Transformation Of The Blue Line

On April 23rd 2015, Bob Nicholson announced that the Edmonton Oilers had named Peter Chiarelli the President of Hockey Operations and General Manager for the club. When Peter walked into the building that day he knew he had a huge mountain in front of him to climb. The team was small up front, without a goalie to be found and there were about five pylons on his blue line. Peter Chiarelli seems to have found the two goalies he’s happy with going forward. I plan to put up a post on the Oilers forward group moving forward in the next couple days, but today I wanted to take a look at the defensive core.

I think the Oilers have four guys they’re pretty comfortable with going into next season. Ideally the club would like to have Darnell Nurse in the 6-hole next year. This year he’s been playing in the 3 spot. He’s been in way over his head. The Oilers have six defensemen under contract next year.

Oscar Klefbom

Andrej Sekera

Brandon Davidson

Darnell Nurse

Mark Fayne

Andrew Ference

The Oilers probably need three new defensemen next year to make considerable progress. I think they will try really hard to move Mark Fayne. If they can’t, I could see the Oilers buying him out. He has $7M  in salary left. Due to his age, the buyout ratio is 2:3. So without going into depth on it, if the Oilers were to use a compliance buyout on Mark Fayne they would carry a $1.1M cap hit for the next four years. With the Oilers having six contracts on the blue line going into next year it makes it basically impossible to improve the defense considering the contracts and money tied up in bottom-end guys.

Andrew Ference has been shut down for the year due to a hip injury. But with the amount of swelling he has currently, they haven’t been able to do the surgery. Apparently they hope to be able to do it in the next month or so. This all but makes it clear the Oilers can’t buyout Ference this summer. They will do the surgery and next season he’ll be put on LTIR. If they manage to trade Fayne or buy him out we will end up with something like this:

Klefbom    X

Sekera       X

Nurse     Davidson

X

I don’t see Eric Gryba getting resigned. He’ll be looking for a contract in the $2-2.5M per year range. Not sure the Oilers are comfortable with that in the 7 spot. Brandon Davidson has made huge progress this year. I think they would like to start the year with him on the third pairing. He’s capable of playing second period minutes if needed. But they probably like the idea of him being a third pairing guy which moves him up in case of injuries. If they slot him in on the second pair and someone gets hurt, we will have the same problem as this year. When Oscar Klefbom got hurt, there was nobody even close to be able to cover those minutes.

I’ve come up with a few realistic options that the Oilers could add in the top four for next season:

Travis Hamonic

6’2 205lbs Right shot

57 GP 5 Goals 11 Assists +/- -2

Travis Hamonic has some pretty solid numbers. He plays the majority of his minutes with Calvin DeHaan. I like DeHaan, but I think Hamonic with Oscar Klefbom would make for a really nice top pairing that’s very inexpensive for the next few years. The Oilers have two top-four spots open, and just like everyone else has reported, the Oilers will go after him hard in the summer.

Sami Vatanen

5’10 185lbs Right Shot

61 GP 9 Goals 25 Assists +/- 3

Another option is Sami Vatanen. It will be interesting because he’s an RFA. Would Chiarelli offer-sheet him? Or prefer to trade for him? He plays on the Ducks’ third pairing and gets a lot of PP time. From talking to a couple people along with my own evaluation on him, he projects to be a real solid second pairing guy that can run a powerplay. He’s average defensively mostly due to his smaller stature, but doesn’t cause major breakdowns or chances against.

Jason Demers

6’1 200lbs Right Shot

58 GP 7 Goals 15 Assists +/- 14

Jason Demers is a UFA this summer. Sometimes this is a tricky game, but with the cap going down or staying where it is, the Oilers could possibly be a front-runner for him. Although, Dallas isn’t exactly deep on defense either, so they will probably make a run at resigning him as well.

The Oilers also brought in Adam Pardy via waivers on Monday. Chiarelli admitted he was looking for a defenseman to test drive. I believe he’s looking for a cheap #7 guy that can play once in awhile next year. I found a few cheap UFA defensemen that could possibly play in this role.

Adam Pardy

6’4 230lbs Left Shot

15 GP O Goals 1 Assist +/- -3

Carlo Colaiacovo

6’1 200lbs Left Shot

GP 25 O Goals 4 Assists +/- -6

Jordie Benn

6’2 200lbs Left Shot

56 GP 1 Goal 8 Assists +/- -1

Personally, I would probably target Jordie Benn for the number 7 spot. He can play either side and has a little bit of offense in his game. But can they pull him away from his brother in Dallas? The closer the days get, I can’t see why Jordan Eberle wouldn’t be able to get the deal done for Travis Hamonic. The Islanders will probably lose Okposo this summer. They’ll need a skilled winger to play with John Tavares. If the Oilers could start the season with the following, they’d definitely be the playoff picture next year.

Klefbom-Hamonic

Sekera- Demers

Nurse- Davidson

Benn

I don’t think it’s to crazy to expect either. Chiarelli was working the phones a lot on deadline day trying to set up a few summer deals. I wouldn’t be surprised to see four or five new faces on the roster come September.

Cheers!