to deploy unless Turris + Puljujarvi find chemistry - which is very possible. Turris has been useless defensively in Nashville and needs to turn it around. Look how much they paid him just to leave. Iffy on it but thankfully cheap.
- We avoided deals with term, which is fantastic. Holland did really nice work not leaching into 2022.
- Klefbom will probably have to miss all the way to the trade deadline minimum for our cap purposes. There was definitely no way you could fully replace what he brings.
- Our forwards didn't improve enough, we needed a two-way winger on the left side to bump Khaira or Nygard out of the lineup. We don't have a lot of defensively responsible forwards nor players who can forecheck like Tampa's guys do (if we forechecked as a team like the Neal/Chiasson line did vs CHI, we could have broke them down like Vegas did)
- It's kind of awkward that Chiasson is still kicking around when they clearly don't have room for him.
- Absolutely nothing wrong with Ennis at that price.
- Tyson Barrie is a nice contract but it's more of a bonus - our PP just needs a guy who can push the puck on the blueline and his defensive play leaves a lot to be desired. I have hope he is a really special tool for us to use this season and that his puckmoving at 5v5 leaves to better 5v5 results but also we didn't really fix the problem vs Chicago (a total defensive zone breakdown) and without Klefbom, it's even worse. Stauffer had Barrie as a 3rd pairing 5v5 D and if that's his deployment, he truly is more of a bonus than a necessity and not a Klefbom replacement aside from being the PP guy. Toronto fans said Barrie liked to shoot on the PP - he's going to have to defer to McDavid/Drai like Klef figured out for it to work well. His playmaking will be key. I am 50/50 on this working and I'm very curious to see but the deal doesn't hurt us so can't say Holland did poorly here.
- Mike Smith is truly a bad idea, and people that think he'll only play 20 games forget Dave Tippett's loyalty to him. They paid him money. They gave him an NTC. They started him game 1. He's going to play too many games for this club and lose us a couple key ones, and that was a big whiff. Holland stuck to his budget in net and the lack of creativity hurt us. There's a chance Forsberg looks better in camp. There's an argument to be made that the money on Barrie should have went to Crawford or Greiss and we'll see during the year if Barrie wins us more games vs Smith losing us some. I can't buy the "Smith is a leader" either because it clearly didn't show vs Chicago.
- I still think the key pieces for the Oilers to improve this season are none of Holland's picks - Puljujarvi, Jones, Bear, Bouchard, Yamamoto development will continue driving this bus.
To me it doesn't feel like every Oilers offseason due to the upside of Barrie + Puljujarvi, however also I think we can't call Ken Holland as GM of the Year until we see what we look like without Klefbom and see if these rebound candidates do indeed rebound. It's too early for me to jump around and drink Kool-Aid.
